27
I lay awake in bed, the ringing in my ears loud, the restlessness pulsing in my body. There’s no sleepiness. I am tired, coming off little sleep, the weight of the day fueling my exhaustion, but sleep’s something that washes off my body, leaving now just this: the early morning dissonance. The thoughts that flit through my mind are disordered. I think about the story for a screenplay I’m reworking, and then another screenplay that I’m meant to rework; the revision for my sci-fi novel, and the struggle to reshape it; the book I desperately want to write; and then, memories of my best friend, and my ex, both jostling…
14
I wake and can’t move. I’m just twelve. My brother sleeps in his bed, his snoring rhythmic. I can’t call to him, can’t tell him I can’t breathe, can’t tell him I can’t move, can’t cry out to him that I need help. I am incapable of everything but the awareness that I am awake and paralyzed. Earlier in the evening, I watched a TV show that talked about sleep paralysis. They described just this, and said that the inability to breathe was due to a ghost, or entity, sitting on the victim’s chest, sucking the air out of their lungs. I don’t see anything. But the terror fills me…