/yesod

Tag: paralysis

  • forearms

    Napping this afternoon on the couch, I dream…

    …we’re sitting at the dining room table, my wife and I.

    I hear someone call “Tom” from the back hallway. I turn to see something there, down at the bottom of the steps — small and pale, almost like a child.

    “Don’t look!” my wife says just as it rushes up towards me…

    …awaken with a gasp, lying on the couch with my arms across on my chest.

    I cannot open my eyes. I cannot breathe. I cannot move.

    Something is holding it’s hands on my forearms, pressing me down.

    My breath hisses out between my bared teeth. Little gasps push out of me. I can hear myself whimpering as I struggle to rise, to open my eyes, to speak the name of my God.

    Panic. I can feel my body shaking with the effort to move, those hands holding me down . . . something over me, drawing the breath out of me in long, hissing strands.

    Finally I manage one word: “Ssssssssasssssstop.”

    Immediately, the pressure on my arms lightens and I sit up and open my eyes.

    Alone in the room.

    Even now, writing this, my shoulders and forearms ache as though I’d been carrying a great weight.

    And I can still hear that hissing whimper in my ears. It sounds a little bit like laughter.

  • a sad girl

    …lying in bed this morning, I woke to the sound of the bedroom door opening.

    I hear my wife slowly close the door behind her. I hear her footsteps on the floorboards, approaching my side of the bed.

    I cannot move, cannot open my eyes.

    I feel a fingertip on my arm, just inside the hinge of my elbow.

    The footsteps move away. I struggle to rise, to grasp the her arm but my hand feels strange, tingling in the air where I reach for her, a moment’s resistance . . . then the woman pulls away and walks into a little alcove on the other side of the room.

    The woman is gone. It was not my wife. It was someone else, someone younger — her hair was longer, darker — and she had long scratches or cuts down her arms. And she was sad.

    I cannot confidently say whether or not this was a dream.

  • the shadow on the stairs

    Dozing on the couch while the baby has her bath, I dream…

    …and at the turn of the stairs I look up to see a shadow slowly slide down the wall and onto the floor, like a black puddle of oil.

    From this pool, a figure slowly rises — an almost cartoonlike shape of a man, pale eyes like saucers peering out at me.

    It drifts slowly down the stairs, halfway emerging from the shadow on the floor . . . drifting towards me.

    I run down the stairs and through the darkened living room, falling on the floor — my arms and legs suddenly heavy — immobilized.

    I watch, helpless, as the shadow drifts down the stairs.

    And I struggle to free myself when…