Lately, sleep paralysis has become some sort of meme or normality on the internet. It’s been reduced to seeing an imaginary monster while laying in bed not being able to move or do anything; but I can assure you, it’s much more than just that.
Ever since I was four years old, I’ve been having to go through that intense pain of not wanting to sleep; staying whole nights awake as a little kid, often crying for hours at a time about the shadows coming to get me. That feeling of pressure every time you even think about nighttime, like a car standing on top of your heart ready to squish it in the most painful way possible, is something that can’t even be described in text.
It all started as the exact opposite for me; long nights of insomnia that I wish I could get back. Times of me wanting to sleep, at the age when I’d only just learned to walk. I remember being unable to communicate with my parents in any way other than crying, loud babbling that only made my heart hurt more.
The only times that I was able to sleep, my parents recall having to stop me from falling out of bed and walking around the house. At first, they thought I just had a bad case of both insomnia and sleepwalking; but as the years moved on, it turned out to be a lot more than that.
On my 3rd or 4th birthday, I started sleeping a lot more often like a normal kid would. It was a good sign at first, and the doctor even said the sleepwalking might be over soon. Unlucky me, however, it wasn’t.
My parents started having to stay awake at night, mostly because little sleeping me had found his way to the sliding glass backyard door. The first time they found out about this, they woke up with me crying outside, having have smashed a chair against the now broken door; fortunately, I was unharmed, at least that time.
As I grew up, I became scared of the night. I mostly tried to sleep during the day, but it still wasn’t enough. I remember asking my parents to tie a rope around my hand and to my bed; once they tried, however, they had to drive me to the hospital that same night. I had eaten part of the rope to get out, and I’d swallowed part of it.
I’m guessing you know now that this wasn’t a normal thing to happen to anyone. Don’t worry; it gets worse.
When I was 10 years old, we developed some sort of system. At night, everyone had to close all of the doors and windows in the house. Any object or piece of furniture except my bed had to be more than one meter away from where I slept; this was to ensure I didn’t scratch or eat anything. I had to keep both arms tied with some expert climber’s rope to the bed. If possible, the sheets should be too tight for me to move easily, mostly to delay myself trying to get out of bed. If it was a full-moon night, I needed to have some sort of protection to stop myself from biting myself.
Along with some other stuff, this was the safest way to keep myself from rising up, smashing one of the windows and running into the wild. We lived next to a small forest in California, and that was my favorite place to hide when I slept. We even got the police searching for me quite a few times; by then they were almost used to my parents calling them at night.
This was around the time when I just tried to stop sleeping. I’d just stare at the walls full of moving shadows until the sun rose and my parents came to let me out.
At some point, I started thinking of me when I sleepwalked as a whole different person; I was a kid, and that was the best thing I came up with to understand such madness. I called that version of me Epiales; the Greek god or interpretation of nightmares.
Ten years later, I developed some sort of sleep paralysis; I’d wake up wherever Epiales left me at unable to move. I’d just have to stay there, often in an uncomfortable position, with the sinking feeling that I was being watched.
The worst thing is, that thing that watched me, Epiales; I see it now. Him.
I don’t know how, but I just know he’s there. I’ve talked about this to professionals, who’ve told me it’s just a hallucination.
The thing is, lately, his presence has been getting stronger. I feel him now; I see his shadow, and even have and idea of how he looks like. Behind me, even as I’m writing this, I can now feel his warm breaths on my neck.
At nights, his presence is getting bigger, harder to control. Every time I wake up, he’s watching me; those red eyes are almost impossible to describe in words. They’re just beautifully terrifying, able to turn your heart upside down with one glance, literally.
Every time I go to sleep, I’m closer and closer to escaping; more and more, I see myself moving without wanting to, and I think, soon, he’ll take over me when I’m awake.
He’s watching me right now. He’s going to make me pay for this, and it’s almost turning nighttime.
Please be careful out there, and if you see a young man in the middle of the forest, don’t approach me; Epiales might try to take you too.