I had a bad dream last night. I don't have bad dreams very often, but when I do they haunt me for a few days until I have the nerve to either tell someone about it or write it down. Here I can do both. Read on if you wish... The elevator was rickety and old, smelling of dirty rags and rotting wood. It came to a stop only after jostling up and down a few times from the loose tension on the cable which could be heard screeching through a pulley somewhere far above. Metal on metal ground together as the door opened reminding me of an old bed who's box springs time has ran out. It was an old freight elevator makeshift into a full service people mover now that the building was occupied not by boxes, but by the living. My mother had come to visit from Oklahoma and was holding my daughter tightly to her and I could see fear in her eyes. She didn't like elevators. She said that the only good elevator was a broken one. I guess she figured that the elevator was tolerable after climbing 24 stories up to my apartment. I remember her huffing and puffing and cursing at me for somehow not making it easy on her. As I stepped onto the elevator I caught a glimpse through the small crack that separated the elevator shaft from the building. It was a dizzying hight which reminded me that I was not built for flight. Small details could be made out and I wondered how someone's shirt had fallen below now covered with dust and small bits of paper. The elevator slightly bounced up and down as my full weight of 250 pounds relaxed on it. Just as my mother started to step on I could hear the sound of wire splitting apart. My mother was fully on the elevator now and had no clue what was going on. Then I remember the feeling of weightlessness. The door was still wide open and I could see other peoples apartments steadily streaming by faster and faster until it was nothing but a blur. The sound of the broken cable could be heard whipping back and forth above us and I knew that this was the end. The fall seemed to go on forever finally bringing me awake just as the sound of metal crashing onto concrete could be heard. My daughter was standing next to me beside the bed with her silly grin stuck on her face. In her hands were two small toys that she had just crashed together to wake me up.
I've read from sleep research groups/people that some believe that waking dreams are experienced entirely in a very tiny amount of time, and are generated by the stimulus which wakes us. It could be that the entire dream was experienced in the seconds or less after you heard the toys crash together.
