I’m a sensible person. I always make sure to get 8 hours of sleep. I enjoy going to bed early and waking up early. I’m never up past 9:30, and often I find myself comfortably tucked in around 8:45.
It takes me a while to drift off. I lie as still as I possibly can and try to keep myself awake. It’s a trick I learned when I dabbled in lucid dreaming. The more I am determined to stay awake, the faster I tend to float away. Even with these fall-asleep-fast tricks I have, I’ll often lay awake for some time before I am able to succumb to the darkness.
I’ve never been a good sleeper. It’s common for me to drift off and snap back awake. It’s even more common for me to wake up terrified of some great threat my brain has concocted. Do you know how frustrating that it? Being left in a raw emotional state from something that isn’t real? Not real in the way we think of it anyway.
I’ve always been a vivid dreamer, but recently I’ve had no dreams. Instead I will find myself wide awake at 11:27 every night staring at the ceiling. I know it’s 11:27 because the digital clock with red block letters sits on the dresser across the room from me. I can see it without turning my head.
When I wake at 11:27, I cannot move. Sometimes there’s a woman there staring back at me. She isn’t unkind, the only strange thing about her is her presence. She has never said or done anything to me. Only stared.
There’s no one for me to share this with except my beloved Christopher. He lays next to me during the night, never out of reach. If I could move I could touch his leg, but all my limbs are immobile. I can feel his body shift in rhythm next to me as the air whistles through his lungs.
Christopher is a great confidant. He never back talks and is a wonderful listener. I know he will never share my secrets. I tell him about the woman. He blinks his green eyes and wiggles his whiskers.
The last two nights it’s been the woman. She and I stare at each other for hours. When my eyelids drop, and I start to go back to sleep, the last thing I see is my clock. It’s only been four minutes.
Short Stories
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This piece is such a cool take on sleep paralysis. I’ve always liked how ominous a reputation sleep paralysis has, as it is a nightmare scenario for people who hate that feeling of helplessness as well as the concept of a demon, woman, or stranger watching you sleep. Your emphasis on such a specific time makes things even spookier; I love it.
Sleep paralysis is one of the scariest things. It usually happens to me if I realize I’m in a dream and then force myself to wake up.