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The logic of nightmares
Standing in the kitchen, you know your basement has grown another creepy dark room that was not there before. In the center is a coffin, and in the coffin there is an undead corpse. You know that, in a minute, you will dream-walk down there and open the lid…
and you know that your confrontation with the monster has already happened, over and over again, even though it hasn’t happened in the dream yet, and you don’t know what the monster looks like or how it will kill you
you just have TOTAL CERTAINTY and TOTAL DREAD
“how could I know about the vampire when I’m upstairs in the kitchen”
that is inconsequential and irrelevant to your INESCAPABLE HORRIBLE DEATH
if anyone in your dream said “basements don’t grow extra rooms” or “why don’t you not go down there? if you do, why not take garlic and a stake and hammer?”
you’d dismiss that with angry impatience—
they are too stupid to get that THERE IS A MONSTER IN THE BASEMENT AND YOU ARE ABOUT TO DIE