He opened his eyes, but it was so dark he couldn’t see anything. He was lying in bed and he could hear something moving in the dark.
“A break-in!” He first thought. But he had nothing worth stealing. He listened carefully for any sound and could hear footsteps and claw scratches as if a dog was walking on his linoleum floor.
The creature stepped on his bed; he could feel its weight shifting from one leg to another. He couldn’t turn his head to see it, only his eyes. And then it stepped into his field of vision, eyes like scorching coal lighting its skull.
Before he could get a good look at the creature it sank its teeth around his neck. Warm blood was gushing out as he struggled to regain sense of his limp body. The pain took his breath away.
He couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore and just as the pain began to dull and a feeling of sleepiness started to take hold his left arm finally did what he had been desperately trying to make it do. He hit the creature over the head and it dissolved into a thick smoke.
Scared, he scrambled out of bed quickly and ran into the bathroom. He closed the door behind him and waited while holding his neck.
Nothing came; no sound was audible so he looked in the mirror hastily. No bite marks were visible so he took his shirt off and again no trace of any lesions. He touched his neck again and it hurt.
After some cold water on his face he felt more lucid. “What’s happening?” He asked himself. He seemed to be alone in the apartment so he grabbed his mop, for protection, from behind the washing machine and slowly began to turn on the lights in every room all the while looking for what it attacked him.
It was a quarter past 3 in the morning. He’ll have to go to work soon. He can’t go back to sleep, his heart is still racing, the adrenaline still in his veins. “I haven’t felt like this since I almost got hit by a bus.” He looked at his hands and they were still trembling a bit, so he put a kettle on the stove for tea. “This will calm me down.” He thought.
He decided to do an internet search for what happened. After all who could he call at this time of day? “SeaBacon may be online; it’s 1 o’clock in Britain.” But he was not.
His desk was facing the wall so he pulled it and moved his chair so his back would be against the wall. He couldn’t bear to sit in his bed again, he still felt scared. He knew it was silly but he figured nobody could see him anyway. He opened his laptop and started to search all the while he peeked over it to check the room.
“Sleep paralysis. Looks like it.” He concluded after consulting Wikis and WebMD pages. “But it seemed so real.” He couldn’t shake the feeling of fear off. “ Lucid dreaming … nightmare.” He mumbled. “Causes … include stress. Yeah, well … who isn’t stressed?”. His body felt cold after the adrenaline wore off but the feeling of fear persisted in his gut and he started to feel annoyed he couldn’t shake it off. It was as if he didn’t have control over his body which only increased his overall feeling of anxiety.
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