The Dream

This story is based off a dream I had, and something that happened that I'll never forget. All of it is true.

I had a dream a while back that I was being chased by a man with a machete, kind of like Jason Voorhees, but with no mask and a body type similar to Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We were in a wooded area with a house here and there. I was running for my life, pretty far ahead of the man. 

I ran into the house in front of me, one of those ones where the basement can be easily accessed through a door like the first floor. It was on a hill, which made me slip a few times before I finally managed to get inside.

The physical trauma was overwhelming to me. I had never in a dream experienced so much "real" terror. It was too much. I looked around for something to defend myself with, which was my original intention. Eventually I had a shotgun in my hand, ready to fight off whatever came. 

But before I could see any sign of the man, I turned the gun on myself and pulled the trigger.

All the sound cut out like someone pulled the plug on a TV. Sudden, with no echoes of even a hint of anything ever being. The darkness came along at the same time.

I was terrified to say the least, for real this time. What if the rumors were true, that when you die in a dream you die in real life. What if I was actually dead? After a while, the sound slowly came back and a picture loaded into place, allowing me to continue with whatever I was doing. But the experience with death stayed with me, even after I woke up.

Was that what death was like? An eternal darkness? Or maybe, like in my dream, it only stays like that for a while before another life, or the afterlife, loads in. I guess we'll never know, or at least not for sure.