dream of a nightmare
It’s Saturday, October 30th, 1999. Diana wakes up and is heading down to the kitchen to enjoy her breakfast when a boyish, assertive voice fills her head. It was Jack, her imaginary best friend, he’s who’s been with her since forever. You might conjecture this is a peculiarly sick joke, but the truth is that Diana is a maladaptive daydreamer. She spends excessive amounts of time daydreaming, and while she knows it is an unhealthy coping mechanism, but she disregards such information. Basically, a maladaptive daydreamer, Diana suffers from mental health problems, mostly anxiety, and struggles to deal with problems, so Jack is here to help. Something scarily fascinating about Diana is that she often has these surreal, phantasmagorical fantasies of murder tattooed in on her twisted brain.
As Halloween approaches, her daydreams appear to be more graphic and disturbing. It always starts the same way: she is trick-or-treating in her gloomy and squalid neighborhood when suddenly, a totally black costumed figure violently murders everyone, leaving her until last, and that’s how it ends. Diana is aware of what’s happening in real life. She can separate imagination and reality. She has also made several attempts to seek help, but everyone stares at her sympathetically and nods understandingly, leaving her drowning in the ocean of her repulsive thoughts.
Sunday, October 31st, 9:30am. Diana is out, having experienced a gut-wrenching wrecking feeling that her dream might as well become a morose reality. After trick-or-treating, she decides to return home. She’s having her usual late-night paranoia and talking with Jack when, out of the blue, all she can hear is an ominous silence; rather sweet confirmation of the unknown figure to give her, she thought thinks. Having been mentally prepared, Diana almost submits herself to her illusory murderer. What one declares rational, another acts out irrationalities. Normally, one would run away for their life, but Diana just wants a drop of the sweet release’s taste, and her wish is his command.