Somnum

Cataplexy: A sudden loss of muscle tone triggered by strong emotions which can include crying, laughing, or feeling angry.

Sleep Paralysis: A temporary inability to move or speak while falling asleep or upon waking.

Night Terrors: Episodes of screaming, intense fear, and flailing while still asleep, often paired with sleepwalking.

“When we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another.”- Salvador Dali

“I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I’m not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares.”- Mark Z. Danielewski

“Monsters don’t sleep under your bed, they sleep inside your head.”- Anonymous

Author’s Note:

This work is a labor of love, for everyone who ever thought they were crazy—who’s ever felt trapped within their own mind. The horrors we find in our minds are no less real than physical beings from the way they torment us. But that does not mean that they are true. There is help to be found, and know that one way or another, you are not alone.

Samantha Paredes

***

Night was chasing him. An inflated descriptor, sure, but it was true then. It got darker quicker than it had all year on that day. The doctor couldn’t have spent more than an hour at his colleague’s house, and though he’d gotten there in broad daylight, as he was leaving, the sky had turned to tar. The cold stillness of the night was unnerving. By the time he’d buckled himself into the front seat and slammed the sedan’s door shut much like a child quickly scampers into bed after turning the lights off at night, the spindly branches of trees were covered with ragged black cloth. The leaves shuddered in clusters, as though pulled by strings. His foot slowly pressed the gas pedal further down, tires squealing with every treacherous turn down the empty, winding road leading back home. His hands gripped the steering wheel. He kept checking the rearview mirror, unable to shake the gnawing feeling in his stomach… the feeling that someone was close behind. It was in the dark, halfway-illuminated view of bushes and the gravel-studded dirt road behind him that he caught a glimpse of the drops of perspiration on his forehead, then felt them trickle down his face like melting ice.

The only other thing on his mind was getting home to his family. A heavy cold had seized upon his chest, causing his breath to shorten and a distressed search for eyes in the darkness. He knew he needed to get back to his family before whatever was behind got to him. He didn’t know who it was… he didn’t know what it was… The farther he drove, the quieter it became.

He slammed on the brakes, drawing claw marks in the dust with the overheated tires to miss the figure of a man that had appeared blocking the middle of the road, just a few feet from the vehicle. When the car stopped teetering and threatening to flip over, he threw his head from side to side, praying that he wouldn’t see a body splayed out on the dirt in front of him.

The man was gone.

“What?” he whispered to himself, squinting at the glowing circle formed by his headlights, when he saw the figure in the rearview mirror. He was sitting in the backseat on his car. Only, he wasn’t a man at all. Just a solid black shadow, with no face or eyes.

A terrified gasp tore through him and he glanced back with a start. Just as quickly as it had appeared, the apparition vanished. When he finally had the courage to turn toward it again, there was nothing in the rearview mirror either.

He removed his glasses, rubbing his eyes and the sweat around them. When he put them back on, he looked out at the little bit of road he could see illuminated by the headlights once more. Again, he found nothing.

He sat for what seemed an eternity. Finally, once his breathing had slowed down—once he no longer felt like a mouse, ribcage fluttering up and down, and again like a man—he carefully put the car in reverse.

It had strayed a little into the forest, strewn with detritus from plants—twigs, dead leaves, and pieces of dried fern. It crunched like tiny bones beneath the tires as he pulled out of it back into the dirt road. He began to drive forward, slowly at first.

When he reached home, he hung up his coat and crawled quietly into bed next to his wife. Her soft brown hair looked like feathers in the illumination from the slats of moonlight shining through the blinds. While his hand hovered over her shoulder to shake her awake, he thought the better of it. It had been a long night. There was no need to bother her.

But the haunt would be there that night, standing at the foot of his youngest son’s bed while he slept. The little boy woke up, paralyzed, greyish-green eyes frozen in shock. He reached for the gold frames on his bedside table, but soon wished he had left them. The shadow grinned, baring its stalactite teeth.

***

Amarilla