Old MacDonald had a murderous grudge

I wasn't slaughtered the other night but the situation has hardly improved.  The whole affair has sent me into a state of perpetual tension, and I keep swinging between hysterical excitement and a morbid fear for my life.

The stalker's car has not reappeared, nor any corporeal sign of him, but today there was a noise in the hall.  It was about five seconds of a nursery rhyme, I can't remember which one exactly because I was so taken aback, but I think it might've been Old MacDonald Had a Farm.  The noise was reminiscent of a doorbell, but I would not be caught dead with such a ridiculous doorbell and there was nobody on the step who could've rung it anyway.  I am positive it came from inside the house, but I searched high and low and failed to find any device that could possibly have made such a sound.  I didn't even find an intruder lurking with a machete in the larder primed and ready to cleave my head from my shoulders.

Needless to say, I am a nervous wreck.  I can hardly leave the window, and every passing shadow makes my heart go spasming around my ribcage.  The gin has had to come out, and my quivering hands keep shaking it out over the carpet.  Even going into the back garden for a cigarette has become a mammoth task of infinite courage, but it is the only thing providing any comfort now.  I feel certain someone is toying with me, and if it is their plan to bring me to the brink of insanity then they are doing a stirling job.

The only other possible explanation is that the house is haunted.  This does not make me feel any better.  Every time I get sleep paralysis I convince myself that a demon is about to pop out of the wardrobe, and while I have not yet been spirited away to the Netherworld, I fear it may only be a matter of time.

I don't want to be dragged to Hell.  I'm Catholic.  I've earned Purgatory at worst.

With a stab-stab here and a stab-stab there.
Here a stab.
There a stab.
Everywhere a stab-stab.

It's a nightmare

I don't know if it's a symptom of anxiety or simply goes hand-in-hand with it, like strawberries and cream or methadone and a crippling heroin addiction, but I seem to suffer from an ungodly amount of nightmares.  I would assume it is not a symptom, as this has been a lifetime curse and anxiety has not, even if I have been of an uncommonly pathetic disposition since the day I was shot screaming from my mother's womb.

On the upside - if there is an upside to this - there doesn't seem too much Freudian grimness about them, because they're often concerned with the most generic of monsters.  Often witch-like things with hanging faces and rotting skin, which pursue me until, in dreaming, I consign myself to death and give myself over to the creatures.

Evidently I even take my cowardice with me to the dreamworld.  I'll likely still be frightened when I'm dead.

But of course, once I've woken I can't possibly return to sleep in case a monster pops out from under the bed or slithers down on me from the ceiling.  Once I was convinced one was staring at me from the wardrobe, and I was on the brink of tears until I switched on the lamp and realised it was just my straw hat propped at a jaunty angle.  This is not the first time that a straw hat has frightened me nearly to death, but that is a tale for another day.

Unfortunately, I think there's little I can do about them.  That said, I've lived with them for years with no terrible side effects, unless you count the debilitating mental problems, but I'm not sure I can exactly blame the nightmares for those.  Not sure I can really blame anything for those.  But if you have some sneaky trick for coping with nightmares, do let me know.  So far all I do is make sure the straw hat is safely tucked away.

Alarmingly, I do live quite near an 'Elm Street.'  I never go.