Author’s Note: I first had this nightmare at age 11.
It comes and visits me on random nights with no warning.
Unlike other peoples’ nightmares, I remember mine in vivid detail.
(Lucky Me!)
I am driving a large 4 door 1960s black sedan, a Chevrolet Impala to be exact. My right foot is pressing the gas pedal to the floor. It is pitch black except for the light of my speedometer.
That speedometer is an old analog type, with 0 on the far left side, 60 in the center, and 120 on the far right. A thin piece of red plastic indicates how fast I am going.
My thin piece of red plastic is beyond the 120 and banging against the speedometer housing at the speed of a hummingbird's wings.
My engine is screaming at me to let up on the gas, but in this dream I have no control over my body.
I can’t see it, but I know I am in a pitch black tunnel, which is just large enough to fit my car. It is a half moon shape. My hands are on the wheel, but I cannot purposefully move it.
I know that if my car veers a millimeter right or left, at this speed, it will mean certain death.
I sit there appearing to drive, but I am merely a mannequin with sight, hurtling into a pitch black abyss.
I am being driven at speeds over 120 mph, in a car with a screaming engine that sounds like all four of its ventricles will explode in a massive coronary at any moment.
This goes on for what seems like hours.
Suddenly, a small streak of something wet appears on my windshield.
At the speed I am traveling it quickly flies overhead.
As time passes, more wet streaks appear and disappear, and then there is a constant parade of them until my windshield is saturated.
I am confused as I wonder:
“Where is all this water coming from in this pitch black tunnel?”
Then I take a deep breath through my nose and realize that it is not water at all.
It is gasoline.
I am shown a view of my car from the outside and I see that it is literally sweating gasoline. It is seeping at such a high rate it looks like my car is in a solid bubble of it.
I am back in my gasoline enveloped car now, still a frozen, but sighted, mannequin, right foot pressing the gas pedal to the floor, holding my steering wheel which I am unable to move, traveling at more than 120 mph, just millimeters away from the tunnel walls and certain death.
Just as I am settling back into what I believe is the most extreme panic, I sense that another car has joined me in the tunnel and it is in front of me. I only know it’s there as I can hear its exhaust note mixed with mine.
I squint and try to make out the car or its driver but I am unable. The blackness is complete and the gasoline on my windshield is unrelenting.
We drive on, in our shared black tunnel, my panic increased by the possibility of the driver in front of me slamming on his brakes.
Visions of me flying through my gas covered windshield and entering that car in front of me through its rear window is added to the many ways I could meet my maker at any moment.
Suddenly I see a small orange light, just barely discernible straight ahead of me. I think nothing of it until I see another, but smaller orange light.
I am momentarily confused, until I realize what just happened.
That isn’t a smaller orange light, it is a burning orange dot.
The other driver lit a cigarette with the car's cigarette lighter.
In the old days, people smoked while driving. The smoker had to make a decision what to do with the ashes. There were two choices.
1) use the ashtray in the center of the dashboard under the radio or
2) open the driver’s window to pull the smoke out of the car and also to flick the ashes.
Option 2) would certainly be the end of me.
I watch intently and see the burning orange dot of the cigarette hovering in the middle of my view. It is dragged left while the other driver takes a drag then it reappears hovering again in the same spot.
I am hoping that the driver keeps his cigarette in his right hand, and the burning orange dot will move downward as that means the driver is using option 1) the ashtray and not option 2) the window to flick the ashes out of.
But I see the burning orange dot move left again and then appear left of what must be the other driver’s head.
He has moved the cigarette to his left hand.
He is about to flick his ashes out of his window.
My car is sweating gasoline.
I want to slam on the brakes but am unable.
I want to purposefully crash the car 1 millimeter into either wall but am unable.
I want to grab the metal bar of the gear selector and push it up into “P” Park, but I am unable.
I want to use my left foot to engage the emergency brake, but I am unable.
Even if I could open my door, it would instantly scrape against the side of the tunnel.
I sit there a helpless, but sighted, mannequin, unable to do anything but watch the event unfold that will certainly end my life.
Even though we are traveling at speeds over 120 mph, I see the band of even smaller burning orange dots leave that driver side window in slow motion.
I can’t see the other car, but the aerodynamics move the still-burning ashes along the other car’s outline and for a moment I get a sense of its shape.
The burning orange ashes flow, just as the car engineers had designed the aerodynamics to work, and they hit the chevrolet logo on the front of my hood dead center.
The entire outside of my car is engulfed in flames.
For just a moment the flames illuminate the rearview mirror of the other car.
I see the other driver is cackling.
Then I can see no more.
The heat is so intense my entire car starts to melt and shrink around me.
Just as the flames, splintering glass and collapsing metal are about to engulf me,
I awaken.
Fascinating dream