When I was seven years old, I shared my room in The Bronx with my Uncle who was in transition from a hard life. He constantly read, but he bought more books than he could read in a day…
My room was littered with lurid covers of books from when paperbacks had lurid covers of sexy women for staid topics. I would look at all these books and I started to file them onto my shelves. I was the seven year old librarian.
The books I filed on a special shelf were all the Horror classics. I loved looking at the covers from Frankenstein, Dracula, and Phantom Of The Opera. I told myself that one day I would write a Horror book that would have some sexy woman on the cover screaming with some greenish blood creature lurking above her.
I don’t usually write Horror stories. I have played around with my Horror ideas in “My Monstrological Society” stories. I love writing this series. It is about a father of three who tells his young boys a made up on the spur of the moment Horror story, in order to keep them quiet in a household that has a new baby girl in it. I probably started writing these stories about five years ago.
Maybe I have already written about “My Monster” – a story that will make me proud to put on that top shelf with those famous Horror icons I already mentioned. One day I will re-read my stories, and see if there is any one monster I’ve created who I feel deserves a cover with a sexy girl screaming at him, but for the moment, I wanted to tell you about why I am so confident that my monster stories are going to just get better and better right now.
I have sleep apnea… It means I snore and while I sleep I stop breathing. Now, when I found out I stop breathing, I wasn’t so concerned, but what I was concerned about was that I stop dreaming. The Apnea wakes me up during REM. For a long time, I have not been having my dreams, which means that I haven’t been having my nightmares.
For a man who wants to write a classic Horror fictional character, this was dramatic news. I knew that in order to write a Horror icon, I would have to start having my nightmares again. I went to a sleep study which confirmed my darkest fears: my sleep apnea was not allowing me to have my nightmares I counted on in order to get ideas about a Horror character.
Pure living nightmare for me. I needed to get to sleep and have bad things happen in my dreams. I knew they were there and that it was just a matter of not stopping breathing while I slept. The best way that I can describe not dreaming because of Apnea is that it is similar to drowning. Remember that time you were a kid and you sucked in the swimming pool water cause some other kid held you down for too long; all you could think about was getting back up above the water line so that you could gasp and breath in some fresh air? Well, that is where I find myself now and my dreaming. Finally, with my CPAP machine, I can breath in air and dream my dreams.
Unfortunately, a lot of my dreams are pleasant. Still, the dark ones are surfacing, and I am sure eventually I will dream my classic Horror vision. What will my tale be about?
I think my monster will be hungry. I think he will want to eat out of his problems. I’ve always liked Cannibals, but of course we already have Hannibal, so I probably will skip this monster.
I’ve only had the machine for a week now, so I don’t know exactly what to expect from my nightmaring. Still, I do expect greatness… I think I just came up with a Monstrological Society story title,” May All Your Nightmares Seem Long and Relentless.” It is about a gypsy who curses a boyfriend of a woman. The woman believes in the Tarot, the boyfriend does not. He starts having such terrible nightmares that he decides he will never go back to sleep.
I’m tired, I think I’ll go take an napnea.
