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…
Twenty-Three
About ten years ago, I woke and was unable to move. I knew immediately I was caught in an episode of sleep paralysis. There was no sense of what time it was, the way there is usually when you wake unexpectedly. The room should’ve been dark, but it wasn’t; it was dim, but had a sepia tint. I felt something to my right – a concentration of unrivalled malevolence that I knew was watching me. Every panic attack I’d ever had, the fear of recovery after the car had hit me, the dread of awaiting test results when they’d initially thought my digestive issues were going to be much more…