Recently while the holidays roared by I had begun experiencing more and more nightmares on a daily basis. I have always had bad dreams, dreams where I am killed, dreams of a ghostly being haunting me, dreams where my heart is beating out of my chest out of anger, dreams that would make me wake in a cold sweat, but I had always referred to them as dreams. Now that the frequency is increasing am I only just now beginning to refer to them as "nightmares". My dreams in general are quite odd, "segmented dreams" I call them. Often I will have several to a dozen different dreams all unaffiliated with eachother every single night, if I remember them. Each dream is incredibly realistic and vivid, you could almost say lucid, I can read, write, physically feel, emotionally feel, think, taste, and respond to temperature all from a first person point of view, just as if it were real life. It gets to the point where very often I almost cannot differentiate my dreams from life, was that converation I had with a friend real or a memory? Did I really visit that location in the past? Did those friends really exist? Am I currently in a dream? Due to this, it could be imagined how much more intense "bad" dreams are, the typical tricks to realize if you are in a dream or not do not work for me.

The nightmares themselves have been terrible lately, and they have only been ramping with intensity as time goes on. I did not truly realize the extent of the issue until a few months ago in which I had a dream where I was living in my current apartment with my family living with me (despite being several states away in actuality) with most of our interactions being screeching and clawing at eachother until we drew blood, they kept getting more and more stressed until eventually they stole my car and apartment keys, followed by then kidnapping me and bringing me to a different state, I attempted texting and calling everyone I knew for help but they were unavailable, along with the police. I was desperately attempting to find what address they had taken me so I could call for help, and in being unable to do so I tried to steal their car keys and flee while they were all asleep. I woke up soon after they began running after and hunting me.
The next major nightmare that has stuck with me was again with family, however under different circumstances. At one point I was in our old basement home staring at my father working on a truck outside when I began having auditory hallucinations of him saying the same thing over and over, along with other phrases that did not sound human, eventually I began recording it (a tactic to see if a hallucination is real or not via whether or not it can be recorded). I started texting my friends "I'm hallucinating im losing my shit right now" suddenly everyone around me turned into different creatures all repeating the same mundane phrase, I was so scared I just kept screaming "HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME", I couldnt make a sound so I kept trying harder and harder and harder until I finally woke myself up by screaming it in real life.
The next nightmare of note was a few days ago, I was living with my brother and for a good hour I kept hearing screaming and fighting outside our apartment, initially I brushed it off as a hallucination but eventually I saw my brother sitting up in his bed stiff as a board staring at the door. Asked if he was hearing it too, he confirmed. I tried to dearly to get out of bed but everything felt sluggish and off center, we opened the door and it was a couple beating the absolute shit out of their children, I mean holding their toddlers by the legs and bashing them against the concrete walls, soon after we confronted them they left to their apartment. I was shaken to my core. I woke up wondering where my brother was before realizing after a few minutes that I have not seen him in a year, I live alone, and those were not the people living across the hall. For the remainder of the night I struggled to sleep feeling something standing in my apartment staring at me, fearing it would jump out and murder me the moment I let my guard down.
Tonights nightmare continued to get worse, I was in my apartment alone as I usually am, everything was normal, but everything felt off. A similar feeling to the major nightmare before, I felt sluggish and off center. Soon I began hearing noises from my bathroom, I attempted to brush them off once again but before long I see the bathroom door open, and a man with a towel wrapped around his waist walk out, I soon realized I had been drugged and I watched his smile slowly grow as I struggled to scream and shout and say no, but I couldn't muster the strength. He made his way to my bed and raped me. I woke up instantly with an indescribable fear instilled into my heart, once again I felt the presence of someone in my apartment, before long I began hearing noises from the toilet. Real, honest to god noises. Just like the dream I tried to brush it off as a hallucination, despite never experiencing auditory ones, but just as I began to ignore it my skull was hit with the unmistakable sound of the shower running. The walls of my apartment are very thick and it was 2-3AM, never in my life had I heard that sound other than when I was warming up the water from outside the bathroom. I gathered my strength, silently got out of bed, grabbed a large cooking knife off my counter, braced myself against the bathroom door, and barged in screaming "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU". Nobody was inside. For the rest of the night I slept with the knife and I still am continuing to leave it on my bedside just incase the creatures come back. I am being tortured, I don't know what I have done but I know they are controlling it and punishing me but I genuinely do not know what I did this time, perhaps it really is all just a game. I don't want to go to sleep anymore. Every night I am terrified to close my eyes, as soon as the sun sets my heart begins pounding. I can't live like this. I can only imagine what this night will bring, maybe this time the presence will show itself and finally kill me.