Living Nightmares
What if there were no difference between nightmares and reality?
I know someone who reacts as though any dream or nightmare she has is reality. A nightmare might haunt her for days, making her irritable and even frightened. If I do something to her in a dream, she sometimes acts as though I actually did it. And, will occasionally hold whatever it is against me.
Imagine a person who cannot, in fact, tell the difference between dreams, nightmares and waking reality. How would that person act? What would their daily life be like? Is this, by definition, insanity? What kind of interaction problems might this person have?
I see, in a character like that, an interesting challenge and type of story. It’s a seed of an idea that needs to be married to a plot, but I can see possibilities here. Especially, if the story, whatever it may be, is told from the first person view. In fact, I think a device like this would only work from a first person point of view. That kind of limiting perspective is neccessary to get the full juice from that literary fruit.
Of course, someone will not doubt tell me that it’s been done to death already. After all, there’s nothing new under the sun.
