I wake and can’t move. I’m just twelve. My brother sleeps in his bed, his snoring rhythmic. I can’t call to him, can’t tell him I can’t breathe, can’t tell him I can’t move, can’t cry out to him that I need help. I am incapable of everything but the awareness that I am awake and paralyzed. Earlier in the evening, I watched a TV show that talked about sleep paralysis. They described just this, and said that the inability to breathe was due to a ghost, or entity, sitting on the victim’s chest, sucking the air out of their lungs. I don’t see anything. But the terror fills me…