31
I wake to the sound of a moan by my left ear. It’s the usual night-time shtick; I was sinking into a half-sleep, accompanied by the sounds of tinnitus and the CPAP machine hissing when this roused me. This happens so often it’s become the norm. It used to scare me, until I started dismissing the experiences as hypnagogic hallucinations – there: classifiable, safe, and unimportant. But some of them shake me – like this one. And the reason is it sounds so much like something occupying physical space in my everyday world, rather than some projection of an overactive subconscious kicking it up as my logical mind tries to…
23
I wake to the sight of five shadowy black pulses wafting through the doorway into my bedroom and approaching my bed. And that’s it. I sit up, fully roused. The shadowy pulses are gone. They didn’t just disappear. They might’ve never been. I’m alone in my bedroom. Nothing but me and what happened. I think of this in-between world between waking and sleep, this realm where the conscious mind is shutting down, and dreaming and reality blurs. There’s an alarm here, but I’m not overly worried. I haven’t kicked into fight or flight mode. My anxiety is not cycling up to catastrophising what’s going on. Of course, I’m older now.…