Last night was horrible. Every inch of sleep was nightmare.

I've mentioned my recurring dreams of the woman before. There is nothing blatantly sinister about her, but she frightens me so much that Kat always wakes me up because I'm hyperventilating. Sometimes she's an old woman with, as I described before, skin that is precisely the color of mouse feet. Sometimes, like last night, she seems younger, but she's wearing a veil. She never speaks, but behind the veil, I can hear her breath gurgling like water dribbling over a rocky riverbed. Always, I feel paralyzed. I am aware of her presence, but I can't even look down to see her. There is a weight like that old painting of the cauchemar, the nightmare beast sitting on the sleeper's chest. All of the ambient noises in my room, the fan running, the hedgehog going about his nightly shuffling, it's all gone. The room is completely silent, except for her breathing. All the lights are dark, both the glow of the cable box and the alarm clock on my nightstand, and the ambient light coming from the streetlights outside the window.

Last night, even her breathing disappeared, and I was laying in pitch darkness, in utter silence. And then Kat spoke, "what's going on?"

The entire block had lost electricity. I woke from a nightmare of darkness, isolation and oppression into a blackout.

Kat's half-sleep and the clinging shreds of my dream made the entire situation absolutely terrifying. I couldn't fall back asleep until almost three hours later when the power came back on, so I just alternated between laying in darkness and flickering candlelight.

Then I went back to sleep and dreamed of being trapped in a town of walking dead, animated by swarms of locusts nesting in their viscera. When they attacked they opened their maws and let forth a torrent of insects, who would begin to devour and burrow into their prey. I had lost my shoes somewhere, and the crawling bugs burst and popped beneath my feet. Thankfully I don't remember much more of that one.

Can I have some pleasant dreams tonight, please?