Dreams and Nightmares

This is the dream I had last night. Each time I startled myself awake, I fell back to sleep into the same dream, in sequence, and kept the story moving forward.

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I was a detective in a desert community. No pariah or outcast, instead I was a decent detective, well-respected, and involved. However, my one quirk was that I thought a serial "killer" was at work. The twist being that the killer didn't actually kill anyone; instead, this guy serially targeted people, captured, tortured, fed them Ketamine, and lobotomized his victims. He effectively killed them-- they were no longer the people they were prior to his intercession in their lives-- but they were technically still alive.

Soon, my forays into finding him came to the serial killer's notice. He started taunting me in letters, emails, and such. However, everything was just inside the letter of the law for harassment and/or stalker rules, so there was nothing I could do. Soon afterward he started targeting people around me and first acquaintances, then friends, and finally family were lobotomized by the sadist. And then the killer started framing me for the crimes, which, of course, made me look guilty as hell and suspicious to most of my colleagues. My boss believed me and believed I was not to blame, standing by me through it all.

It soon turned out that the killer believed he was possessed by the spirit of an ancient tribal Indian shaman. He had found a piece of ancient wood, that he thought was part of a sacred totem pole from that tribe. It became a cat-and-mouse game between the two of us as I hunted him and he hunted me. In the end, I captured him but he screamed out to me that he would be free in a very short period of time. Even if convicted, the most they could get him on was aggravated assault with special circumstances, because while "(he) took everything they were as a person, (he) didn't kill them!"
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Needless to say, I woke up exhausted after such an active, scary, and trying dream. Since I wasn't able to fall asleep until close to 2am and I woke up from this dream (for the final time) at about 8:30am, I got right to it and dreamed this one dream for most of the night's dream periods. Even when it got graphic and scary enough to force me awake, I fell back to sleep and picked it up as though pressing play after pausing live TV. I'm tired, sore, and a bit mentally fatigued after a 'good night's rest.'

What's really sad is that this isn't the worst dream I've had recently nor is it the most graphic.