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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Popular-Ask682 on 2024-11-05 22:40:45+00:00.
The following posts were originally found on a popular website forum and have since been removed.
OP (06-17-21): Several months ago, I lost my husband after he apparently died in his sleep. I wish I could say he looked to be at peace when he died, but the look of terror on his face when I found his body would suggest otherwise.
Now, I'm no doctor and I haven't seen many dead bodies, so I assumed his ghastly expression was a normal occurrence. Something related to the muscle fibers expending their last ATP stores to cause one last final muscle contraction, a final abnormal neurological firing resulting in an odd last facial expression… but now I'm starting to think there might have been another, more ominous reason.
After months of mourning his loss, I decided it was finally time to start going through my husband’s things. To get a sense of closure. To move on with my life. Maybe even try and meet someone new.
While going through his bedside dresser, I found a diary. He was a writer, albeit not a very good one, and I'm told this is a normal thing that writers to do. Sometimes he would have vivid dreams and would have to jot them down before they slipped his mind.
I'll relay his entries here as they're written in his diary. Knowing who he was and what he believed, I know that this is what he would have wanted; he would have wanted me to share his musings with the world, even if they fell on deaf ears. But before you read any further, there is one slight caveat I should mention. He had hundreds of entries in his diary and I read through all of them. Maybe to get a better sense of who he was, maybe because I was bored, or maybe because I just wanted to hear his voice again and reading his words allowed me to hear them. To hear him.
Regardless, most of the entries are rather mundane, lacking in inspiration or originality, but towards the end his dreams started to become more linear, almost like a TV series, with a clear protagonist and antagonist. A beginning, a middle, and an end. I’ll start relaying his entries at the beginning, or at least what I believe to be the beginning.
Entry 1: I'm sitting in the bleachers of my high school basketball gym. It's exactly how I remember. There are 2 sets of bleachers on each side of the court, one on the lower level and one on the upper level; I'm on the upper level. The dance team is doing some kind of performance, but I'm not really paying attention because my high school crush – we’ll call her Angelica to protect her identity and because she was like an angle to me - is sitting directly across from me; we keep making eye contact.
OP: I didn't know he had a crush on anyone in high school, but I'm willing to let bygones be bygones.
Entry 1 (continued): The dance team is finally done with their performance. I'm now standing by myself in the middle of the basketball court. The spotlight is on me. Shit. I'm still in my underwear. The entire audience is laughing at me. I turn to run, but I'm now in the middle of our football field. It's our high school graduation.
Entry 2: I'm back in the middle of the football field, but now I have pants on (thank God) along with my cap and gown. Our entire graduating class is sitting in plastic foldable chairs, all neatly laid out in the middle of the football field. Why did they make us sit out here for our graduation in the middle of summer? Anyway, the valedictorian is in the middle of a commencement speech.
And now the valedictorian – initially an archetypal Poindexter, complete with braces, glasses, freckles and a pocket protector – has transformed into Angelica because of course that would happen. I can't stop staring into her eyes and I barely process what she’s saying. Why can't I stop staring? Does she wear contacts or are her eyes really that captivating?
Angelica stops in middle of her speech and fiddles with the microphone. There doesn't seem to be any sound coming from it. I never hear anything in my dreams anyway, so it's kind of weird seeing someone else in a dream react to not being able to hear themselves.
Suddenly, someone appears next to the podium where she's standing. I recognize everyone else in my dream except for this strange interloper. He leans over and whispers something to her. She nods to the mysterious guest and makes her way to her seat, which, you guessed it, is right next to me. Does that mean anything? It has to mean something.
The moment she sits down, the strange interloper picks up the podium and hurls it into the sky. Everyone, including me, looks up. When I look back down, the strange interloper has transformed from a pedestrian middle-aged man into a clown, complete with red curly hair, an unnerving smile and large sharp pointed teeth. I think he had eyes, but I don't remember what they looked like. Small red dots that pierce through the darkness? Or maybe they were large, yellow and lifeless… eyes the size of dinner plates that couldn’t possibly belong to anything in this reality? I’ll be sure to look more closely next time, if I have the wherewithal to remember.
Then, one of the school administrators took it upon herself to confront the clown and shoo him off the stage. As she approached, the clown’s gaze slowly shifted from the audience to the administrator. The clown’s intense gaze quickly melted her confident demeanor and she suddenly had a change of heart. Like a dog with their tail tucked between their legs, she slowly started to back away from the clown. She must have thought she was safe because she turned her back on him. Big mistake. He quickly closed the distance between them, picked her up, unhinged his jaw, and devoured her whole. I was completely speechless. And then I remembered I was in a dream.
When I woke up, I was drenched in sweat. I watched a scary movie about clowns last night, so that's probably what this clown thing is all about. To the light of my life, if you're reading this, that's why I washed the sheets. Not because I was actually trying to “be a better husband”, though I really do try.
Entry 3: I'm back on the football field and the clown just finished engulfing the administrator. He jumps down from the stage and begins devouring everyone in the front row, one by one. I stand up to get a better view. I can barely make out a pair of feet squirming before they disappear into the clown's grotesque mouth. I sit back down and turn to Angelica, who's still sitting next to me. She doesn't seem to be bothered at all by the atrocities happening before our eyes. In fact, no one seems bothered by the clown until they realize they’re next.
When I wake up, I'm not drenched in sweat, but my hands are sore. I think I had a death grip on my blankets while I was sleeping. I wonder how long my hands were stuck like that? I've never had nightmares of the same movie back-to-back and I've certainly never had such a visceral experience during my dreams, let alone dreams that happen in a linear fashion. How far can I take these dreams? Could these dreams be telling me something? Are they the gateway to the story that's going to make me famous?
Entry 4: I'm back on the football field. The clown has finished devouring everyone in the front row, though he certainly doesn't look like he's eaten anyone because his funny little checkered vest still fits and his bow tie is still miraculously secured around his neck. I begin counting the rows between him and me.
21 rows between him and me. I let out a sigh of relief.
It seems the clown heard me because once I finished sighing, he looked directly at me. Up until this point, we hadn't actually made eye contact. What’s particularly strange is that I still don’t know what his eyes looked like, despite making a conscious effort to note their appearance. Maybe there was nothing where his eyes should have been and my mind is just trying to fill in the blanks. What I did notice is that the clown’s motivation seemed to change. At first, it seemed he was causally killing the audience members, almost as if he was tasked with killing these people and was reluctant to do so – like he drew the short straw and was in charge of cleanup on aisle 4. Now it seems like he’s trying to dispose of them quickly so he can get to me faster – rushing through the entrée so he can get to desert.
I say that because after the clown looked at me, he looked at the rows between him and me, bounced a few times in his massive red shoes, and then jumped 15 feet into the air. While suspended in mid-air, he began breathing fire at the rows in front of me. Rows 2-15 were suddenly filled with nothing but charred bodies and melted chairs.
When I woke, I could have sworn I smelled burning flesh and heard the muffled sound of people screaming. The smell lasted for only moments and the sound of screaming, even less so.
Entry 5: I’ve only slept twice over the past four days. That’s two more dreams. Two more rows of people dead. Two fewer rows between me and that clown, or that demon, or whatever it is.
I fear falling asleep because every time I fall asleep, another row of people dies, each time more brutally than the last. I’m beginning to fear that these aren’t just dreams after all.
Entry 7: I don’t know how long I’ve gone without sleep. I’m trying to hold it all together and pretend like everything is fine because no one would believe me if I told them the truth. If I told them what was really happening to me.
In the last dream I had, I tried to escape. Bu...
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