The Night Terror.

I woke up this morning before it was fully light. I don’t know what time it was, but the light level suggested it was between 6 and 7am. For a second or so I felt nothing, and then a shock of something hit me, something powerful and horrific but unidentified. It was like touching a low voltage electric fence; for a second you feel nothing, and then the shock hits.

There were no pictures with it, just a sense of horror. And mercifully it didn’t last long; I fell asleep again quickly. I’d had no dreams that I remembered, save a pleasant domestic one about Helen. Nothing obvious to explain it.

I know this sort of thing is common enough. We explain it as a simple mental aberration, an anxiety attack. I’ve heard it called ‘night terrors,’ something driven by an underlying fear or other negative disturbance.

But I wonder whether the pragmatic explanation covers them all. I do believe that some people are empathic in various ways and to different degrees. I remember the same thing happening to me when the Japanese tsunami struck. Maybe that was just coincidence, I don’t know.

This one felt personal, though, and there’s one person out there in cyberspace with whom I seem to have a psychic link. That’s why it bothers me.