CXR

He woke up with a sudden jolt and it felt as if someone had been calling out his name whilst he was sleeping. Was it a hypnopompic hallucination? It was very dark and cold, he felt really disorientated. The stench of urine was overwhelming and made him nauseous. He suddenly started retching and continued to vomit. It was difficult to tell how long he continued to vomit; he had lost all sense of time and space.

He gradually became more aware of himself and as he did, he had an uneasy feeling of not having any clothes on his body and being wet all over. It was not easy to decipher why he was wet, was it his own sweat? Had he been in the water? Did he drown and now woke up in hell?

He tried hard to focus and remember where he was but couldn’t make any sense. By this time his eyes got used to the darkness and his surrounding made a little bit of sense. He could vaguely make out the walls of a very small room. It was so small he thought he had been buried alive. If this was somebody’s idea of a practical joke, he wasn’t laughing; not even smiling. All of a sudden he heard faint voices coming from a distance; he couldn’t make it who they were or what they were saying. Was he hallucinating now? He also heard some more scuffled noises, was that the sound of dogs barking in the background? This sent a chilling sense of fear down his spine as if he was conditioned to this. Unable to understand his bodily reaction, he tried to move but immediately realised that he was held down by something around his neck and feet.

He then experienced an uneasy feeling, like there was someone else in the room. No, not one but a few others! But how could that be? It is such a small room? Had he really lost his mind? Was he dead or was he dreaming, infact was this a nightmare? With all those thoughts rushing through his mind, he violently struggled to recall how he got here. Some fleeting thoughts poured in but they were disjointed. A few images flashed in his mind, a barren land, the sea, a group of people around him- he didn’t recognise any of them. Maybe there was a clue there. He closed his eyes and concentrated harder, another image flashed of him being stripped, he couldn’t understand why and he felt too disorientated to make sense of any of this information.

When he tried opening his eyes again, something hard and powerful hit his face so hard that he could taste the blood gushing out of the corners of his mouth. He shut his eyes again thinking that it would take away this merciless infliction of pain. But to his horror, he had vivid images of a dog barking loudly inches away from his face. The image was so real that he could actually feel the warmth of the animal’s breath. To his surprise he could now feel the animal’s saliva dripping on his face. How could that be? This animal wasn’t real, then how can his senses experience it? Had he lost his mind and all this was a bad psychotic experience?

Right at this point he felt a gush of water on his face. It continued and there was no sign of it stopping. He couldn’t breathe; it felt like he was drowning. He started gasping for air. Who is doing this? Why are they doing this to me? Why won’t it stop? I can’t take it anymore.

Then something weird happened. It all started to make sense to him, all his thoughts were no longer scattered. All the images were now playing in his mind in the sequence which made perfect sense.

He woke up with a sudden jolt and it felt as if someone had been calling out his name whilst he was sleeping. He then heard a soft voice say “Wake up” “Wake up” “It’s just a nightmare.” Dreading what he would see, he slowly opened his eyes. He saw the image of a saintly women leaning over him, her eyes were red as if she had just woken up or had been crying recently. He felt disorientated and bewildered again. “It was so real” he said in a croaked and parched voice, finding it difficult to get his words out. “Don’t worry, I am here with you now, go back to sleep” said the women and gave him a gentle hug whilst caressing his hair and patting his back as if to help him to sleep like you do with an infant.

He felt very calm, infact too calm. He could not figure out what was real and what wasn’t. If this was a dream, he didn’t want it to end. He didn’t care about anything anymore, as he closed his eyes to sleep he felt eternally blissful. Everything is going to be all right now, he thought.