My Nightmares
This is a true story,about the source of my past nightmares.
It all started simply enough,with an innocent game of hide and seek,when I eleven years old.
The town I grew up in, there is an old drawbridge that allows boats to access the inner harbor from the outer harbor,with train tracks running across the bridge.
One summers day in 1964,my brother and some of our friends,were playing a game of hide and seek on the old drawbridge. I found the perfect hiding spot. It was inside a big metal box about ten feet tall by three feet wide by six feet long. I had to climb up the side of the box and then down into it. It was a great place to hide, so I thought.
Suddenly there was a tremendous grinding noise, I looked up and noticed the giant gears that opened and closed the bridge were turning and moving lower into the box, I was hiding in. I quickly climbed up the inside of the box, and tried to escape. I had my head and shoulders out of the box when I felt the giant gear starting to scrape my back. I immediately moved back into the box to avoid being cut in half! But now I was TRAPPED!!!!
Laying in the bottom of the box looking up at this giant,turning,metal gear,coming closer and closer to me, was all I could do. I was screaming for help.....but no one could hear me screaming because of the tremendous noise the drawbridge was making. Down and down and down came the giant gear,churning and grinding in the darkness!!!
The gear came down until it was just an inch from my chest (I had to turn my head to the side to avoid it being crushed) I was very lucky to be a skinny kid! Finally the gear stopped turning.... After what seemed an eternity, the giant metal gear started turning in the opposite direction and moving up and away from me....
I don't remember climbing out of the gear box, but I do remember my brother asking me if I was alright. (apparently I must have been very pale and visibly shaken) I walked straight home and went to bed,exhausted....
The experience was so traumatic to me, that my brain buried the experience somewhere deep in my mind. For years afterward, I would wake up from terrible nightmares about being sucked into giant gears and torn apart. I would awaken screaming and shaking.
It wasn't until I was about thirty years old that this old memory resurfaced, and the whole experience came back to me in incredible detail. Since remembering this horrible ordeal, I haven't had a nightmare about gears since.
Copyright © John Logue | Year Posted 2016
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