Napping this afternoon on the couch, I dream...<\/p>\n
...we\u2019re sitting at the dining room table, my wife and I.<\/em><\/p>\n I hear someone call \u201cTom\u201d from the back hallway. I turn to see something there, down at the bottom of the steps \u2014 small and pale, almost like a child.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>Don\u2019t look!\u201d my wife says just as it rushes up towards me...<\/em><\/p>\n ...awaken with a gasp, lying on the couch with my arms across on my chest.<\/p>\n I cannot open my eyes. I cannot breathe. I cannot move.<\/p>\n Something is holding it\u2019s hands on my forearms, pressing me down.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Finally I manage one word: \u201cSsssssssasssssstop.\u201d<\/p>\n Immediately, the pressure on my arms lightens and I sit up and open my eyes.<\/p>\n Alone in the room.<\/p>\n Even now, writing this, my shoulders and forearms ache as though I\u2019d been carrying a great weight.<\/p>\n And I can still hear that hissing whimper in my ears. It sounds a little bit like laughter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Napping this afternoon on the couch, I dream... ...we\u2019re sitting at the dining room table, my wife and I. I hear someone call \u201cTom\u201d from the back hallway. I turn to see something there, down at the bottom of the steps \u2014 small and pale, almost like a child. \u201cDon\u2019t look!\u201d my wife says just as it rushes [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[830,117,355,831,157,744,829,498,828,282,280,832,551,100],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dreams","category-ghosts","tag-ache","tag-afternoon","tag-couch","tag-forearms","tag-gasp","tag-hallway","tag-hissing","tag-nap","tag-pale-child","tag-paralysis","tag-stairs","tag-table","tag-teeth","tag-wife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tmcamp.com\/yesod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tmcamp.com\/yesod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tmcamp.com\/yesod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmcamp.com\/yesod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmcamp.com\/yesod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmcamp.com\/yesod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":952,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmcamp.com\/yesod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions\/952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tmcamp.com\/yesod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmcamp.com\/yesod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmcamp.com\/yesod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}