"Her Worse Nightmare"

Eyes wide open, she lay there frozen in time, she could see her family, but only if they passed by in her line of vision. She could hear Bob Barker encouraging a wheel spinner on"The Price is Right" through the TV. She tries to talk but she can't open her mouth. Her heart is beating so hard she could hear it in her head. Panic sets in! Oh, please, someone help me, she instinctively knows screaming would be in vain!

"You have a total of 85 cents, would you like to spin again?" Bob's voice echoes in her head...

I'm paralyzed, she thought, my whole body is paralyzed! She pushed hard against herself, willing herself to move, nothing not even the tiniest little movement! Oh, my God, she thought, it's happening again, only now she was not a little girl, who had, had re-occurring nightmares, she was 16 -years old and she was wide awake! She began to panic, there was nothing she could do...

She is a captive audience, as the memory of the fragmented nightmares that haunted her as a child play vividly in her frozen mind...

FLASH!

She is that little girl, and she lay in a small casket, her family members wipe away tears as they file by, she can not move or make a sound, she is paralyzed, all the while she is screaming, screaming at the top of her lungs, "I AM NOT DEAD" a desperate scream that no-one hears...

FLASH!

She is being taken from her bed by many little tiny people, they are all along the sides of her body and they are taking her, they take her into the woods on a small path that leads to a beautiful lake, a lake that shimmers with rainbow colors...

FLASH!

She is frozen, she can not move, her eyes stare blankly upward, Her daddy stands next to the open casket, a broken man, his shoulders move abruptly up and down as he openly sobs, he strokes her hair, "Oh, daddy do not cry, I am not dead, daddy can't you see, it's me, and I am alive" She wants to reach out to him, to comfort him, she is frozen, she can do nothing, Her body is playing a sinister game, her daddy moves slowly away and she screams, a silent scream...

FLASH!

As the tiny little people carry her down a beautiful path, she can see the lake, as they get closer she begins to smell a sickening, sour, smell and the beautiful lake begins to morph, it morphs into a filthy dump with garbage, huge heaping mounds of waste, everywhere...

FLASH!

Unable to move she struggles within her small body, all the while she continues to scream in terror desperate for someone, anyone, to take notice, "I AM NOT DEAD", she screams again, over, and over, and over again, as her family continues to pass by one, by one...

FLASH!

The tiny little people lay her amongst the heaping piles of waste and encircle her, and they begin to dance, they dance around her as the smell of the rotting garbage fills her nostrils, everything has turned a dank and dreary gray, gone is the beautiful rainbow lake, with its rainbow colors that shimmered about, she is just a little girl, she doesn't understand...

FLASH!

She is alone, the viewing is over, she lay frozen in time, eyes staring straight up at a painting of angels on the ceiling, someone with no face has come and he is slowly lowering the lid on the casket, she is hysterically screaming at the top of her silent lungs...

"I bid $21,000. Bob" the TV chimes in.

She always woke before the lid shut.

She never tells anyone about her nightmares,

And now all these years later she is that 5- year -old little girl again. She lay wide awake, unable to move even the slightest, how could this be? " That's a difference of $1,400.00" Bob's voice reminds her of the horrifying fact that she is awake! She hears her dad, "Tony, wake Val please, we are meeting Grandma at the restaurant and I know she wants to see her Grandma."To her relief, the very second her brother touched her it was as if "force" snapped its sinister fingers and she was released from its ominous grip.

She didn't tell her brother any of what she had just endured. She just brushed her teeth and grabbed her jacket and got in the car. En route to see Grandma, she was thinking why? why, would a 5-year old child have such nightmares? She was never traumatized as a child, she could think of no reason at 5-years old she should manifest re-occurring nightmares of the magnitude that she had? And the path to the lake in her dream was almost exactly like the path to the lake they now live on! Coincidence? She wasn't so sure!

The mind is a very complicated thing was the only conclusion she could come to! She thought about how the nightmares had slowly dissipated as she grew older, as they usually do, so much so that by the time she was 7-years-old, they had stopped altogether.

She was 16 now, and the nightmare had returned only she was not sleeping! She had experienced it in real-time, this was not a dream of any sort! She could barely grasp this! Did she need to see a specialist? Had she manifested this from her subconscious? She had never heard anyone speak of such a thing. Right then she made the decision not to tell anyone! Why would she? They would think she was a freak or plain losing her mind! Besides for some reason, she could not explain, it embarrassed her. She wanted to make light of it and hope it just goes away! Why feed the beast?

It had been nine years since the "force" had visited her...

She can remember the night so well, it was a warm summer night, with no breeze, the air in the house felt stagnant and hot. She had fallen asleep on her sofa and was woke by a strange electrical buzzing that had emulated from the bottom of her spine on up her back, she tried to move before she opened her eyes, nothing! Instantly she was gripped by the familiar all-consuming fear, an abusive ex had returned! She opened her eyes, and that was all she could do. Fighting the frozen hell she was met with unwavering resistance. It felt as if she had been hit by a stun gun and frozen in time.

Eventually, its grip on her released and she could move freely. She had hoped this was another one-time incident, but that was not to be! "Force" had returned with a paralyzing vengeance and visited her weekly, she feared sleep, and it knew this, so it increased its visits!

And it brought friends..,

Waking two or three times a week, paralyzed, unable to move, at times she swore she saw, in her peripheral vision, a wisp of a large dark figure looming over and around her bed.

And then there was the hag!

The musty smell would announce her visit, she could feel the paralyzing weight of her sitting on her chest, her long grey stringy hair falling on Val's chin as she moved in closer to look in the wide-open eyes of her prey! Her spindly fingers that supported her long brittle brown and grey pointed nails would scrape along the outline of Val's face! Unable to stop them, the terrified silent screams would reverberate throughout her frozen body and bounce back with the vengeance of a hard slammed pin ball against an unrelenting barrier,,,

With fear engulfing every inch of her being she would sit up the rest of the night consuming endless cups of coffee until her body would eventually give in to its need for sleep.

Ben, rolled over and reached for Val only to find an empty spot where she had been when they first fell asleep. This no longer surprised him since it had become the norm. Most nights he would find her sitting up awake, with a look on her face he could not get accustomed to. She wasn't herself lately and the dark circles that encased her once bright eyes worried him. He missed her, and no matter how he tried she would not open up to him.

Other nights he would find her sitting up, her head bent, chin almost touching her chest, sound asleep he would gently carry her back to bed and hold her until morning. They had been close friends in school and hadn't really started dating until the night of their senior prom. He had escorted her, there was no way he was going to let her get away and he took no chances of her giving her heart to another. So many great love affairs and lasting marriages had been initiated under the facade of an innocent slow dance at a prom. And he made sure that dance was with him. He didn't want to lose her, ever, and he could feel her slipping away from him as she dealt with whatever was keeping her up at night. You could see it all over her. Why would she not talk with him about it? He was determined to find out!

One thing that she did say, a lot, was how she no longer wanted to be buried when she passed away, she told everyone "make sure you cremate me when I pass!" He found this to be the most disturbing, not that she said it on occasion but that she mentioned it to everyone close to them again and again.

If he only knew her reason, she did not want to find herself in a casket alive, and a man with no face being the last person she would ever see. as he slowly closed the lid, leaving her with only the sound of her terrified silent screams!

She was thankful for Ben, he had no idea the comfort of having him with her gave her. She knew he was getting very concerned and she didn't know how much longer he would stand for her silence.

At times her mind ran wild, maybe it was an abduction? Or the grim reaper? She felt as if she needed professional help but she couldn't remember seeing an advertisement for "Spontaneous Paralysis Specialists." Well, she thought at least she still had a small sense of humor. Even tho this was not funny at all!

"What's wrong with you Val?" you don't sleep well and it's taking its toll on you, those dark circles around your eyes, babe they worry me." By the look on his face, he wasn't going to settle for anything less than an explanation. She knew this was coming eventually, and she wanted to tell him, after all, he was her best friend, her lover, the closest person to her, but what if he thought she was losing her mind? What did it matter? In reality she was losing her mind! And so she took a deep breath and she told him. She told him everything. She stopped ever so often and looked at him hoping he would react and give her a hint as to what he was thinking and feeling but he just sat there and listened intently, slack-jawed.

"And lately it's been happening more often, like three or four times a week Ben, and I 'm afraid to close my eyes for fear I will fall asleep." "I'm scared Ben, so afraid that one of these times I am not going to snap out of it and I am going to be trapped in my body the rest of my life! And what if I did get buried alive!" He reached for her and held her close to him, her body trembled and shook with the power of her sobs, she was crying so hard her nose was running, he had never seen her cry like this and he realized it didn't matter what he thought, this was real to her, it was happening to her...

And it made him angry very angry!

Fighting back the urge to react and show his true feelings, he asked her if she had ever told her doctor or anyone that could explain this? Of course. she told him no, and begged that he not tell anyone. His mind was racing in an effort to find anything to help her."So let's google this, maybe there's something we can find?"

Leave it to Ben to be logical and methodical in his approach she thought as she retrieved her laptop from the desk.

Ben entered "waking paralyzed" in the browser "Wow!" was all she kept repeating as link after link popped up for "Sleep Paralysis". Ben was quite surprised himself, he really did not think that many people experienced this in their lifetime, this was a real phenomenon!

"Frightening" was all he could say! She couldn't stop reading about it as her experiences were confirmed paragraph after paragraph. Yes, it was all there. Why had she been so relentless when it came to telling anyone? She had lived with this fear for much of her life, the relief just knowing she was not alone was unmeasurable. She read how relief was found through different methods and she practiced them all, she no longer slept on her back, when the "force" visited her she learned to calm herself and self-sooth and release would come sooner than when she fought against it, she learned that this was a "sleep disorder" brought on by one's mind waking before their body. She was not aware that all humans enter a stage of paralyzation during REM sleep! She made sure she did not over exhaust herself and that she slept a full nights sleep nightly. She even read that some people experienced halucinations and a feeling of others being in their room! All of this brought some level of relief, "force" still visited her but not as often.

She was becoming her old self again and Ben could not have been happier. She was sleeping well most nights...most nights, until she woke in a startled state disturbed by a dream, a familiar dream, she was being removed from her bed by many little tiny people! She turned to reach out for the comfort of Ben, he stared back at her, eyes wide open, the look on his face was shear frozen terror!