-Tangerine
There’s something funny that happens to people. Sometimes, we get to experience things we have only imagined after hearing about them from various media, YouTube, TikTok, and News outlets. There are nice things. Like tasting strawberries for the first time and discovering the hype was probably nothing more than that, or going to a chiropractor for the first time to learn the relief that comes from getting your bones snapped. There is also trying a rollercoaster that swings you hundreds of feet in the air, or going on an aeroplane for the first time, and experiencing that hum in your ears. I can name so many.
Other times, the experiences we can only imagine aren’t fun or tasteful. They are terrifying, like getting lost in a country where you don’t speak the language or getting an intruder in your home who watches you while you move around, unaware. There are stories we hear and think, “I can’t imagine how that must feel”. Until the moment we are put in those shoes, we can only do that…imagine.
The same happened to me with a topic I found scary the first time I learnt about it. But my experience came when I had a dream.
It wasn’t a good one. I barely remember all of it, but I vividly remember what woke me up that day. It was it. I can’t describe the horrifying fear that washed through me when it came into the room. Like the Nun from the Nun. Not the same, as this thing had no face, but with what little memory I had, it was the best or closest description to help me paint a picture of what I saw.
It floated in from the open doors, casket in the darkness that blanketed not only its body but also the areas of the floor closest to it. It didn’t move. No, it glided towards the bed where I slept. There were no words, no music like in the movies when a jump scare was about to play out. It was just me watching this entity draw closer and closer.
I felt my heart racing, but most of all, I felt fear. I watched its gnarly, long, grotesque fingers inch out of its black coat and toward my brother’s head. I wanted to scream. Shout for him to wake up and save himself, but I had no voice. I opened my mouth, and no sound came out.
How could no one else see it, I wondered. It was getting closer, only its hand stretching and stretching until it caught around my brother’s head and wrapped around him firmly. He screamed, and my body lurched in response, trying to save him as he was dragged away.
I screamed then, but still, there was no sound.
That’s when it happened. I opened my eyes to an even worse fate. My brain had woken up before my body. In front of me wasn’t my brother, of course. He was asleep in the other room. Instead, my eyes fell on my cousin, fast asleep in front of me, her face a mask of peace as I lay in torment. My eyes were the only thing I had, and my mind was still stuck on it. I feared it was still there, coming to get me next, but I couldn’t move a morsel of my body. Not my fingers, even though I tried to wriggle. Not my legs, even when I wanted to use them to turn my body. Not my neck, even when I struggled to lift my head and look around.
I was awake, and I still had no voice. I ached to call out, but even with my will, enhanced by sheer panic, no words could come out of my mouth. A task as simple as trying to part my lips was excruciatingly frustrating as they remained closed.
I heard my name then, and my mother came into focus. She lay on the floor—how she enjoys sleeping on rock-hard ground would always be beyond me—and, at that moment, I was happy to see her. Someone else was awake. Someone could help me because my body was betraying me.
She called me again, her face confused and slightly amused, but I found nothing amusing about it. I was in agony. And I said so, but there were no words. Just grunts like an injured animal striving for its final breaths. Every time I tried to speak, to beg for help, nothing came out but a grunt of pain.
Her amusement turned into worry as she called me again and again. I remember being annoyed because, in my head, I was speaking words.
“Help me!” I said.
I said it so many times, but all that came out was grunts.
And then, like a flip was switched, I lifted my head. I lifted my body and when my mother, still trying to figure out what had happened, asked what was wrong, I told her I had a bad dream. I turned to my other side and prayed. I prayed until I fell asleep because it was still on my mind. The monster that had jarred me from my sleep.
Later, my mom laughed about the whole ordeal. She asked why I just kept staring at her like a mad woman, and I couldn’t help but tell her how annoyed I was that she couldn’t hear me calling for help. I explained to her that every time I made a sound, I was actually asking for help, but all I got was her staring wide-eyed at me while I battled to move. We laughed about it then because the initial fear had passed, but the memory took a while to fade. For the first time in my life, I experienced sleep paralysis.
And it was horrifying.
Years before I had heard about sleep paralysis from TedEd videos, as a throwaway topic when watching a few Dr Mike videos, there was even a short horror film that tackled it, but I have long forgotten its name.
Sleep paralysis. Every time I heard about it, I wondered what it would feel like to be put in that position. How scary it would be to be frozen as you watch the world around you. The pressure that they said the sufferer felt, “like something sitting on their chest.”
I wondered and wondered, but after that day, I knew and it was nothing like I imagined. The pressure I felt holding my body down felt undefinable. The frustration of not being able to speak while I was awake was a terror I wouldn’t wish on another soul. It felt like I was being dragged back into a dream state, but my mind was not ready to return and my body was not ready to be woken.
But I had a dream. A nightmare, to be exact. Had many of those in the past and never woke up like that. Still, I chalked it up to that. I had a nightmare, so that was the reason.
Until it wasn’t.
The second time it happened, it was a simple birthday celebration raging while I slept. It was almost a whole year from the first time, and the memory had all but been buried at the back of my mind. Didn’t think that kind of horrifying experience could fade from my mind, but fade it did. After months of my body returning to its normal routine of waking up along with my brain, the memory buried itself away.
The second time, I was asleep when my brother and father started singing to my mother. I joined them as soon as I woke up, picking up my phone to record the moment as my father held her cake, lit with candles, up for her. There was only happiness in that moment.
I woke up easily from this one. I simply opened my eyes. It was then it came. The fear. The fear arrived before I realized my body was still asleep. I felt something move behind me, but when I tried to turn, my body would not respond. I heard voices, words I couldn’t pick apart in my slow-waking mind. It was like someone stood over me, whispering in my ear, while intense pressure pinned my body to the bed. I tried to turn my head, knowing if I could look around to confirm that no one was there my fears would be gone. I was unable to do anything.
This time, there was no one to look to. The entire house was empty save for me. I was alone in my bed, paralyzed for the second time in my life.
Even alone, I tried to speak. The lull to return to sleep was worse the second time around. My eyelids were pulling close, and with what little control I had, I fought to keep them open. At that moment, I thought if I allowed myself to sleep, I’d die. Irrational? Maybe? But it was all that went through my mind as I lay on my chest, my eyes looking where they could to try and stay present in reality.
The voices I had heard earlier were from my neighbours discussing, and I clung to them. Outside the house, men banged on their metal wheelbarrows, calling out for trash, and I hung on their voices. I held on to anything that kept me from returning to sleep.
I wiggled my fingers, but of course, nothing moved. I tried my legs, but I got no response. It’s a strange thing, feeling the motions your bones and muscles should be making, all the while knowing they are not doing as you imagine. And, just like the first time, I was afraid.
Twice this had happened, and it was only after the fact that I remembered the details of sleep paralysis.
When I am in that state, unable to move my body despite countless thoughts and tries, I don’t remember anything about it. In those moments all I can think about is the overwhelming pressure of my body being dragged between sleep and consciousness. I’d think the second time, I’d realize what is happening and relax as I wait for my body to catch up, but that doesn’t happen.
There is no sanity for me in that situation. No rationality or patience. There’s no point where I tell myself to only wait until my body wakes up. All there is is panic and fear as I push my mind to wake my body up as well.
And when it’s over, my body returns to me. Not slowly, like with wiggles of my fingers and toes, but immediately. And I never have the correct words to describe the experience. Even now, the words aren’t enough. How do I explain it when I still fail to understand why it happens? It never had before in my over two decades of living, and then it happened twice in less than a year.
At first, it was a nightmare. Understandable. I was scared awake before my body was ready. But the second time, there was no fear when I woke up. I simply opened my eyes to the reality that my body was still asleep.
It’s an enlightening experience, and not in the best way. I am now constantly praying I never experience it again. Twice was enough, and in those two instances, I did something I always did…I had a dream.
