Seeing a ghost. Getting badly injured. Being attacked by a weirdo. No terrifying experience can ever compare to a nightmare you see at night. That's what I think. In fact, I just had a dream like that last night. My head has detached, and I'm wandering around inside the house. Wanting to know what month and day it is, no matter what, I'm looking for a calendar. I sluggishly make my way down an empty hallway. My field of view is lower than usual, and realizing that I really am just a head, I felt strangely sad about it. Screaming "Whoa!", I make it to the kitchen, where my mother is standing in front of the sink with her back turned to me. For some reason, I've already forgotten, even though it happened just a moment ago, but I made my mother turn around by saying something terribly frightening. Then, her face was...
That kind of dream. Even with a dream like that, the person who experiences it goes through bone-chilling fear. However, conveying that to someone else is difficult. Only four hours have passed, but I can already no longer recall the scene right before waking up. Yet, only the sensation of having been terrified remains like sediment. Wanting to share that kind of terror with someone, people talk about their imperfect dreams. However, they can't convey it well, and just list subjective things like "it was scary." Stories like that are generally boring. Naturally, they aren't scary either. Knowing that from experience, I don't talk to people much about my scary dreams. No, maybe that's not it. Maybe somewhere in my heart, I feel that talking about a scary dream is like stripping naked in front of others. It must be pathetic and shameful. The materials of terror in a dream are nothing more than projections of oneself. After all, it's like being frightened by something inside your own trouser pocket.
The spring of my second year in college. I was getting ready to go to pachinko from the morning. I even set an alarm clock—how truly diligent of me. It makes me a little sad to think that if I had directed even a fraction of that passion toward my college lectures, I might have had a better life. The phone rang just as I was about to put on my pants. After jumping slightly for a moment, I picked up the receiver and heard a woman's voice saying, "Come over right away." It was someone named Kyosuke, an occult friend. "Kyosuke" was an internet handle. It was common for me to call him when I had a problem, but it was extremely rare for him to call me. I cancelled my pachinko plans and headed over to Kyosuke's place. I knocked on the door of the apartment I had stepped into several times, and Kyosuke appeared in jeans, biting on a non-smoking paipo. With a pounding heart—and a little excitement—wondering what on earth was going on, I stepped into the room and sat on the sofa. Saying "Just listen," Kyosuke sat cross-legged on a chair at the table and began to speak. "I had something insanely scary happen to me." His voice was pitched high and unsteady, different from his usual breezy image.
"I was bowling by myself, and I kept throwing gutter balls for some reason. As I was wondering why I was in such a bad slump, someone was beckoning to me from in front of the restroom. While I kept going, thinking, 'What's that about?', I threw another string of gutters. You probably don't know, but my average is 180. That's impossible. So then I glanced over at the restroom again, and someone was just about to vanish inside, and that hand was fluttering and beckoning again. Curious, I went over there, and there was an 'Out of Order' sign posted. But someone had definitely gone inside, so I barged right in without caring, and what do you think it was like inside? It should have been the women's restroom, but for some reason it was the men's restroom, and what's more, zombie-like guys were lined up in front of the toilets. In a whole queue, at that. When I panicked and screamed, they all turned to look at me at once, and starting to approach me while saying things like, 'Don't look, damn it,' Some of them had eyes drooping halfway down. And they all stretched out their hands with peeling skin like this, grippingly..."
Hearing up to that point, I stopped Kyosuke. "Wait, wait a minute. Is that by any chance—or rather, even if it's not by any chance—a dream?" "Yeah. An insanely scary dream." Kyosuke looked bewildered, keeping his hands stretched out in front of his chest. Ever since around that time, I had attained the philosophy that other people's dream stories aren't scary, and instead, I was experiencing a tickling sensation around my buttocks.
People who talk about the scary dreams they had tend to put too much effort into it if the other person's reaction is poor, sliding further and further off the mark. "Just listen, will you. What happened after I escaped from those zombies was wild." I listened silently with my head bowed to the adventure story Kyosuke forcefully restarted. It seemed this guy had called me out since the crack of dawn just to talk about a scary dream he had. It was completely unlike the usual Kyosuke. No, maybe it was just like Kyosuke. The dream story continued. With my head still bowed, I eventually shed tears. "...So, right when I escaped to my own room, wait, hey. Why are you crying? Hey. Don't cry. Why are you crying?" I couldn't stop the tears naturally welling up. At the edge of my vision was a large, drained aquarium. That aquarium had made Kyosuke suffer for a long time. "Stop crying already, hey. This is a problem. Don't cry." That was the first time I knew that everything was over. That the series of nightmares continuing since last summer had ended. In the end, I was left out in the cold. Unable to be of any use. While Kyosuke and the people who saved her were spending their long night, I had been spending it dreaming about playing pachinko the next morning. "This is terrible. Is it so scary that you're crying? Are you a kid?" It was so pathetic and shameful that it made me cry, and yet, it made me so happy that I wanted to throw away all the warding charms tucked inside my pocket. The morning Kyosuke had that dream—I was endlessly, helplessly happy about it.
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