Tuesday Prelude

Tuesday Prelude is a weekly meme inspired by Should Be Reading's Teaser Tuesday. I always found it extremely difficult to limit myself to just two lines, so I decided to amp up my posts a little bit and give you a little more insight into my current reads.

This week's Prelude is inspired by The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett:

The Nightmare Affair

Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare.

Literally.

Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy, is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder.

Then Eli’s dream comes true.

Now Dusty has to follow the clues—both within Eli’s dreams and out of them—to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target.

I was just an average sixteen-year-old girl who happened to be the offspring of a normal human father and a mother who was a Nightmare.         Literally. 

Interesting concept. How can someone literally be a Nightmare? The book explains that they are:

...those mythic creatures who sat on your chest while you were asleep and gave you bad dreams, the kind where you woke up struggling to breathe. 

and...

Nightmares had to dream-fead to live... 

Now, I've heard of these Nightmares on one of those ghost shows that the Discovery channel likes to marathon every now and then, and in the show I just remember them being scary as hell. And I also remember the less elegant name of "Old Hag." Ouch.

Upon further reading, these Nightmares, Old Hags, Dream-Feeders, are myths scientifically explained away by sleep paralysis. (Read more...) Has this ever happened to you? It's happened to me several times, unfortunately, and its not an experience I want to relive anytime soon. I wake up but I can't move ~ I'm literally paralyzed to the point that I can't open my eyes or even make a noise no matter how hard I try, and it totally freaks me out every time. Makes me afraid to go back to sleep....

Is it a Nightmare, feeding on my dreams?

Creeeepy....


Happy Reading Everyone :)