The Performance

 

Assignment: Have you ever had the sensation that you were "asleep with eyes wide open", either in its literal sense or its metaphorical one?  If yes, this week share with us a piece about that experience.

I’ve kept this story inside for so long. I’ve told only a few close family members and friends about it before, but for some reason I’ve never written it down, perhaps out of fear that I would trigger my subconscious and cause it to happen again. I’ve been afraid that I would bring my sleep paralysis experience back to reality, conjuring it from the recesses of my mind where it has been stored for years.

When I was 17 years old on a breezy May night in 2016, I finally drifted off to sleep after a long day of high school classes, homework, and typical teenage stress. My grades, friends, books, and prom occupied most of my mind at the time. I was anxious about graduation and the new chapter of my life that I was going to begin in college. But regardless of how busy my day was or how nervous I was about the unknown future, I always fell into a deep, uninterrupted sleep at night. Whereas most of my family struggles with insomnia, I deal with the opposite issue: sleeping too much and too late. After a busy day, I can shut my eyes to the world at 11pm and drift off into slumber within ten minutes by picturing fake scenarios in my head and making mental lists of everything I have to do the next day. And so with the warm breeze flowing in through my bedroom window and the long day behind me, I fell into a deep sleep.

That’s when I saw her standing in the doorway to my room.

She was in a mid-length red dress, the kind that housewives and secretaries in the fifties would have worn on a warm summer day to the Sunday afternoon block party. Her features were blurred, and I couldn’t focus on them enough to get a clear image of her face. Her hair was brown, and she had a red piece of cloth tied around her head like a headband to keep her long hair off her face. She looked as if she was in her thirties.

I was looking at an unknown woman in the doorway of my bedroom in the middle of the night. She was just standing there, and it was as if she was looking through me. She didn’t take any particular notice of me at first, and she didn’t say anything. She didn’t look threatening at all. But it wasn’t her appearance that riled up fear inside of me. It was the energy that surrounded her. Her features started to change, and she began to look worried. Soon her face warped into a look of anger. I was laying on my right side looking straight at her, and I knew I had to get out of bed and out of my room. My instinct told me to wake my parents, as they were right in the next bedroom.

I was frozen in place. My arms and legs wouldn’t move, even though my mind was begging them to work. Thoughts were running through my head telling me to get up, get out of the room. My instinct was telling me I was in danger somehow, but my body was not complying. My fight or flight failed at this moment, a first in my lifetime. I was used to my fight or flight being in overdrive.

On my left side, I felt a dark presence. It appeared as a shadow in the corner of my eye, and I could not make out any identifying features. Again, it was the energy this figure gave off that made me shake with fear. It growled in my left ear, and I could feel its breath on my face. Still, it never touched me.

Then, an electric current began to course through my body - or at least that’s what it felt like. Since I still wasn’t aware that this was sleep paralysis, I thought that I was having a seizure. My entire body felt like it was tingling, and I felt myself shaking all over uncontrollably.

Soaked in sweat, I attempted to scream out for help. Nothing came out of my mouth, but in my head I was trying so hard. Suddenly, the woman in red points at my bed where I lay, frozen. On my right, an infant in a diaper is sitting up on the bed right next to me. I have no idea who this child is, but I can tell that she must be the woman’s. The baby rolled over onto her stomach, and she was about to fall onto the floor. The woman pointed as if telling me to grab the baby, but I simply couldn’t. I had a strong urge to keep this baby safe, but I lay there with no choice but to watch this child fall and injure herself. Why wasn’t this woman in red moving and attempting to grab her child?

The dark figure to my left growled in my ear, and a pressure sat on my chest. It was as if this thing was mad at me for not grabbing the baby. At the time, I was trying to figure out what this shadow figure was. What was even happening? Was my house haunted, and there was a demon in my room? I’ve always believed in the paranormal, but I had never experienced anything myself. Or was this a nightmare? It could be, but it felt too real, as if I was lying in bed awake. Or maybe, could I have died in my sleep from an unknown illness, and my soul was stuck in my body and trying to get out?

And then I gasped. I sat up suddenly in bed, and there was no one in the room. The darkness surrounded me, and the television light emitted a white glow throughout the room. My father’s usual snore cut through the chatter of crickets outside, and I felt my heartbeat pulsing in my chest.

“Dad!” I screamed. Finally, my voice worked. I ran to my parents room, where I saw my dad already sitting up. He heard my scream, meaning that I wasn’t still paralyzed and imagining all of this.

This was a nightmare, but not a typical one. I was awake, watching a nightmare play out in my room as if I was watching a show at the theater. I was a member of the audience who was witnessing everything right in front of me, but I wasn’t allowed to get up out of my seat or yell at the actors - even if they were making me fear for my life. This was a sick, twisted play that truly kept me glued to my seat, prompting me to question my sanity and the nature of sleep for years to come.

Lexi