It's 12:59 A.M. I have given up on sleep. Fortunately tomorrow is my one day off (I will still go into the office to make my COVID EMS notifications) but I will go in at whatever time I feel like and will only stay for a couple hours. It's not like I have to get up at 4:30 to dress in the darkness for a 12-hour shift on the ambulance.
I am up not because I can't sleep, but because my sleep is restless and tormented, and because of the tiger.
When I last reported on my nightmares. I was being terrorized by the corona germ that looked like Spongebob. He and I faced off on a basketball court without hoops and I was considerably larger than him and I had a blanket that I tried to smother him with, and even though he escaped, and continued to come at me, making a strange high pitched shrieking sound, I could easily kick him off before he caused me damage. He had no teeth or nails. He was after all only made of sponge,
Now it is a Corona tiger that comes at me. I am no longer on a hoopless court, but in a small two story house. At first the tiger came in the open front door from the yard. But now he comes out of a large square hole in the floor from his basement lair. I have a host of weapons against him. Giant pillows I can throw at him. Furniture I can pile high that he will have to jump over and doors that I can escape behind. We have a game. He tries to get me and I try to get away, occasionally whacking him with a pillow or a wood board with nails on it. But each time we play, he gets bigger, and my weapons of defense get flimsier. I start on the second floor now and throw stuff on him from the balcony, and he comes up the stairs after me, and I leap over the furniture I have piled high against him, and I escape into the closet with the flimsy wooden door that does not lock. The last time I felt the heat of his breath as he roared outside the door, and I was saved only because he grew bored and wandered elsewhere in the house, and I awoke, but I don't want to play again. He is full size now. When he stands on his hind legs, he can reach the second floor with his sharp clawed paws. I know the next time he will leave deep scratches on me that will not heal.
I don't want to play anymore. But he will not leave my house. I can hear him pacing downstairs.