Hi everyone. First post.

I had this very vivid nightmare a few years back which I often think of from time to time. It's the only dream I've had with a self-contained, coherent plot, albeit a pretty cliched one as far as horror plots go. I woke up shaking and was distressed for about a quarter of an hour which is very odd for me.

In the dream, I was in some snow-covered wilderness - a bit like the kind of pictures you see of Alaska and Canada in travel brochures. I actually live in Australia, so I don't see much snow. Anyway, I was lost and travelling through some woods. Eventually, I came across a log cabin. I went to the log cabin and a lumberjack there invited me in to stay for the night. There was very little light in the cabin and it was a very creepy place. There was also an overpowering acrid smell which got stronger when I went to the bedroom. Despite this, I slept there. The lumberjack was helpful and pleasant enough.

When I awoke the next morning, I told the lumberjack I'd be on my way to try and find a way back to civilisation. There was a network of dirt roads, but I found that I seemed to be going around in circles. I asked the rare random stranger how to get back into town, but they kept giving me contradictory instructions. I found a highway and asked people at a gas station and a roadside restaurant how to get into town, but again, they gave me complicated directions which sent me back to the dirt path network. I began to cotton on that everyone might be misdirecting me. Just as it was starting to get dark again, I came across the log cabin.

I went inside the log cabin, but there was no one there. I went into the bedroom, and it was darker than ever. I smelt that acrid smell again, and I realised it was coming from the matress. I tried to lift the matress, and suddenly the matress burst open and dead bodies fell out. Then I suddenly got an axe in the back. It was the lumberjack. I stayed conscious while he chopped me into manageable portions and stuffed my parts into a sack.

Then I woke up on a bus and was physically whole again. First, I wondered what I was doing there. But then I realised the people on the bus were people I'd met earlier while I was trying to get back to town. The bus started moving off and everyone on the bus was completely silent and had vacant, sombre expressions on their faces. I didn't know where we were going, but I somehow knew we were going to be the lumberjack's slaves in the afterlife.

I thought to myself how I could be here, and I suddenly saw a spectral image of my chopped off head back in the real world. It screamed in this horrible, echoing voice, "BECAUSE I'M DEAD!" I was waking up just as it screamed, and I was shocked that a noise in a dream could sound so chilling in the first place since it seemed outside the realm of my imagination, but also because it seemed like it was a real noise which continued into my waking state. That's probably the part that distubed me most. The whole dream was strange because I haven't seen or read much horror fiction in my life at all.

Does anyone know what it might mean or why its content would've bothered me so much? Thanks in advance.