Stay Awake

“See you later, Dee.” Delilah’s friends hummed the farewell in unison like zombies. Some were stifling giggles and others could barely move their mouths. She had already made it halfway down the stairs before the door slammed behind her and the usually damp corridor was a welcome breath of fresh air compared to the stale and smoky space she had just escaped from.

When Dee exited the main door and the icy 3am breeze hit her face she sobered for half a second. She fumbled for the tin of pre-rolled cigarettes in her bag as she half-closed her eyes and swayed to the music she could still hear from upstairs. The party started on Thursday night which was student night in her city and after a glance at her smartwatch, squinting through the blurred vision, she realised that it was 3am on Tuesday.

Delilah was no stranger to a party and she never turned down a drink, much like all of her fellow students. She was also no stranger to a bit of sniff here and there, but this time took it to another level. She stumbled down the street trying to figure out how days had passed in the space of a single night but her intoxicated and sleep-deprived brain couldn’t quite do the math. Oh well, she had a good time. Probably. As she pondered this, it began to dawn on her that the events of the party already seemed to be becoming a distant memory, or had disappeared from her memory altogether. Not to worry. She could remember the important bits. She could remember being with her friends and fucking that guy with the brown hair. Delilah searched deep within her brain for his name but she could not find it. She also remembered taking some things that burnt the back of her nose and throat. She could remember nearly vomiting from the sensation but held it together.

Delilah shuddered as the memory of the sensation was so vivid that she felt as though she was reliving it. She shook her head as though that would undo the thought process but the small movement nearly tipped her whole body into the road. She began to concentrate more on her movements but felt like she was moving in slow motion. No matter how much she tried she couldn’t move any faster. She looked up from her feet and stopped dead on the pavement as her gaze fixed on a lamppost up ahead. She felt like she might have a heart attack and forgot to breathe for a little while because she saw a person hanging by a rope around their neck from it. She felt paralysed for a moment but approached the light as fast as she could, which was not very fast at all.

As she got closer she blinked and looked back to the horrific scene only to find that nothing was there. It was just a standard streetlight with nothing morbid or unusual hanging from it. If she’d had more energy she would have probably questioned that the fuck was going on but she barely had the energy to keep moving as it was, so she ignored the incident and powered on.

As she continued on her journey back to her shared house strange things kept happening. On one street corner, she had seen someone sprawled out across the pavement and began to pray hard to a God that she didn’t believe in that it was a homeless man asleep and not someone that had been hurt. Their position looked unsettling from where she was looking at them and it made her feel uncomfortable. As she approached after a blink it became clear that the man was just a bin bag settled on the side of the road.

Her eyes kept betraying her for the rest of her short journey. As she crossed the street to get to the one where she lives there was a beautiful big tree in the community garden across the way. She always found comfort in nature and so took this opportunity to glance over and let herself calm down for a moment. As her gaze slid over her body became rigid, as in the place of her tree it appeared that there was a group of people contorting themselves in mysterious ways, impossibly climbing over one another. The group slithered amongst themselves in a way that was not human. The outline of the group was blurred but resembled that of the tree and the way they were moving made Delilah cold to her core.

The terror that ran through her provided a small burst of energy which propelled her towards the garden. She tripped on the curb in front of the gate and quickly dusted herself off and tried to prepare herself for the terror she was about to witness up close. She looked up at the tree to find that it was just that, her favourite tree. A shiver ran through her body and she decided at that moment she needed to get into her room without looking up from the floor, and she needed to sleep for 3 days and forget about this whole encounter.

She made it over the road and spent a little too long unlocking the door but managed it nonetheless. She did not remove her gaze from the floor until she made it upstairs into her bedroom and although she didn’t see any more strange humanoids, everything just looked a little off. A little hazy like static on a badly tuned TV.

As she shut the door behind her she realised how tense she must have been because her whole body relaxed. Without another thought, Delilah threw herself face down onto her bed.

-

She woke with a gasp and frantically moved her eyes to find the source of the rude and abrupt awakening as the volume of her heartbeat in her ears sounded like a jackhammer in the street. Delilah attempted to move her head to get a better view but she couldn’t move. She could feel that her clothes and bed were damp with what she was hoping was sweat, she tried to move her hand to feel the situation out but she couldn’t. No matter how hard Delilah tried to move she couldn’t.

After the biggest intake of breath she had managed in all her life she forced out a scream but no sound came out. All she could hear was air passing her lips like someone had removed her voice box. As tears gathered in the corners of her eyes she could hear nearly inaudible whispers and banging coming from the space above her head. She desperately used every ounce of strength in her body to try and get sight of where the noises were coming from but it was no use. The more she tried to move the more she realised it was hopeless, and the faster her heart kept beating.

Through the muffled vision of her tears, Delilah spotted a shape at the end of her bed. It was dark in her room but this figure was darker. She had never seen anything so black in all of her life. If she hadn’t been paralysed before she definitely would have been after spotting the creature that was observing her fear with no attempt to help her. She closed her eyes tight because it was all she could do and hoped that when she opened her eyes again whatever it was would disappear, just like the strange visions she had outside.

After blinking her eyes shut so hard she felt she might have bruised her eyeballs, she opened them to find the silhouette still very much there, but it was no longer stationary. Now, the creature was slithering on top of the foot of her bed and slowly advancing towards her head. As she looked upon the creature its eyes locked with hers and as it slowly approached, the once shadowy facial features became vivid and made her blood feel as though it had stopped circulating altogether. She’d hoped that maybe if her will was strong enough she could force her heart to stop beating before the situation reached its climax.

Delilah closed her eyes once more and accepted that this would be the moment that her life ends. She accepted that it would not be pleasant and she accepted that there was nothing she could do. She opened her eyes again just in time to see the crooked limbs of the creature bend as it sat on her chest. Although it appeared skinny and shadowy the weight felt like she was being crushed by an elephant. It became harder and harder to breathe and as she gasped, realising that one of her next breaths would be her last, she sat bolt upright in her bed.

Delilah looked around her, unsettled by the sudden regain in control of her limbs. Everything in her room seemed normal with absolutely no sign of an intruder. She said hello quietly to herself to test whether she could, and was relieved to hear a sound come out of her mouth. Lifting her wrist to check the time the screen read 05:17. It was still pretty early and Delilah was even more exhausted than before she had her short sleep. She threw herself back into her pillow ready to sleep everything off for the second time.

-

Delilah's body became rigid once more and her eyes shot wide open as she felt her heartbeat thump in her ears like a hammer to a nail. This time she knew that she wouldn’t be able to move or speak but tried anyway. Daylight shone through her curtains this time and illuminated the creature staring back at her. This time it didn’t look ghostly. It was solid. The outline of each crooked limb no longer blurred into the background and every line on the grey skin of its face was more vivid than anything she had seen before in her entire life. The woman-like creature turned her neck to the side and it sounded like bones were breaking. She smiled in a way that made her face look like the most grotesque thing Delilah had ever seen and she slowly started to crawl upon her helpless body.

Delilah closed her eyes to lock her tears in and held her breath as she felt the weight of a thousand bricks descend upon her chest. She wondered in that moment how her heart was still beating like a jackhammer when her whole chest cavity must have been crushed. After an indistinguishable amount of time passed Delilah felt like she could breathe again. She opened her eyes to find her room untouched with no sign of an intruder just like before.

Delilah knew that she couldn’t go back to sleep, not now. She was safe as long as she stayed awake. She got up and went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. The area around her eyes was dark as her glance fell upon her black coffee. Neither of these things could rival the darkness that she had encountered that morning. The darkness that penetrated her soul and now lived within her.

Delilah would never sleep again.

-

Thank you for reading this story inspired by sleep paralysis and some other experiences from a misspent youth. I'd love to know what you thought @creepyandcurious on Instagram and @curiouslycreepy on Twitter.

Stay creepy and curious, ghouls.