Empathetic Dreaming

Being plagued by disturbing dreams is either the mark of a disturbed mind or perhaps the mark of a writer, which is essentially the same thing.  I was in my parents' old bedroom in a house we no longer own being chased by two men who wanted my attention for a very unwholesome reason.  As I braced myself against the door, I saw that my two swords, replica Masamunes from FFVII were against the wall as they are in my current bedroom.  So I grabbed the longer one (Mercy), flung the door open, and you can guess what happened next.  They both ran onto it one after the other (guess mine was longer after all...)  It's about a five foot blade, and they were taking up about three feet of it, and I could feel it.  Not feel it go into them, but feel the pain in my own flesh.  Then (because dreams are strange like that), there was just one guy bleeding in my upstairs hallway, crying and in pain.  He rolled onto his back and just begged me to make it end, so I stabbed him through the spine and I suppose into the heart, and I felt that, too.

Then I went downstairs, and there were a whole bunch of people, friends, acquaintances, people I didn't recognize, but I knew I knew in that dreamlike way.  I told them all what I had done and they wanted to see the blood on the sword.  It was more than halfway down, painted on the steel, and I wanted to know how to get it off.  Someone said that I could get "white wash," and that would make it clean.  Then the dream shifted into something else, but I remembered this part when I woke, and the beat of my heart was all crooked, and blood stained the back of my tongue.

Sword Fight Win or Fail

I do have quick dreams/visions about being impaled fairly often, more so depending on what I've been watching, but I was in the full blown dreamscape with this one.  I was sword-fighting someone, a guy, nondescript.  I won the battle, but took a stab wound to the stomach, deep enough that it would've killed me in real life, but in the dreamworld I didn't feel a thing.  What was odd was the sword/knife I was stabbed with had a smooth edge, but the wound was serrated horizontal across my stomach.  There was also no blood.  I could walk, but I had to constantly hold it together.  Medical authorities were called, and I remember I was in one of my friend's houses, though it didn't look like it being altogether much larger and we wandered around looking for these doctors so that they could stitch me back up.  When we finally found them, they were busy doing something or other, and when I grew tired of waiting and said something, the "head" doctor said that it wasn't his job and directed me to the next in line who initially looked appalled at the wound, but then decided I didn't need to be sewn up after all.  The last thing I remember is running my hand along the bumpy edge of the wound and when I woke up I clutched my stomach, feeling far more nauseated on the other side than I did in the dream.  The best part is I do have a scar on my stomach from my gallbladder surgery, horizontal, but smooth, but I've felt pretty sick all day thinking about this.  I usually avoid watching scenes were people get impaled, because I can literally feel it.  It's awful.  I guess my recent avoidance of some such scenes might have called this potential nightmare up.

I had one a while ago where I was watching two women sword-fighting around an old style carriage.  They were dressed in Victorian or steampunk outfits.  Then they began to chase each other around the carriage, but the one suddenly stopped and turned around with sword facing her opponent...you can guess what happened next.  I wrote a scene in my story of just such a thing prior to this one happening.  That wasn't the worst one though...the worst are the ones that feel real.  Where I'm falling and falling, and what stops me is getting impaled. Front or back it makes no matter.  These dreams usually end the same, so the one described above was a different sort.  I didn't wake up after it happened and I learned to heal myself.