19
I wake to the sight of an old woman standing over me. She’s a crone, twisted and ancient and alien, a disruption of my reality that lasts a millisecond, but it’s a millisecond that stretches so tortuously over my surprise that I’m able to process so much. It’s seven years ago. I’ve been sent home from work for a few days because I have a bad cold and, after waking around my usual time, have stayed in bed and tried to catch up on sleep. But light’s busting in from the window, and the blinds aren’t that effective. Come the morning, I know about it. Opening my eyes, seeing her,…
18
I wake to malevolence. The room is peculiarly sepia. I can only guess that the time is early morning. There’s no rationality now. Panic attacks produce fear, but that’s internalized. This exists everywhere – I am immersed in a terror that is absolute. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t escape. Strangely, when the Aropax was instigating parasomnia episodes, it was driving me out of the bed. Now I’m locked in here. It’s ten years ago. I haven’t had a sleep paralysis episode for over thirty years. Right now, I can’t even reconcile that’s what’s happening. Then a greater truth presents itself. There’s somebody to my right. Somebody cold…