JUST A BAD DREAM

Have you ever woken up scared, class?

“Nightmare” is a funny word. People use it to mean a lot of different things.

As you might expect at my age, I have friends with young children, and when they meet up over coffee at the local soft play they talk for hours about how their kids are little nightmares. In this instance it is being used as a term of faux-annoyed endearance.

Then, when I get to work sometimes, I hear people say that the traffic was a nightmare, with a huff and a sigh. When they say this they are referring to how ‘bad‘ something was.

When I was at school, and I was being bullied because of the colour of my skin, and the older kids were telling me they’d bring bleach to school to help make me normal I had a lot of concerned adults tell me they were so sorry I was being put through this nightmare. In that case they were using it to describe a deeply unpleasant experience.

And then there are people like David Manson, who tell you that they are your worst nightmare, like some sort of human realisation of a combination of all of what we have just been speaking about. And it is this particular usage that I find intriguing. It betrays this sense of enlarged ego. The person saying it feels that they are superior to their purported victim. DAVID MANSON is claiming to be better than ME.

David Manson, who couldn’t even correctly hold a prisoner captive? David Manson, whose cult army has been dying around him for weeks now?

And that’s when you take a look at things a little closer, and you have to laugh, just like I did. You see, a nightmare is a frightening dream by definition. And a dream in turn is nothing but a series of thoughts or emotions that occur during sleep. David Manson has built his whole bravado on people thinking about him a bit when they close their eyes for the day.

When you realise that you can just wake up from a nightmare, you realise that Manson is nothing to worry about after all. When you realise that the light can banish sleep and keep nightmares at bay you realise that nothing he can do can harm you.

Manson may be the Nightmare, but I am the beacon in the dark that keeps him out of reach. He will never harm anyone whilst I cast my light on his indiscretions because the light burns him. He hates the glaring eyes that watch his every move, because he prefers to move without being noticed. Well, Manson, I noticed you, so your slippery ways end now.

There is nothing to be afraid of about a silly little nightmare, class. After all, it’s all just a bad dream.

And David Manson is about to get a rude awakening!