What happens when you die in a dream

The wind pummeled me as I dove through the lower atmosphere. My eyes were watering so bad that I couldn’t see straight, although I don’t know if it would have mattered considering how the landscape blurred from my speed. All I could distinguish was the looming wall of earth growing exponentially as I hurtle closer and closer, needle sized trees growing into a behemoth’s grasping claws until…

Right before impact, I wake up gasping. I’ve had that dream at least once every few months since I was four.

There are others too. I remember fighting in one of them. Some kind of street brawl with dozens of swirling bodies dancing to choreographed violence. First I’ll be pushing the other combatant back, then he’ll push me, back and forth, back and forth. Until I’m about to land the finishing blow and he whips out a gun. I hear the sound and see the flare of the muzzle, and my whole body tenses for a force it can’t resist, but…

Right before impact, I wake up gasping.

So what would happen if I didn’t wake up? Would I feel the bullet, like I felt the wind and the swinging blows? Would the dream dissolve into some unspeakable hellscape where I continue to experience the beyond? Or would I never wakeup at all?

I finally got my answer thanks to a teenage girl who couldn’t wait five minutes to text her friend back. Her left wheel slipped over the double yellow line, and her bumper clipped my car going 45 in the opposite direction. Before I knew what was happening, I suddenly felt the impact absent from my dreams all those years.

It didn’t last more than a second. A wave of pressure too intense to be pain washed over my body. My face slammed into the airbag which felt like it was full of sand. All the light in the world constricted into a pinprick, the screeching roar devoured until only a ringing tingle remained, and then silence.

I was out cold and didn’t dream that time. I was pretty disoriented when I woke up in the hospital, but I remember grabbing the arm of a nurse and begging her not to let me fall back asleep.

“I know how it feels to die now!” I told her. Or at least I tried. My words were slurring, and I couldn’t be making much sense. A moment later I felt a sting in my arm and my vision swam.

The next thing I felt was the wind stinging my face and whipping the tears from my eyes. I was far enough up to see the curvature of the earth, but I couldn’t appreciate the magnificent sight knowing what was to come. I could picture the impact so clearly now. Part of me knew I was still in the hospital bed, but I was so fixated on the rush that I couldn’t convince myself it wasn’t real.

This was a hundred times worse than the accident. Everything happened too fast in the car for me to be afraid, but this time I had a few minutes of excruciating anticipation. My stomach was a knot of snakes trying to strangle each other. The air flooding into my lungs was thin this high up, but it came so fast that I felt like I was perpetually caught between breaths.

I wanted to wake up so bad. I screamed the best I could, thrashing around and hoping that the nurse would notice my disturbance. I tried to convince myself that I could fly, but the rush wouldn’t stop. I tried to spit, disgusted to feel the saliva dribble down my chin, unaffected by the torrent around me. I’m still in bed! This isn’t real! But it felt real. And when my body was obliterated on the ground, I just knew that was going to feel real too.

Watching the ground speed toward me was torture. Closing my eyes and bracing for an unpredictable collision was even worse. I had a glimmer of hope when I heard the nurse speaking, her voice distant and muffled from the wind. A last desperate call for help, but I couldn’t reach her. The muffled voice grew even fainter as it mingled with the city noises below.

No trees or branches to slow my fall. No water or soft earth to dampen the blow. Just concrete and asphalt for as far as I could see.

The landing was everything I knew it would be. I smashed through the roof of an apartment building, legs first. I felt my bones in my feet pulverizing to dust, but the shock wave was so brutal that I could feel my skeleton rearranging throughout my body. The roof caved in beneath me and I tumbled through in a hail of broken tiles and splintered debris. There was a brief, horrible moment where my body knew it was dead but my brain hadn’t caught up yet, and then…

Right after impact, I wake up gasping.

The clattering of the falling debris was still ringing in my ears, but it was over. Disoriented, I got up and staggered toward the bathroom. Even though I knew it was a dream, it was a relief to feel my intact body responding to my commands. At least it means I walked away from the car accident without too severe injuries…

The car accident. The hospital. But I wasn’t in the hospital, where was I? I rubbed my eyes, finally noticing the giant hole in the ceiling of my apartment. And the twisted remains of a corpse on my floor. I almost threw up. Taking a step closer to inspect, I could no longer deny the bile rising in my throat. My dead body was lying in the middle of the room. In the distance, the blare of sirens cemented the absurd scene into reality.

I rushed to the bathroom and hurled in the sink. It took a few moments of heaving and spluttering before I was able to pull away and look into the mirror. I didn’t recognize the face staring back.

THUMP THUMP THUMP — pounding on the door. I nearly jumped out of my unfamiliar skin.

“We heard an explosion. Are you okay in there?”

THUMP THUMP THUMP — my heart playing along. This was a dream. I was still in the hospital. I had to wake up. The pounding on the door was getting louder, and I couldn’t think straight. I ran to the balcony to get some fresh air, noticing that I was still over a dozen stories in the air. Someone was trying to force the door now, and I didn’t have the stomach to stand over my dead body and attempt to explain the macabre situation. I swung my legs over the metal railing, and hesitating only a second, let myself fall again.

This time I’ll wake up…

The wind. The snakes in my belly. The scream of onlookers, and the full body immersion of pain. Next I knew, I was gasping for air. People were screaming all around me, so I started screaming too.

I heard a shrill, piercing shriek tear from my lungs. I clapped a hand over my mouth — a shriveled old hand, frail with a road map of bulging veins. I staggered away from the scene on the sidewalk against a stream of people. They’re crowding to see the broken body of the poor fool who nose-dived from an apartment balcony a dozen stories up.

THUMP THUMP — my weary heart fluttering as I stared at my reflection in a car window. An old woman was staring back at me, her face distraught and confused. I watched one of her hands raise to her face and felt the leathery skin beneath trembling fingertips. THUMP THUMP THUMP — my heart going faster and faster, the strain of half-filled arteries vainly trying to keep up, then a sharp pain radiating through my chest.

I had no disillusion about it this time. I continued watching my reflection for as long as I could stand, until all color faded from my face and the pain in my chest had echoed into an all-encompassing throb. My vision swam, and everything started to slip away…

I’ve died twice more since writing that. If I’m careful, it seems like I can last a few hours before something gets me. Almost as if it’s the will of the universe to track me down and snuff me out. I’m writing this to keep some record of what is happening while I still have a chance.

I think I always used to wake up because my brain had no experience of death to relate to. It’s not really the impact waking you up at all, merely the shock of your scrambling brain saying “oh shit, what comes next?”

If you’ve lead an easy life, I don’t suppose you have anything to fear. If you’ve never broken a bone, or suffered a trauma, then the near-death experience is a safety valve that will keep you safe from this revolving nightmare. But if you’ve suffered exquisitely in life and your mind knows how to retrace that dark path?

Even death won’t be an escape.