I remember once waking up, when, for some reason, I had my eyes open. It was weird: all I saw was just shape; not shapes of anything in particular, but just pur

I remember once waking up, when, for some reason, I had my eyes open. It was weird: all I saw was just shape; not shapes of anything in particular, but just pure essence of what shape really was. Then, over a period of a few seconds, and in distinct chunks, it suddenly resolved into things I could actually identify, and I realise what I was looking at. After the fact I put this down as the pattern-matching areas of my brain starting working rather more slowly than the rest of my visual cortex, so it took a while before they starting resolving what my eyes were seeing into meaningful concepts. I have a variety of mild sleep disorders. I can recommend them as a hobby; they're fascinating. Admittedly, it helps that being hag-ridden is so familiar it's practically an old friend; the first few times were utterly terrifying[ * ]. But the weirdest of the lot is something I've dubbed false memory syndrome, where I'll remember something, while quite conscious, which never happened, and frequently in quite some detail. Just last night I had apparently written and drawn a comic book. That was better than the time I was on the run after having killed someone... [ * ] Apparently there's a theory that this is where alien abduction myths come from.