In darkness deep, Where moonlight's most scarce And shadows dance in eerie parades, I roam at night, My soul devoid of any light.

My hunger grows, a gnawing ache, My anger rages, fierce and tight, My craving for sleep is something I can never shake, My crankiness a relentless quake, So beware of my cranky plight, As Sleep eludes me, like a thief in the night.

I was only nine when it started. It was when I stopped sleeping. Mom was deeply concerned about it. The terrors that came with sleeping were too much for me. So I stopped. The feeling of not being able to move and the figures surrounding me. I couldn’t handle it. I was a stupid kid. Staying up late every night. Why do kids do such things, I could not tell you. But I can tell you that the sleep deprivation was the cause and effect in this situation. My therapist told me to write down what happened every single night. It doesn’t help, but I still do it.

Night 1093: Last night it happened again. It has not happened in awhile. It lasted a long time. Longer than usual. I awoke to a presence in my room. Of course, a shadow figure stood just at my feet. My head throbbed, and although this often happened, my fear of them grow more intense every time. This time was no different. I tried to move, but not a muscle twitched. I wanted to run, I tried to wriggle my way out of my covers. Nothing. The figure crept closer. My heart beat grew faster. The thudding in my chest was so hard and loud, I thought my heart my burst. Tears streamed my face. The figure kept shifting, I watched it. Until eventually I fell back into my slumber.

 Night 1097: This is probably the worst sleep I’ve ever had. Well I can’t really call it sleep, when most of if was me trying to sleep and get away from the towering monstrosity. I decided that, I will only sleep in the day, and only around other people. It might not help, but at night and alone is much much worse. This time it was just one big demon-like human, crawling up and down the walls. Touching my face, my arms. Saying stuff. I tried to scream. Nothing. I felt the fear grow inside of my chest. Like a ball. It was like there was a certain carved out space for all my fear to go, and each and every night, the fear grew outside of that carved out space. Cutting more and more out.

Night 112: I can’t take it, they’re coming for me.

 “Suicide.” The detective said. 
 “I don’t know about that, take a look at this.” 
 He held up a notebook, full of writing

bzzzz the fan is buzzing in the background. The t.v is on lighting up the room, the sound barely audible. Eyes dart around the room and in an instant her stomach is in knots and a wave of terror and anxiety creeps up her back and into her arms. Goosebumps form on the girls skin. Her breathing is picking up pace. She tries to move her arms but nothing. Next, she tries to move her head. Again, nothing. She can’t move. A mixture of emotions rushes through her and a thought pops into the young adults mind. “I’m having sleep paralysis again.”

As soon as she realizes she calms a bit but she can’t fight the anxiety she feels not being able to move or speak. The blonde lays there, staring in front of her. Stomach still twisted in knots. At least this time there was no horrifying creature crawling towards her, or any familiar voices speaking of hiding body parts. She’d experienced this before, but more intensely the first time it ever happened.

I know what’s about to happen before if occurs. I had been having an uneasy sleep all night, but now, after the 3rd time waking up in the middle of the night, it happened.

A warm feeling washes over my body, slowly spreading up my legs and through my torso. My arms, which had been laying at my sides as I tried to fall back asleep, grow heavy. I try to move my hands, to reach out for the lamp on my nightstand and fill the room with light before she can morph from the shadows. But I can’t. It’s as though I have lost all motor control and I’m suddenly a helpless, stiff board of wood.

I try to speak, try to part my lips and call for someone- anyone- to turn on the lights and stop my mind from drawing figures from the shadows, but even my own mouth betrays me.

The pressure that weighs my body down builds, and my visions starts to blur and distort the longer I lied there in that in that strand in-between place.

I’ve tried explain it to people a million times before, that strange transition from laying their paralyzed, to laying their paralyzed in a world that isn’t entirely real. But no matter how many times I try to explain it, it’s like the limitation of my vernacular prevents me from doing so. Or perhaps it’s because what I say is so bizarre and frightful, that they simply do not understand the language I speak.

But the transition from on the real world to that place is always the same. One minute I’m laying on my back unable to move or call for help, and the next, the world around me tips ever so slightly. The change at first is minor, making the whole room look the same but… different. As though the scene before me is a picture left slightly skewed on the wall; the change is uncanny and discomforting, but the scene is too familiar to tell if anything’s really changed.

I can slighglj make out the chair at the foot of my bed, piled high with this mornings laundry. But the shadows around it pull and gather, coalescing as one and suddenly, I’m not too sure what I am even looking at. Is it a ghoulish creature perched on the chair and watching me sleep? Or is it simply a pile of clean clothes? In this strange new state, I am unable to tell. I am unable to trust my mind to give me answers to the riddles my eyes sell me.

While these changes- the figures hovering over my bed, the faces in the books on the shelves- are unsettling, the real fear inducing addition has yet to show herself.

The longer I lay here unmoving, looking at the strange changes in the room around me, the more confident I become that she won’t appear. I begin to think that maybe this time she’ll spare me the visit and leave me be.

But it is naive to think this was and I know better. She’s always liked to play with her prey a little before she seized her opportunity to strike.

When I first see her standing at the foot of my bed, I think I have just caught my reflection in the closet mirror. She likes to do that sometimes, to wear my face so similarly to how I do that I start to believe that maybe she’s a part of me. But then she smiles that sinister grin and something cracks in the illusion. While she still resembles me, startling enough that I doubt my own family could tell the difference, her face is all wrong. She wears it more like a mask that barely hides the rippling emotions and expressions she wears beneath the skin. She’s not real and she’s not human, she’s something entirely different.

She steps closer my mind screams at my body to run, but of course, I am unable to do so.

I watch as she crouches down beside my bed and leans her forearms on the pillow beside me that’s slipped out from under my neck. She eyes me with a strange curiosity, tilting her head to look at me.

She leans in closer and fixes her dark, lifeless eyes on mine. Slowly and deliberately, she runs a finger along my cheek and all I can do is lie there and let her do it.

Out of all the horrible things I see when I am stuck in this in between, she is by far the worse. While all the other things are illusions, merely manifestations of my own subconscious fears, she is something entirely different. She is not my own creation, her presence is a product of something else outside of my own mind. I know this, know that she isn’t mine, because she is the only creature in this state that can touch my flesh and leave her mark.

I know that in the morning when I check my cheek in the mirror, my face will be marred with a deep scratch along my skin where her nail had been.

Breathe. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. My eyes slowly begin to twitch awake. I’ve been here before. You see, Sleep paralysis is an Old friend to me. We are well acquainted, and where many find fear in her presence, I contrarily feel at rest. You see, I ask myself, what is there to fear really? See where many fear a lack of control, I see opportunity to lose control. Even if just for a minute. A moment to breathe, where the unbearable weight of life is not my own. I rest in the freedom. I let sleep paralysis take over, she’s never hurt me yet.

I find life so much more terrifying. There is so much more to fear outside the confines of this friendship. When my body has total control what evils the world can unleash upon me. Maybe sleep paralysis is my mental fortress.

Maybe this is irregular to most, but I’ve alway been different this way. Not fearless. Just unafraid of the irrational. Paralysis is not to be feared. Maybe threats in the darkness are to be feared. Maybe killers. Maybe intruders. Maybe demons. But a little paralysis? No. She is consistent. But the terrors of the world run rampant, committed to unpredictability, all longing to destroy someone who is just the right amount of unfortunate.

So you see It’s not my friend who hurts us, but those who would destroy the vulnerable that hurt us. And those realities exist every day. Awake or asleep.

And as I lay here embracing the lack of control. I think the worst that can happen is the world comes for me. But I’ll at least rest in knowing Sleep paralysis was here for me.

I am in a store spinning on a gigantic Spinney chair. I’m just flying. I never want this to end. Suddenly, I can’t move. I realize it was a dream and I’m in my bed. But I can’t move. Not this again. This needs to stop.

Once upon a time, a young girl was on her family farm playing with some chickens and her pet dog. Then, coming from a nuclear weapons testing plant, is a glow in the dark chicken. “Hello there! What’s your name!” Calls out the girl. The chicken just stares at her, emotionless. The young girl then bends over to pick up the chicken until all of the sudden, the chicken jumps up and pecks her on the head! “OOWWWW! MOMMA! HELP!” Cried the scared and hurt little girl. Then, like a stampede of elephants, her family rushes down to her now fainted body. They soon take her to the hospital where the doctors can’t find anything wrong with her. The little girls family then shouts” MY LITTLE GIRL ABBY IS PARALYZED! YOU CAN DO SOMETHING!” Says the mother. The doctor responds“Tone it down their women, we are trying our best to-“ “TRYING YOUR BEST IS IT?” “M’am chill out or we will have to call security.” “OH I’LL CHILL OUT WHEN MY LITTLE ANGEL IS UP AND RUNNING AGAIN!” “Security!” A few moments later, the authorities take the women out of the hospital. Meanwhile, Abby after 1 day of rest is up and moving again and is now experiencing sleep paralysis. A few years into the future… “Abby! Come here sugar!” Shouts the jock. “Get away from me! Please! Someone help!” Shouts Abby. The boy then catches Abby and puts him in his van and takes her to his house. “Let me go!” Punches the jock. “OW!” Shouts the jock. He then pushes Abby back and knocks her unconscious. She wakes up paralyzed in a strangers home with another girl. “Your awake! Hi I’m Maddie! We are both on the swim team!” Says Maddie “Where are we?” Says Abby “Practically slavery. I’ve been in this cage for some time. Many like you have came through, but none have stayed as long as me.” Suddenly, a group of men walk in discussing something involving money. “Why should we get them? Their racks are practically nothingness. How to we know they aren’t men?” Said man one. “Yeah! I like mine huge. They are super flat” said man two. “ We’re out of here!” Said man one as they left. Suddenly the police bust through the door and I pass out. When I wake up, I’m in the hospital unable to move. The doctor walks in and says,” welcome to the super mutants program. I am Prof. Behavior and I will be your teacher and help you advance your abilities to become super hero’s.” “Do what?” Says the half asleep Abby. “You have much to learn…in the meantime Maddie will be your babysitter.” Maddie walks in and says” We are going to have so much fun! Aren’t you excited!” “Sure but what about my family? My friends? My scholarly career?” Says Abby in a drunken state. “ I’m sorry I have to be the one to inform you of this, but they are dead. Says the Prof. “WHAT!” Says Abby. “Yeah…car wreaks got to them both somehow. Hmm…such a coincidence. So are you ready? If you are take my hand and we will turn you into a hero!” Abby then takes the hand.

I feel aimless at night. Better things to do than sleep. Well I don’t sleep so well. Why, do you ask? It’s because I have… night terrors! Egads! What a terrible fate which awaits me each morning as I wake. Surely quite a terrible thing.

A cool breeze rushed through the cracked window adjacent my bed, softly kissing my rosy cheeks. I quickly awoke. My eyelids darted open, revealing the blank darkness of the ceiling in the nighttime. I felt the coolness of the air travel straight through my body into the bones at the core of my limp body. My blanket had fallen to the floor, prompting the strong urge to reach for it. Yet when my arms attempted to move they were met with a harsh stiffness. I laid there staring at the ceiling in immense confusion. I tried once again and once again failed. My brain said move, but my body said stay. These calm demands quickly became screams. Screams of the internal met with a stark silence of the external. Seemingly enough, no matter how urgently loud the request seemed, my muscles refused to listen. From the darkness a bone chilling fear washed over me like the water over the unsuspecting sand at the end of a wave. A fear that built inside me growing exponentially with every tick of the grandfather clock in the corner of the room. I felt the cold sweat of this fear roll down my cheek. The fear brought upon me an array of questions. Questions to myself asking if I still maintained my sanity. Questions that went to the point of me wondering if I was dead and didn’t know it. The realization then occurred to me. I was experiencing sleep paralysis. An issue that I had been constantly tortured by for the last eight months. You would think that by now I would immediately realize that this was the culprit. But you would be wrong. It is now an understanding of mine that one does not know the unnatural feelings of sleep paralysis until one has experienced it themselves. I have made repeated visits to the doctors and specialist who all prescribe the same unsuccessful medicines. Sadly for me, the placebo effect hasn’t quite taken place. They talk to me with the same medical mumbo jumbo terminology learned in medical school. I plea to them for a solution, still they cease to understand. The fear began to subside, but the frigidness of the air lingered. I tried to move for the fifth, sixth, seventh time. I had lost count during my chaotic frenzy. There was no point in trying to move. So I just laid there. Lifeless yet full of life. My body felt uncharacteristically soothed. The pain from the daily wear and tear gone with the wind out the window. Pain that emotionally ripped my heart to shreds was instantly gone. It felt as if someone had come and lifted the crown of thorns off my head that had been forced onto it by my heavy burdens. A sense of both physical and mental calmness passed over me. A calmness that I hadn’t felt in quite some time. In fact the last time I felt this calm was during my last encounter with the issue. I was then aware of something I had never realized before. This was the only time I was truly at peace. My daily life was awful. I dreaded every work day with a passion. My physical and mental health were at an all time low. And all my hope and energy lost dealing with the custody battle of my dear sweet daughter after me and my wife’s divorce. The dark room that had once felt like hell on earth now comparable to the likes of heaven. A body that previously felt like a prison now seemed to be a paradise of perfection. Maybe I had been looking at it all the wrong way. From the wrong point of view. A bad angle one may say. While these nights of sleep paralysis always started with a prying panic they always offered peaceful euphoria in the end. It was a price I was willing to pay. It was no longer a curse, but a blessing in disguise. My arm fell to the ground reluctantly fetching the blanket. It was over. I dosed off to sleep dreaming of my next dose of the only drug that could ease my pain. Sleep paralysis. Ironically while asleep, I had been awakened.

I wake up, tensed, heavy. I try to move but realize I can’t and an intense anxiety begins to flood in. “What do I do? do I try to call for help? why is this happening?” All these thoughts are racing through my brain. My eyes start to search the room as they are the only things that can move. They wander throughout my dark room, I have a feeling someone is watching me in this incapacitated state. My eyes start to make out a figure in the dark, a silhouette seems like a man. This man’s figure starts to morph. It twists and stretches towards me. My brain yells “stop, stOP, STOP” and all of a sudden I jerk forward. The episode is over and the man is gone. That feeling of no control lasted too long , I hope to never go through this again.