#oneaday Day 9: The Manor of Sleep, Part 1

I've been having trouble sleeping off and on for the last few years.

I suspect this is mostly related to my anxiety issues, though just recently it hasn't been so much a sense of anxiety that has been keeping me awake as simply not being particularly comfortable.

A possible side-effect of this is that when I actually do get to sleep, I tend to have fairly vivid dreams. And, interestingly, I've found that some of them seem to be connected… or at least my brain has interpreted them as being such when I think back over them after the fact.

I often dream of a house. I've never seen the outside of the house, but I know it's a pretty big one. I have a feeling it may be inspired by a few large country houses that I've stayed in over the years — most notably the house my friend Tim grew up in, and a house that Andie and I stayed in for (if I remember correctly) her sister's birthday one year. It's not identical to either, though, just "inspired" by.

Different dreams have taken me to different parts of the house. I've never had a dream in which I go through the whole house, which is why I say I believe it's my brain "filling in the gaps" and connecting these dreams together rather than the dream itself explicitly stating those things. I shall attempt to assemble the "information" I know so far over the course of a few posts.

The first dream I recall having of the house took place on its middle floor. This mostly consisted of a long corridor that ran from one side of the house to the other, with a staircase at either end. There were stairs up to the top floor at just one end of this corridor.  The floor was carpeted and the fittings fairly "modern"; despite having the feeling of a country house, on this floor there were no exposed beams or anything, just fairly plain painted walls adorned with a few pictures down one side, and at least two doors on the other.

The two doors I can particularly remember both led to bathrooms. One of these bathrooms was perfectly normal, but for whatever reason I'd always find myself unable to get in there. Perhaps someone was in there, or perhaps I just felt "repelled" by it for some reason. This meant I would inevitably find myself drawn to the other bathroom; I don't recall that it was because of a particular need to go to the toilet or anything, I was just drawn there in this particular dream.

The other bathroom was not normal. In contrast to the rather modern corridor, the interior of this one had a bare wooden floor that had rotted quite severely. It was the kind of floor you step on and feel like you might go right through it. And there was some sort of peculiar space-time distortion in there that meant the toilet was actually much further away than it appeared to be at first glace.

As I approached the toilet, the floor finally gave way, splintering with a sickening crunch as a huge hole formed. I leaped back from it to prevent falling, but found myself peering into it regardless. Rather than the floor below, however, the interior of the hole appeared to contain some kind of portal; it was a swirling, violet-coloured tunnel adorned with brightly lit markings that rotated around it in a manner oddly reminiscent of a particularly distasteful 1970s lamp. The markings reminded me, oddly, of leopard-print.

This was obviously an unusual sight in itself, but I felt a particularly threatening aura coming from the hole and knew I had to get away from it as soon as possible. I realised a dull noise that had been present since I entered the room was increasing in volume and intensity, and I was being "pulled" towards the hole by an unknown force. Meanwhile, the toilet was starting to overflow with disgusting sludge that leaked down into the hole, further solidifying my feeling that I really didn't want to see what was in there.

I'd say I ran, but I'm pretty sure I woke up at that point, so I'm not sure if I actually did or not.

Anyway, that's the first memory I have of this strange house in my dreams, which probably says more about me than you wanted to know. More to come.