Dating : Sleep Paralysis

A flash fiction horror story of a monster between realms

I smelled the thing before I heard it — bitter mildewed broccoli and foul eggs left in July heat, with a sharp stench of rancid meat. Then came the scuttling of large claws and guttural groans resonating in the walls, and along the floor, that spoke only of my impending doom. And I can’t move at all.

Instead, all I can do is watch moments unfold, a picture book flipping page by page with mad delirium of one silent scream at a time. The monster in the dim hallway is approaching, and I can’t move, not of fear but something even more feral. A switch, somewhere in the shadow places of my unconscious mind, is broken. This is what real nightmares are weaved from — not to know what lies deep inside your true self.

The sound swells, coiling around the darkness, squeezing until it pops with ghastly aberration. My heart pounds, the only message I can send to the world as a form of help. But I know no help will come for me. The beast knows it, bathing in my desperation. The transcendent depravity of fear is the fact that nobody is safe in the dark. And whatever this creature is, this being who grows in the night, it taunts me now in the silver locks of the moonlight.

Soon, it’ll bath its sterling form in my blood. My balls constrict in panic, just thinking about it. Pinpricks jitter along my spine, yielding gooseflesh along my arms. But nothing moves. I have to move! I scream, but all that escapes is a whimpering moan.

“heeeeeeeewwwwwwwllllllppppp….oooowoowoo.”

Claws scrape along with drywall. I can hear the chips falling on the ground, as bone rips through the wood.

And then I see it. Oh god, I shouldn’t have looked.

Twenty feet of claws and arms that reach in all directions, spooling of green mucousy secretion falls from its reptile-like openings. Its tongue flicks and licks away still-fresh blood from its scaley face. Fang and eyes that see from all angles look through me. They see the vibration of my spirit’s fear — like a clown laughing as apocalyptic horrors unfold. The creature is a shape-shifter, taking various forms of monstrous nightmares. The macabre nature of the night, the unknown that whirls in our deepest fears, looks at me with an insatiable hunger and unrelenting rage. Then the world goes blurry, as does the monster while it moves upon me. Tears have given me a moment of peace amongst hell.

But peace does not last long in nightmares made real.

A momentary flash, and then I feel it now hovering over me. The stench of its rotten essence protruding from each warm and wet breath. A dark angel, who has no desire to save my soul but to consume it.

“heeeeeeaaaaaaaawwwwghh,” I moan. Tears are falling. Body trembling.

And then it slithers downwards, claws grasping my ankles as it pulls me off the bed. I feel the tearing of tendons of feet. This is no nightmare. In a nightmare, I would have awoken. That’s my last coherent thought before the creature begins to eat me. My lost tether to sanity as I peeked into its mouth and saw that is was a doorway to another place — a place without light or hope or love — just oblivion.