Anna's Room: Origins

I haven't finished the story of Anna's Room yet and it is because I am currently at one of those roadblocks that writers tend to run into during the course of the journey. I believe typing what spurred me to start writing the story in the first place may be enough to get me past this particular roadblock.

It all started with a dream. No, actually, it was two dreams that were one right after the other and somehow connected. Now in dreams there are many details that you don't see but you just know what they are. I get that a lot in my dreams.

The first dream was in our house and focused around my daughter's bedroom. The layout was totally not our actual house but I knew it was our house, just as I knew it was my daughter's bedroom. I never actually saw her in the dream but I knew she was sleeping in her bed. I was keeping close watch because I had a feeling something was coming for her.

Sure enough an evil presence made itself known in her room. I don't know who or what it was exactly, I just knew it was bad. As soon as I felt its presence I ran into her room, waving my arms wildly about. (What, exactly, I expected that to do? I have no idea!) It did seem to work though because moments later the evil presence was lifted like a weight off of my heart.

There was a man in a chair across from my daughter's bed who slept through the whole episode. He awoke, of course, immediately after the evil presence went away. I have no idea who he was but he was there to protect her. I scolded him for falling asleep on his watch.

Then I think the dream jumped right into the next one. I was in a doorway looking over a storage room. Why the door was halfway up the wall I have no idea, well no, the idea was there in my head that this was technically a crawlspace, but it was as big as a regular room. It was filled with boxes and nondescript junk. All the way across the room/crawlspace was another door, again halfway up the wall. It was more like a door to a dumbwaiter. I knew I had to get there and I did, in that dream sort of way where you don't know how but you're just there.

There was a hallway with black floor tiles speckled with white. I think I walked down this hallway and came upon a room, but again I was looking down into it from some sort of window or hole in the wall. There were a bunch of people seated in the room and a man speaking up front. I knew he was a doctor and he was talking about something that was illegal, although I wasn't sure what. I think he saw me because then I felt like I had to get out of there.

Somewhere amongst all of that I must have found this object that I now held in my hand. I won't describe it until I write it into the story, but I knew it was for Anna's room and would help protect her. Now bearing this object I had to somehow get back through that storage room/crawlspace and back home before something caught up to me.

And that's pretty much where it ended. Of course you'll notice that a few details changed when I actually wrote the story. For instance, the man in her bedroom got far more than a scolding from me! Although my dream did not have gore in it, I felt as I wrote the story that this was the perfect time for me to renew my long unused talents of bloody horror. As well, I think adding gore helps to bring in a good amount of fear to the reader. I want the reader to feel the fear I felt while experiencing the dreams.

This brings me to my final thought on these dreams. I have had on a few occasions throughout my life, had dreams that I vividly remember, and later in that year 1 detail from those dreams would come true. Which detail, I'd never know until it happened or was encountered. That makes me a little wary of these 2 dreams. Especially since the fear I felt in them was so real. Now I have dreams where something is trying to kill me quite a lot. That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the fact that something in this dream was trying to hurt my daughter.

We will just have to wait and see what happens.