I know how that sounds, but bare with me.
I’ve had sleep paralysis before. It’s terrifying. The first time it happened was a couple months before this whole situation, and I still remember exactly how it feels.
You can’t move, you can’t talk, and you can’t do anything besides stare forward and hope your brain doesn’t conjure up a nightmarish creature to blend into your reality.
I thought it was the last time anything like that would happen. I was stunned for a long time afterwards. I prayed it was a one time thing, but as we all know, life loves to throw things at you as soon as you think you’re doing well.
Nothing was particularily different two weeks ago today. It was a normal day. I came home from work feeling exhausted, ate dinner, and went to bed.
Shortly after I lied down, everything went wrong. I could feel myself drifting off to sleep, and I prepared to close my eyes, except I couldn’t.
I thought I was dreaming at first, because I felt like I was sleeping. It was only after I tried to move that I realized I was stuck in bed, staring at the ceiling of my room. Usually during sleep paralysis I struggled to keep my eyes open, but this time it was the opposite.
I couldn’t close my eyes, and I couldn’t move. I was still fully aware of my surroundings.
I heard something underneath my bed — a sound I couldn’t quite place. It was a mix of scratching and rustling, as if a blanket was being dragged across the floor.
I wanted to turn my head, but of course, I couldn’t move. The rustling slowly approached me, and I couldn’t do anything except stare forward. I tried moving the smallest parts of my body — my toes, my fingers, my eyelids — but I was completely frozen.
Before I could even process what was happening, it was there. On the ceiling, in front of me. I don’t know how to describe how much it terrified me. It was like a web of stringy black slime, two glowing white eyes in lopsided positions in the center, staring at me. I wanted to scream, but I felt like my entire body was encased in concrete.
We sat there for what felt like eternity. Neither of us moved. We were just there, staring into each other’s eyes, and I couldn’t do anything besides wait. Then suddenly, it was over. The thing seemed to fade out of existence as my ceiling returned to it’s normal off-white, popcorn surface.
I’ve never shot up out of bed so fast. My breath seemed to come back as I started hyperventilating. Tears welled in my eyes, but I knew there was no point in grieving. It was over, and that’s all that mattered.
Well, it was over for a little while, until it happened the next night. The rustling under the bed, and the eyes, and the dark, eternal staring contest.
For the next two nights afterwards, I stayed awake. I really stayed awake. I didn’t even bother to lie down in bed. I was too terrified to see the thing again.
Of course, you can only go so long without succumbing to the night. The third day, I lied down in bed and immediately fell asleep. Well, fell into whatever was happening to me now.
The rustling, and the eyes, and the waiting happened all over again.
I cannot describe to you how weird it is to not physically be able to close your eyes. I can blink, but as soon as I try to fall asleep, it feels like my eyelids are glued to my face.
I wish I could say the thing got less terrifying the more times I came in contact with it. It didn’t. I ended up downing a few sleeping pills in hopes of getting rid of it, but they only made the experience last longer.
I thought I was just going insane, or having reoccurring hallucinations, or repeatedly returning to sleep paralysis — until what happened today.
The floor underneath my bed is used for storage, and nothing else. I had to look for my old student ID for a work project, so I decided to crawl inside the space and dig through a couple boxes.
As soon as I reached a hand forward, I felt it dip into about an inch of a wet, sticky substance on the floor. I yanked it back in disgust, which brought a string of the substance with me. When I looked up, I was horrified. The stuff was pitch black.
My hand was covered in strands of gooey, black muck. I didn’t bother wiping it off. I tilted my head to the side and looked back underneath the bed to find the source of the stuff.
It was everywhere.
There was a huge puddle of it on the floor. It was draped around boxes, dripping off of the bed frame, and smeared on the walls. It looked exactly like the thing, but without the eyes.
It took me about an hour of skin scrubs, soap, pumice stones and sponges to get the muck off of my hands. By the time I was finished, it looked like I had performed an exorcism in the bathroom. Not to mention it was smeared along the floor in my room, and I wasn’t about to bring out a mop.
I don’t know what’s going on. I really thought it was all a nightmare, but I’m starting to think something more cynical is happening here. I don’t want to go to bed. I don’t even think I want to be in my house tonight. I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.