The room is quiet, I would imagine, as I lay in deep slumber. The willow tree right outside my window blows in the wind, and in doing this, casts dark shadows onto my walls. These are the shadows I stared at one night after an especially nightmarish nightmare believing to be people who were trying to enter my domain and do who knows what. But these shadows are no discomfort to me now-real or fake, as I am in a different world, the REM world. The discomfort that I am currently feeling however, is very real in this alternate locale, in this world of dreams. 

The person who is the star of this dream, who I assume is myself, is running through a dark house errantly. The dark house is like a distant memory of childhood, oddly familiar yet foreign. Have I been here before? I realize that I am running, and stop. But some unidentifiable force in my body is telling me to keep running. I think I am afraid. I end up in a room that I recognize as my own. Everything is in place as it is in real time. I jump into my bed and fling the covers over me and cower in the same way the 7 year old me did once. What is this unknown terror that unhinges my very sanity?

In real time, the real me awakens with a start, unable to sleep again.