The Dweller

Our drill instructor instructed us on the proper wearing of our uniform as he walked down the line of bodies that stood erect one after another. Across from me stood a man whose face said his bladder was about to explode. He displayed real pain, and then a slight discomfort, fear, joy, and then again fear. A fine line of urine formed a larger and larger puddle from his leg. We stood there in awe of moving, not daring to make a sound. I was terrified. I had left my home, my family, a higher education, to be here where a full grown man pissed himself because he was too scared to request to use the restroom.

I reflected on the thoughts of home and the last day with the man pissing himself, while I lay in my bed. The lights shut off overhead and a red glow took over. The night is never dark in boot camp, there is always something keeping you awake. I closed my eyes.

Harry! Someone had screamed my name. I jerked awake as my eyes opened from the pure reflex or months of being in constant fear of being emotionally traumatized by a drill instructor. It was still dark in the barracks. I didn't know what time it was. The night watchman walked past my bed. “Hey did you call my name?” I asked. “No.” “Did you hear anyone yell my name?” The guard walked on thinking I was just another slightly delusional person that filled our division at boot camp. I was sure that it was not a dream; someone had screamed my name, in anger or in need. It was no dream. I was sure. God had called the name of Samuel, a young man who lived thousands of years before me, but he didn’t know it. Samuel thought it was his teacher Eli, but after Samuel came to Eli and told him, Eli informed him he did not call.  Three times God called Samuel while in bed and the last of his calls Eli told Samuel to answer to God by saying, “I am here.” As Samuel had done many years ago, I answered back, “Here I am Lord,” the words whispered from my mouth. There was silence in the barracks room late in the evening, not a soul would dare make a sound. No one heard my whispers. No one had called on me.

Vine and I sat down at Sharies with cups of coffee in front of us. It was going to be a long night full of exciting information about each-others lives and the new things we had learned. It had been a few years since I had left for boot camp and we were doing our yearly catch up. These meetups didn't exactly land on any specific day, but we made it worth our time. In no time were on our sixth cup of coffee.

It was late at night and the street lights lit up the flakes of falling cotton tumbling into the blackness until they melted on the street. The snow was falling, but not yet enough to stick. "How's it been, I'm excited to talk dude, “Vine started off. "Yeah man, it's been a while. God, I’m so glad we get to talk. Most the people I talk with don't care about this stuff, “He said.”Yeah man, I know I wrote to you about my crazy experience, but can I tell you again?" I asked. "Sure,” He replied, a smile on his face.

I was working long days in the military, working more than twelve hours a day, waking up at 0330 going to bed past midnight and doing it over and over. Life had become quite monotones. I had started to read a book called Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot where the author really started to challenge some of my basic views about my religious faith, the author being an atheist and all. I also had just purchased my first home and slept on the top floor of the three-story townhouse. So I was lying in my bed resting and then someone jumped on my back.

It felt like someone about my size My roommate most likely as he often liked to play jokes on me, and personal space had no barring with him. “Get the fuck off me man,” I said, annoyed. I couldn't move, and I was overtaken, powerless. My roommate said nothing. “Dude you need to get the fuck off of me,” I said louder, this time a bit more angrily. No word was replied, but a heavy breath of air was blown into my ear. “What the fuck man, get off of me!” The heavy breathing in my ear was a bit much and at this point, I was ready to do some severe damage to my roommate. The breathing persisted. I exerted all my strength and swung my fist around to inflict as much pain as I could do which I hoped would be his face. When I moved, the weight was gone I was alone in my room. No one, nothing, silence. There was just me and the night.

For the next few nights, I slept on the couch on the first floor of my house. I didn't want to alarm anyone who lived there with my crazy story, so I just stayed up watching movies late, and I guess my roommates figured I was just really into watching movies. I eventually moved back upstairs after I either I gained the courage or didn't want to sleep on a couch in my own home when I had a nice bed.

A number of months passed by. I had forgotten about the heavy breather and figured all was normal besides my terrible sleep schedule. I was resting my eyes while in bed and heard my roommates talking downstairs. I could hear their voices distinctly and noticed that one of them couldn't possibly be home as he had left a month ago to go to Afghanistan. The conversation downstairs stopped. I wondered what was going on, why they stopped talking. A terrible dread fell over me. What came next is hard to describe, but the best of I can explain is a feeling. I felt as though a blue orb of light came through my door, as though my door put of no barrier for the object. The blue orb then continued to move towards my bed where I was asleep. It was though I was watching this all occur in an alternative perspective.

"Jesus," Vine let out a gasp while he put down his coffee. “It just sounds so much more intense hearing it from you in person.” "Yeah man, it was really terrifying, “I replied. I somehow felt it come through my door and over to me, and then it was gone. I was awake. The next day is when I sent you an email with the story and what was going on.” “Wow man, and didn't you say you saw the grim reaper?” Vine asked. “Yeah, that's what happened next. I received your email about you thinking I may be having sleep paralysis. It made sense from what everyone said on the website you sent me. I asked God to overcome whatever it was.” Actually, I was frantically asking God to help me while I was sweating my balls off in the middle of the night with the heavy covers locked tightly over my body, covering every inch of me in pure fear. As if somehow blankets provided some type of protection.

I laid there fear struck late in the night and sure as shit, once again the feeling of dread filled me. This time it was no glowing orb of light but a dark cloaked figure. It walked toward me, looking at just the beads of my eyes, the only things that I didn't cover with my blankets. It reached at me. I felt pure terror overcome me. I looked into its face and saw squirming maggots eating at its rotting flesh. All I could think was, “Oh my god!” Then it was gone, vanished It had just slipped away, but not my fear or the paralysis. If I dared moved it would know where I was and come back out of the darkness.

"God man, that is crazy," Vine said to me, taking more sips of coffee. I looked at the grounds floating in the pool of brownish black mixture in my cup, swashing this and that way, no order, just madness. I remembered what came next.

“I couldn't let this thing defeat me, this Dweller of the Night. I had prayed to God for a week now and it wasn’t working. I had to do something. I couldn't sleep a full nights rest, I couldn't focus at work, and I was losing it. When I would talk to people at work they would tell me that I was possessed by a demon, or that spirits were attacking me. My mind was much more rational than that, it had to be something else, maybe something was attacking me but I wasn’t possessed and I wasn’t going to be. I also was determined that this wasn't going to let it happen to me anymore.

I knew that any night now the Dweller would show up in my room again, and terrorize me until I pleaded for its mercy.” “God it must have not had anything better to do,” Vine said while letting out a small laugh. “I lay there in my bed and waited to fall asleep. If it was a dream and it was sleep paralysis then I could defeat it, it was in my head. I closed my eyes.

The hairs in the back of my neck rose swiftly, quietly, I knew it was time. I looked at the stairway and out of the night, a figure formed. This bastard was going down.” Vine sipped more at his coffee. “For some reason, I was laying on the floor. I got up and ran at the beast as it turned to run away. I knew I had it this time, it was scared. It started to run but I managed to grab its black cloak and did the first thing that came to my mind. I started to eat it. The beast started to squeal like a dying pig, loud, painfully. I ate and ate until the beast was gone, every bit of it. The room became quiet again, and peaceful again. A strange light came from down my stairs. I knew I was dreaming but somehow now lucid, awake, and aware. I walked down the stairs and became transported to a beautiful hotel room, something out of the 1940s. Crystal chandelier lit up the ceiling. I was surprised how real things looked even though I knew it was a dream. I felt the hard cold granite walls, to confirm it was real. This was something different than a dream, not in the way I had been used to anyways.”

Ann Faraday in her book The Dream Game talks about how two competing powers rule human consciousness. The Top Dog who is always doing its best to oppress the self and control its actions and the Little Dog, our consciousness always believing it’s in control when it’s really just playing out the wishes of the Top Dog. She talks about how it’s important to take control of our lives as well as understand what the Top Dog wants by analyzing our dreams. She also implied that devout religious believers often provide the Top Dog with total control of their lives by trusting it for all the answers, as though God and the Top Dog is really the same thing subconsciously. She continued that once religious beliefs were questioned, the Top Dog often attacks the believer in their dreams to try to scare them back into giving Top Dog total control. It’s my understanding that when I started to question my beliefs my Top Dog started to physically attack me in my dreams resulting in me to having to overcome my fears and abandon my old beliefs. My Top Dog, or Dweller had shown its true self. If I had not overcome the power of the Top Dog, I still would be today asking God to take control of my life and once again providing the Top Dog the power that it wanted. This battle between the Top Dog and Little Dog could be applied to correspond to other religious experiences, such as the dweller in the threshold which is taught in many occult groups, as well as the challenges faced in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Our coffee was running out. “That's pretty crazy,” Vine said. We sat there for a while reflecting over my story and I thought about the future. I soon would be going back to college.

The military gave me the option at another try for higher education due to my hard work and extreme dedication to the cause. I had somehow managed to turn my life around and was able to impress my parents and serve my country. I had found meaning in my work but still had no meaning as a person. My job was my life.

“What's with your old friend too?” Vine asked. “Yeah, I almost forgot, a lot happened this year, god. I had a roommate that was one of my best friends since high school. He tried to kill himself. Then there was the other roommate who had schizophrenia.   A good high school friend was discharged from the Air Force for medical reasons. He ended up moving in with me so we could live up the old times like in high school. But instead, he became obsessed with drinking and became more and more depressed. At the peak of his depression, he pulled out a loaded gun and pointed it at his head. The gun, silver with copper shells loaded into its revolving cartridge, terrified me. “Damnit put the gun down!” I managed to talk him down. I asked him to leave and move back home where his family could support him.

After he left, another roommate moved in. Unfortunately, he failed to mention that he had a family history of schizophrenia and recently started to see dead people. By the time I finally realized that something was a bit off with him, we were friends. I allowed him to say at my place until he was able to move home, which he was already in the process of doing. His stories scared the shit out of me. He said a dead girl frequently was cutting her wrists in the shower behind him. This made it incredibly hard for me to wash my face in the shower. When I removed the soap out of my eyes, I feared that a dead woman would be staring at me. I didn't care that I couldn't see her; I felt that realness in my imagination.

In the end, both experiences opened my eyes to the realities of life. Things weren't so black and white. Good people have problems, and so did I.  In my friend with the gun I saw myself. I too was depressed about girls, my family, and my job. If I took up heavy drinking, I too might have a gun in my face.  Who knows? I may also one day see dead people for no apparent reason. This made me want to know more about myself, others, and why they act in specific ways. I was intrigued by the impossibly complex puzzle caused by the 100 trillion synapses that encompass the human mind. I became extremely interested in understanding sleep, psychology, and anything in between. I wanted to learn more about who I was. I wanted to know if there was anything I could learn that could help me and others like myself, better know who they are.

The coffee was gone, Vine was gone, and I was once again asleep. I felt the sudden feeling of sleep paralysis as I had that sickening feeling of being pressed down and total fear of something bad soon would be crawling towards my body. This time I was lying down in the barracks room filled with military people and one particular group was talking in the hall across from my room. I looked up at a little man who sat on the bed in the next room, swinging his small legs back and forth. He was very out of place, and frantically listening in to what the people were talking about. My body reacted to him with pure terror as it did with the Dweller/Top Dog figure months before.  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye once he noticed I could see his stubby white body. For reasons unknown, this infuriated him beyond comprehension. He jumped down from where he perched and ran at me. His bushy red hair, which would put to shame any traditional leprechauns, bounced as he ran. His little arms moved in a back and forth movement, fist clenched and teeth grinding from anger. I jumped out of bed and quickly put my arm out to his face which stopped him in his tracks,.” No!,” I shouted out at him. He cringed and made a growling sound but didn't move any further. I opened my eyes as I lay motionless in my bed.

From this I realized that my fears in life often ran at me, never stopping until I was trampled. The only way I could deal with the fear and pain was to create alternative ways to survive. My dad in his fits of anger, yelling about my mom about how horrible she was and in result how terrible I was. He couldn't be stopped by me saying anything constructive. I wouldn't be listened to anyways. The only thing I could do is laugh historically. My sister had her own emotional issues with my parents often would often result in her picking on me, beating me up at times, and me getting hurt. I would laugh instead of cry, pretending that I was just having fun but my Dweller knew better. It had taken the pain for me and hid it away teaching me how to hide everything and only let out the feelings that others couldn’t use against me. I had started to tread on the Dwellers territory and it was angry but I didn’t care. In my dreams, where fears somehow are more potent, pure, I was taking control, telling them I wasn't going to take it anymore. I was becoming strong and it reflected in my waking life.