Afraid To Sleep

Life is very fragile. You can be taken away at any time. We all go to bed seemingly healthy and happy. It is always possible that we won't wake up. Die in our sleep.
I had a crazy dream last night. I was taken hostage by a former friend from high school.  When I say former, I mean not in touch with anymore. There was no bad blood. We just faded off, like so many high school friendships end up doing.
But I always had a feeling that he would be the type who could go off and be crazy. The kind that everyone would say after the fact was the normal one that they never saw it coming from. He just seemed too prim and proper and nice. Being his friend, I saw the other side of him sometimes. The angst. The frustration. It always stuck in the back of my mind.
In the dream, he had taken a few of us from our high school "circle of friends' hostage and forced us to play golf on holes that were out of sequence (I have the golf holes out of sequence dream a lot) at gun point. He was mad about something.  Not really sure what.  Maybe because we all remained friends to this day and he was not part of that. I don't know for sure what he was mad about.  I didn't dream that part. I just know he was mad, at least my projection of him in my dream was mad. Of course that means a part of me is actually mad, but that is too Freudian to get in to here.
As the dream progressed we all managed to escape.  I now had my dog, who was old and not that mobile, with me. She couldn't walk. But she was so sweet and loving that I carried her everywhere. I had actually done this in real life when she got very old.  It is a very vivid memory and a dream I have often. Not really sure why it was part of this dream.  Again, much too Freudian for me. She just was. That is all I need to know at this point. All I get to know at this point.
I hushed her quiet as we hid in a room. There were others there and they were attempting to hide me, so he couldn't find me. It was apparent that he had. I managed to get away.  I seemed to be able to go through the wall to get out. You have strange powers in a dream. You are able to go through walls but not able to get away from mere mortals. Such is the reality of dreams.
We were now on the street. Every direction we headed ended up at a fence that restricted further movement. Funny, I could go through the wall of the room, but not the fence. Again, not going there in this story.
Because the dog needed to be carried we were moving slow and he would always catch up. After about 4 dead ends he was now on top of us. He still had the gun and was about to shoot. He wasn't trying to kill me, but wanted to kill my dog. Just as he pointed the gun at me, he was actually about to kill  my dog. My precious dog. As the bullet left the chamber and headed towards us, in that instant, I woke up.
I couldn't run in the dream, and now as I awoke I had a horrible cramp in my calf. I tried to ride it out, but it was intense and wouldn't go away. Finally I rose to my feet, very abruptly and managed to move my leg in a position to release the cramp.
I had gotten up very suddenly. My wife, normally a very poor sleeper, did not move or react at all. That was highly unusual for her. She could hear a pin drop in the basement at 3am after she had been in deep sleep for hours.
I got back in bed and looked at her. She was out cold. Not moving either. Again, highly unusual for her. I touched her and no response. I touched her again. No response again. I didn't see her breathing either. I thought she might have died in her sleep. I touched her harder one last time and she awoke.
Falling asleep comes with risks. It might be the last thing you do and you have no idea that it will be.
It's like a friend with a gun chasing you on a golf course with holes out of order.  You never see that coming.
You can't protect your dog from death, even though it is inevitable and you try anyway.  You can't protect your wife or yourself from death when you go to sleep. If the crazy guy with the gun wants to take you, he will. If you wake up alive, he didn't want you bad enough yet.