There’s an artist named David Devries who takes children’s drawings of monsters and redraws them to look more realistic.  It’s a super cool idea, and I like the execution.  I almost feel like he’s too true to the kids’ drawings, though.  Kids draw ideas, representations of what they see in their minds.  They can’t draw exactly what they see, but when something is tall, they draw it thin and long, that kind of thing.  I think a little artistic license would be fun for this guy’s project.

I had a recurring nightmare growing up in which I would hide at the end of a narrow outdoor hallway.  There’s nowhere to hide though, so I just crouched down on the floor and made myself as small as possible while keeping my feet under me and my eyes up in case I needed to run (to where?  I was trapped).  I usually dreamed vividly, so the fact that this dream was always in black and white is probably why it stuck with me.  At the end of this hall/alleyway, is a street where people are walking by, going about their day.  But of course, they’re not really people.  They’re long, gangly, black figures with long snout-faces.  They were indistinguishable from each other.

Being a Communist state or whatever, everyone had to conform.  I was clearly not conforming, because I wasn’t a Snout-Face, which is why I had to hide.  Naturally one of them spotted me and came after me.  And he brought friends.  They came marching down the alley with a swift, chilling grace that made panic set fire to my insides, and woke me up.

There really is no way to describe how purely fear is felt in a nightmare.  It’s just terrifying.  Luckily, we’ve all had that experience, so we don’t need to find the words to explain it.