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…
12
I wake to somebody bouncing on my bed by my right ear – I hear the springs of the mattress recoil; feel the depression of the mattress; and am startled by the unexpectedness of it all. They bounce again around the middle of the bed, and one final time at the end of the bed, like they’re working their way down a hopscotch grid. And that’s it. Done. It happens in the time it takes me to wake, so I’m playing catch-up on processing all this. “Who’s there?” I bark. There’s no response. I see nothing. But my heart thumps. It’s night – early morning. Who the hell would bounce…