Originally published at Corey J Feldman. Please leave any comments there.

Here is a little idiosyncrasy from my childhood. Somewhere around age 6 I got in my head the notion that it was possible that I could die and keep on keeping on in some sort of heaven/hell of my own creation. So every time the thought popped into my head I had to check my pulse to see if I was still alive. Even at 6 I understood that it was a little silly to assume that God/The Universe would create a reality for me compete with sight, sound, smell, taste and touch and miss such a minor detail as providing me with a pulse. With the aid of cognitive dissonance I eventually reasoned that God/The Universe might want me to figure out that I was not actually “living” in the real world and the lack of a pulse would surely be the path to my enlightenment. For the record by the time I was 10 I had given up on that theory. I actually hadn’t thought of this little ritual in some time but was reminded of it while reading Tim Pratt’s Dead Reign from his Marla Mason Series. One of the characters suffers from Cotard delusion, a psychological disorder in which the afflicted believes that they are dead. Please note I am not suggesting I suffered from this disorder, I was simply a child grappling with the nature of consciousness and reality.

So on to the dream… Last night I had what started off as a fairly mundane dream. Not really spectacular, vivid, creative or particularly enlightening. Other than some normal inconsistencies/dream logic, it was actually a pretty boring dream. There was, as I mentioned, some odd inconsistencies. Occasionally when dreaming I notice the dream logic and say – hey wait a second, that’s not possible I must be dreaming… Then I either go with the flow or take control of the lucid dream. Not this time. In what I am sure was some sort of synergistic reaction to Tim Pratt’s book along with the impact of my Mother’s sudden passing I was sure I was dead, I even checked my pulse. When I couldn’t find one, I had the sudden recollection of an impact and I just “knew” that I had died in a car accident. I woke up with such a fright that it was a good hour before my adrenaline was overwhelmed by the Lunesta and I was able to get back to sleep.