The Stuff Nightmares Are Made Of

The first thing I notice is the bed. Not the darkness. Not the room itself. The bed. It moves beneath me with a slow, seasick wobble, like I’m lying on the back of some enormous dying fish. Every tiny movement sends a wave rolling under my spine. A water bed. Who the hell still owns a water bed? The mattress sloshes beneath me with violent enthusiasm, my vertebrae clacking together like loose cutlery in a dishwasher. Something is deeply wrong here. I cling to the headboard for stability while the entire bed continues gently undulating beneath me, breathing almost, as though haunted by the spirit of the North Sea. “This is awful,” I mutter aloud. The mattress answers with another violent wobble. By the time I finally stagger upright, I already feel emotionally concussed… like the bed and I have survived a small maritime disaster together. But things somehow get worse. I open the bedroom door and immediately freeze. My carpets are disintegrating. Not stained. Not worn. Disintegrating. The beautiful cream carpets I’ve only just sacrificed several painful pay packets to are collapsing beneath my feet like they’ve simply lost the will to continue being carpet. Every step creates fresh holes. Fibres peel away in pathetic little clumps. “Oh, for fuck’s—” I crouch down in horror, lifting a flap of carpet that tears apart in my hand like wet tissue paper. “There’s no saving them.” I look up. Mum stands halfway down the hallway holding a mug of tea, staring at the destruction with the grave expression of someone identifying a body. “They’re utterly useless now,” she says. My heart begins thudding violently. “I’ve only just had these laid!” “You should’ve gone for better quality,” Mum replies darkly, bending to tear up a loose section. “But you recommended them!” And it’s true. Mum practically campaigned for the company. Apparently Mr Dishy Moustache Carpet Man was “the best in town.” Technically, he doesn’t actually lay carpet. He just arrives in women’s homes armed with a measuring tape, dangerously maintained facial hair, and the sort of eye contact that makes you suddenly aware you’re still wearing your dressing gown at three in the afternoon. He had measured my house with unnerving dedication. Every room. Every corner. Slowly extending that ridiculously long tape measure across the floor while squinting down it with intense concentration, occasionally murmuring things like: “Mmm. Lovely girth on this hallway.” Or: “Oooh, that’s a tricky gap to fill.” At one point he actually dropped to one knee in my living room and pulled the tape out so dramatically it practically shot across the carpet like a weapon. Very professional. Very thorough. No flooring estimate should contain that much sexual tension. And honestly? The moustache wasn’t helping matters. Neither was the way he’d occasionally bite the end of the measuring tape while thinking, like he was staring in some sort of DIY-themed erotica and calling it Fifty Shades of Beige. Meanwhile I stood there nodding along like an absolute idiot while this man sensually assessed my underlay. Then, weeks later, the Dale Boy Duo arrived to fit everything. Rogueish little bastards. They had the energy of men who always looked slightly surprised to still be allowed indoors. Every morning they’d appear outside in their van at precisely 8:12am, hyped up on Monster Energy, communicating entirely in shouted half-sentences and relentless banter. Then in they’d stomp with muddy trainers, Stanley knives, the faint musk of fresh underlay and vape juice in their wake. I was constantly tripping over their shoes in the hallway. Massive things. Abandoned clown canoes. One pair were Lidl-branded trainers, bright blue with the little yellow logo on the side. Made me laugh every time I tripped over them. There’s just something deeply humbling about entrusting your financial future to a man laying luxury carpet in discount supermarket trainers. Every morning: “Tea please, love. Two sugars. Tiny drop of milk.” Every afternoon: More carpet. Bedroom. Landing. Hallway. At one point I genuinely forgot they didn’t live there. I’d wander downstairs half asleep and find one of them crouched silently in the lounge eating a packet of Nik Naks like a goblin that had learned a trade. Still — fair play to them — they worked hard. The carpets looked incredible. Worth every penny saved. Or so I thought. “Moths,” Mum says grimly. “The bastards have had a right feast.” I stare at her. “But Mr Dishy Mustache Man said moths only eat wool carpets. These are synthetic.” Mum pauses. “Mr Dishy what?” “The carpet man,” I quickly correct myself. “Well,” she replies, ripping another strip free, “he lied to you.” Ouch. And worse still, I fell for it completely. That moustache. That devastating, trustworthy moustache. “It all needs ripping up and taking to the tip,” Mum announces. I physically wince. The sound of carpet tearing feels like money screaming. Unable to watch any longer, I wander into the bathroom. And nearly swallow my own tongue. Nothing makes sense. The bathroom looks like someone built the room using leftover Sims expansion packs. To reach the toilet, there is now a staircase made entirely from giant wooden building blocks stacked into a death trap. Alex’s bedroom door has somehow been installed between the shower cubicle and the sink. At this point, you’d think a normal person would realise they were dreaming. But apparently Dream Me is as clueless as Awake Me. So instead I simply think: Hmm. Bit inconvenient. Then I start climbing the blocks to use the toilet. Halfway up, one wobbles alarmingly beneath my foot. “This seems unsafe,” I mumble, continuing upwards anyway. At the top sits the toilet. The boys have struck again. Toilet rolls are arranged into a face. Two for eyes. One balanced beneath the lid like a stupid little tongue. I hear Alex laughing somewhere nearby. “Idiots,” I mutter affectionately. Then, just as I sit down to wee — Alex walks in through the bedroom door. Because of course he does. “Oh shit,” he says. “Language!” I snap automatically, while desperately covering myself and balancing on what is essentially a wooden Jenga tower above a toilet abyss. “I’ll cover my eyes,” he says. But as he speaks, flies pour from his mouth. Tiny black flies. Hundreds of them. No. Thousands. They swarm into the air in thick buzzing clouds, writhing around his head like living smoke. I sit completely frozen. Watching. “What the fu—” “Oh, it’s been happening a while now,” Alex says casually. Now, logically, this should’ve been the exact moment I realised: Ah yes. This is clearly a dream. But no. Instead I just nod sympathetically while perched on a block tower toilet in a broken bathroom watching my child vomit insects. Because apparently the human brain can normalise anything if it arrives confidently enough. Then suddenly — I’m at work. Except not Royal Mail. No. In this dream I’m a semi-famous TikTok dancer. Which is objectively ridiculous because in real life I can’t dance for shit. But here? Here I can dance beautifully. Not choreography. Not rehearsed. Something else. Something wild. Music moves through me like possession. My body bends and twists effortlessly, limbs flowing with impossible elegance. It feels less like dancing and more like surrendering to some invisible current running beneath the world. I film videos everywhere. Shopping centres. Petrol stations. In the middle of roads. Outside Greggs. An airport for some reason. I have nearly a million followers. Sometimes I read the comments just to marinate in the praise. Unreal movement. This healed something in me. Mother is transcending. And honestly? I love it. For the first time, everything inside me goes quiet. No stress. No bills. No collapsing carpets. No insect children. Just movement. Freedom. Now I’m beneath a spaghetti junction filming an interpretive dance to Björk’s Hyperballad, because why the hell not? Crowds gather around me. Cars roar overhead. The concrete vibrates beneath my feet. And I dance. God, I dance. My body feels limitless. Electric. Alive. Until I see her. Kylie. Standing in the crowd. Arms folded. Expression unreadable. The moment our eyes meet, everything inside me collapses. My rhythm dies instantly. My limbs suddenly feel borrowed. Heavy. Wrong. I stumble. Miss a step. Then another. The graceful movement vanishes completely. Now every movement feels frantic and horribly visible. The crowd loses interest almost immediately and drifts away. But Kylie remains. Watching. Mortified. “What the fuck are you doing?” she asks. Not kindly. “I’m dancing,” I snap defensively. “What does it look like I’m doing?” “It looks,” she says slowly, “like you’re flapping your way out of a paper bag.” Ouch. “You were always a terrible dancer,” she says. “Always stepping on people’s toes. Always hurting people.” And suddenly I’m no longer sure we’re talking about dancing. “I’m sorry,” I say quietly, pathetically. “I just thought… maybe I’d finally found something I was good at.” Kylie sighs, exhausted. “Stick to what you know,” she says. Then I notice the blood. Pouring from her nose. Thick streams spilling down her chin onto the concrete between us. “You’re bleeding,” I whisper. “But am I?” She smiles strangely. And disappears. Just gone. I stand there trembling beside the puddle of blood. Then slowly look down into it. Waiting to see my reflection. But there’s nothing there. No face. No eyes. No me. And suddenly it hits me all at once. The water bed. The moths. The impossible bathroom. The flies. The dancing. The TikTok fame. Especially the TikTok fame. I would rather be dragged naked through Tesco by feral cats than become a TikTok dancer. This is a dream. I’m dreaming. Lucidity bursts through me like sunlight through glass — And I wake up. Bolt upright. In my real bed. Solid mattress. Silent room. Beautiful cream carpets fully intact. No flies. No blood. No Björk-fuelled interpretive dancing beneath motorway infrastructure. Just me. Breathing hard. My heart battering my ribs. Relief floods through me so powerfully I nearly cry. “What a nightmare,” I whisper. Then — From downstairs — I hear Mum’s voice. “Manda?” I freeze. “There’s something wrong with the carpet.”