Stranger things than fear

I look in the mirror and my reflection is smiling back at me, with a sinister smile. The image of myself licks my lips but I did not.

The terror ran over me like a victim paralyzed by this… ‘evil thing’ that was not me.

I awake in soaked bedsheets with wet strands of hair plastered to my neck. I’m relieved but yet can’t shake this energy. And that’s exactly what always lingered, the energy, like a physical person standing behind me breathing down my neck. Though the dream stopped, it’s almost as the supernatural crossed over with me. It takes me awhile to snap out of it every time, of the night terror, that is. Sometimes I’m just frozen for the first few hours. I can’t shower because that means being alone in a closed space with no room to exit in the instance of an emergency. And forget about looking in any mirrors. I can’t swallow because my throat is dry, as if someone is gripping it.

Fear is the uttermost prison of our thoughts. If your thoughts are incarcerated, then everything you eat, sleep and breath is too.

Eventually I move along, even though the rest of the day is daunting.

I picked a verse out of the daily bread box. The daily breadbox is a little bread container with over 100 colorful mini cardboard verses inside. My mom always had us pick a verse every day when we were little. So, I picked a verse and read one for ease and comfort. It did the job, it always does.

Later that evening, I received a call from my dad. He was drunk, per usual. It was always hard enough being the parent to both of my parents. My mom is schizophrenic and my dad, well, he might as well be too.

So far the day as a whole was rather lackluster.

3:00 a.m

I enter the dark circular staircase. Something diabolic is calling me without words. Just sensations. Everything in me is telling me to run or go the other way. Get out! Now!

But behind the sensation, there was another figure, a supernatural call to save. To be strong. To face it! Between the two wordless voices I move up and toward the half closed door. Nervous, I coughed into the crook of my elbow. My forehead is glistening with the perspiration of all my trauma. Every idea of fear surfaces because that’s what I’m thinking. I mean, isn’t that what everyone does when their afraid? Sometimes we work up the fear to a reality, resurrecting every childhood scarecrow from the cornfields.

I then enter the room. I’m frozen. I feel it. That force.

Floating all around me in thin air are the verses from the daily breadbox. And sitting straight up in the bed is my dad. He’s sick and asking for help. His behavior is strange-like and he’s otherwise consumed. He switches from a sad shell to a vigorous ominous menace.

This was the part I forced my strength. I started to rebuke everything in my way.

And then I gasped.

I woke up from the very similar night terror that I had the night before. Where I’m visited by this sinister dark force.

This time I’m panting in utter relief! Then started to pray.

I don’t know what these dreams mean but they are reoccurring possessions of the people I love. The following night I had one of my mother, as she laughed and it wasn’t her laughing, and then of my sister standing against the wall until she slowly glances my way. And the dreams always end or stop once I’m rebuking it. It’s like I’m the only one who carries the thing to make the tormentor flee.

I felt some range of peace along with fear, it was the strangest thing, because part of me knew exactly what thing it was that defeats fear because the thievery of my family ends with me.

This optimistic but yet practical sensation meddling amidst the terror, is something stranger than fear.