Sleep Paralysis

“Don’t touch me,” I screamed, my lungs quivering inside my chest. “You’ll let them back in!” My body convulsed as my eyes darted around the stark white room. My heart was racing so hard and fast I was nearly certain that my rib cage couldn’t contain it much longer. A sharp shot to the arm and my eyes rolled back in my head and my body went limp. If only they knew then what they know now.

5 months earlier

It was early fall when I started seeing them. I don’t even know what to call them, really. They aren’t shadows, perse. They move inside of shadows, almost hollow and a black so deep there isn’t a word to describe it. They’re like the shadows of shadows.

I remember sitting in my dorm room, the cool breeze blowing in the fresh fall air through the creaky old window while I studied for my upcoming Lit final. The late afternoon sun cast a leafy shadow across my desk and the papers I’d been diligently highlighting. That’s when I saw it for the first time. Something inside of the shadow cast along my keyboard, skittered towards me, then, it was gone. I shook my head, unsure if I believed what I’d just seen. I stared in disbelief, trying to convince myself that it was nothing. I’d just been studying too long. However, the strange part was that I was certain I’d also heard it. It sounded like tiny nails clinking across the keys of my keyboard. I couldn’t shake it.

By the time my roommate, Noah got home, I was curled up in the farthest corner of my bed wrapped up in a blanket. I had bitten my nails down so deep my fingers were bleeding. Every single light in the room was on and I was trembling.

“Linus,” Noah questioned. “Linus, are you alright? What happened?”

I stared at him, watching the shadows on his face, frozen in terror. Were they there, too? Was something crawling along his face, in the faint shadow the light was casting along his cheekbone? As Noah stepped towards me, I screamed.

“Linus!” Noah shouted, grabbing my shoulders with his hands. “What’s wrong? What happened?” His voice dripped with concern, but I couldn’t hear it over the incessant shrieking pouring from my lungs. I kept my eyes clenched tight, afraid of what else I’d find in his shadows.

Noah wrapped his arms around me tightly and pulled my head into the crook of his arm. It was dark. His body was warm and soft. I stopped my howling but kept my eyes closed. Noah pulled back a little, but I yelled at him to stop. I whispered to him softly, “Turn off the lights.”

Noah sighed and gently pulled back from me. I yanked the blankets over my head and kept my eyes clenched tight. One by one I head the click of each light turning off. A sense of calm washed over me as the room wrapped us up in pure darkness. The shadow monsters couldn’t find me if there weren’t shadows to be found, right?

“Linus,” Noah questioned. “What the hell is going on?”

I felt the weight of his body on the bed as he sat down next to me. I slowly peered over the edge of the blanket. As my eyes glanced up, the shadow monsters danced across Noah’s face, lunging at me, grasping, and groping for a part of me. I could feel their hot breath against my skin, the gnashing of their mangled teeth as they frothed and writhed towards me. Noah had unlocked his phone, the bright blue light blasting against his soft, tan skin. The shadows cast in angles and jagged edges.

A frigid howl escaped from deep inside me. Without warning, I grabbed a pair of scissors next to my bed and stabbed Noah directly in the left eye. He screamed, writhing in pain but I could not stop. I just kept stabbing him over and over again, chasing the monstrous shadows with the tip of the scissors. By the time our TA arrived, there was not much left of Noah’s beautiful face. His left eye sat next to his mangled body; his right was somewhere across the blood-spattered room. Shards of his flesh were everywhere, including all over me.  

I’m not sure when I stopped screaming, or how I got out of that room. I don’t remember when I stopped stabbing Noah. Honestly, I barely remember stabbing him at all, but they tell me that’s what happened. The next thing I remember is the bright, white room with walls covered in a soft padding. The room smelled sterile and stung my nose. I liked it though. It was safe, clean, not a shadow in sight. There were no windows, no bed, no furniture, nothing. Just me and those soft white walls. It was glorious.

Sleep, however, did not come easy in the white room. If they ever turned the lights off, I would howl and rock back and forth in the corner until the turned them back on. I was told that they were on a timer. The entire ward turned on at 7:45 AM daily and shut down at 9:45 PM sharp each night. The first night, I howled until I was coughing up blood. They found the sterile, pristine white room covered in bloody smears from my hands. I had dug deep claw marks into the padding, leaving my fingers a bloody, aching mess. At some point it seems I had also smashed my head into the small window on the door as there was a gnarly gash on my forehead. My face was covered in bright red blood. It took them a week to get the room clean and repaired. It only took that one night for them to fix the issues with the timer. The lights were now left on in my room all day and all night.

My family thought I’d lost it completely. The first time my brother came to visit he told me I’d gone crazy. Maybe I had. Either way, I was safe. They forced my family to stay on the other side of the door when they came to visit. My mother sobbed for the full hour they were there. One of the panels in the padded wall pulled out, revealing a long, thin window with small holes. Everyone was made to stand a minimum of three feet back so that their shadows wouldn’t cast toward me. They all complained about the fluorescent light they were washed in. I didn’t care. If they wanted to see me, they’d have to deal with it.

The doctors were nice enough. They’d sit outside the giant window trying to wrap their heads around the violent act I’d committed against my friend. They all seemed baffled when I explained that I barely remembered it at all. The only part I could really recall was the echoed howl coming from deep inside my chest. That howl still rang in my ears when I tried to sleep. I eventually stopped sleeping. I would pace the bright room for hours, singing to myself, trying to drown out the echoes that rambled inside my head. I would nod off for a moment or two but not for long. Noah’s panicked, mangled face would dance under my eyelids, forcing me awake.

Eventually I fell into a nice routine. I felt safe and comfortable, except for the lack of sleep. But even that became comfortable. Normal even. That night, though, everything changed. It was almost as if the terrors that were haunting me had enough, and they were going to take me come hell or high water.

A crack of thunder raged outside the facility. I could hear the patients down the hall screaming in terror. I pushed myself back in the corner of the room, farthest from the door. I covered my ears, silently pleading with them all to stop screaming. Another crack followed by a long, low grumble. The building shook a little. I tried to calm myself down.

Nothing to worry about, Linus. This is a state-of-the-art facility. There are backup generators, and the doctors would have fixed this room. My room. They can’t get you. Not here. You’re safe. Nothing to worry about, Linus.

Another crack and the facility went dark. A soft flash of lightning streamed in from a window somewhere down the hallway. On the pane of the window, inside the shadow, I saw it. Angry, long fingers curled through the small hole. The entire room filled with a foul stench, like rotting eggs and fresh dog shit. A slight humming stirred behind me.

No. No. No! No! No! Noooooo!

I was wailing in time with the other patients now. A soft flicker and the generator flicked on the emergency lights down the hallway. One by one, they inched toward my room. Not fast enough.

NO!

I howled, screaming for someone to come and fix the lights in my room. The stench hung heavy in the air. I could feel it wrapping around me, hot and thick. A cracking sound came from the window. Bone against bone. I turned and heaved as only half of the lights in my room flashed on. Shadows covered every inch of the floor. As I glanced back to the window, the shadows cast long and heavy along the pristine white floor. They arched towards me. I watched in horror as the mangled flesh of whatever lived inside the shadows lunged forward, right towards me.

As I turned, desperate to make it to the other side of the room, without shadows and unscathed, something dug deep into my ankle, sharp and jagged. The sound from my throat matched that of a wounded animal in the desert. I turned back to look. Lodged deep in my ankle were yellow fangs. Hundreds of them. Sticky saliva coated my foot. Long, gnarled fingers plunged deep into my flesh, their fingernails digging in and upward, tiny hooks from the inside. This thing, this shadow’s shadow was eating me alive. I watched in horror as it began digging its way inside of me.

Blood was pouring down my ankle at a rapid pace. The room started to blur. I took a deep breath and screamed louder than I’d ever been able to before. As the tunnel vision began to set in, the door to the white room flung open. I yanked my ankle up towards my body, leaving the shriveled little shadow panting and angry in the shadow on the floor.

The doctors stared at me in horror. There was a giant hole in my leg and blood all over my hands. I trembled and sobbed. I tried to explain in between bursts of outrage and fear but they were convinced I’d done it to myself. Somehow, I had managed to dig out my own skin. The orderly came towards me with a syringe in hand. I knew what would happen if I went to sleep.

“Don’t touch me,” I screamed, my lungs quivering inside my chest. “You’ll let them back in!” My body convulsed as my eyes darted around the shadowed white room. My heart was racing so hard and fast I was nearly certain that my rib cage couldn’t contain it much longer. A sharp shot to the arm and my eyes rolled back in my head and my body went limp.

I was fully aware of my surroundings yet completely paralyzed. I was awake, but my body was asleep. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t open my eyes, but I could hear everything. I could feel everything.

Moments after the needle plunged into my arm and the orderly dragged my body towards the door, my foot fell in the shadows and the rabid little demon that was lurking in the corner of the room lurched forward and attached to my ankle once more. I could feel its fangs digging deeper and deeper, pulling out chunks of my flesh, its fingernails hooking themselves inside of my body. Pain seared up my leg, whatever poison it was full of pulsing through my bloodstream, straight to my heart.

My body began to convulse as the shadow monster was inside of me now. The orderly dropped my body to the floor as the veins under my pale, white skin started to mottle. My skin turned an ashy grey and began flaking off at the slightest brush of air. The hole in my ankle, much bigger now poured out an inky black liquid. A putrid stench emanated from my body, filling the facility with a yellowish hue.

Everyone stared in horror, mouths, and noses agape, unsure of what to do next. Within seconds, my body stopped convulsing, limp and lifeless. The raging storm outside stopped abruptly, along with all screams inside the facility. The inky black liquid surrounded my cracked, ashen body. It quivered as the ground trembled slightly. A thunderous crack filled the hall where my body lay as the floor began to crumble. The ground opened and I sunk into a black hole darker than the darkest night.

Without warning, the lights flickered back on in the facility and the floor was as it had been. The room I’d been in left no sign of me. Not a drop of blood, not a fallen hair, nothing. It was as if I had never been. The doctors never mentioned it after the incident. Everyone signed an NDA, and the entire matter of my life was left a mystery. As far as the outside world was concerned, I’d died due to complications of the mind, taken my own life, and was cremated peacefully on the grounds.

My family was devastated they couldn’t save me. I hear them from time to time, sobbing gently or laughing over a memory. I try to call out for them, from underneath the floorboards of their house but they can’t hear me over the inky black liquid that fills my lungs. Every time dad walks by, with his heavy feet, I push my hand as hard as I can to the floor to feel close to him. Maybe one day, I’ll break through.