Lost in Time: The Aftertaste of Sleep Paralysis

Sleep paralysis is a temporary inability to move or speak that happens when waking up or falling asleep. It happens for several reasons, and sleep deprivation is one of them.

I’ve had hundreds of sleep paralysis episodes in my life. There was an instance where, for one whole month, I had sleep paralysis every night, and I would dread going to sleep. Nowadays, I’m so used to it that it doesn’t even bother me. As a matter of fact, I quite enjoy it, because I now know the trick to fighting it off. Knowing that you can fight it off at will—what you once thought was at the mercy of the thing you dreaded—is what I relish every time I get sleep paralysis. Also, I can now command the sleep paralysis demon to do whatever I want it to do (for real). But there once was a time when sleep paralysis was the scariest thing.

One of the worst sleep paralysis episodes I ever had was in the summer when I was in class X. It was 4 A.M. on a Saturday. We had been waiting for my sister, and she had just arrived from the airport.

The outside was dark and silent, except for the area lit by the light bulb on the veranda, which was surrounded by the phototropic insects and a huge moth flapping its giant wings, making its spiralling way to and away from the bulb like it was drunk.

The sun had been gone for ten hours now, and all its heat, absorbed by the soil, tin roof, and the atmosphere, had dissipated into the night air. It produced a kind of magical effect on the surroundings—quiet and cool. It felt as though this exact hour existed in another world, unlike the humid and noisy summer during the day. But this magical hour would not last. In less than an hour, the crimson gradient would fill the eastern horizon, and the blanket of silence would be pulled off by the activity of daytime.

I could have stayed awake to experience this moment a little longer if not for the special extra classes required for the seniors, which I had to attend in less than three hours. I had to get some sleep to stay awake in class. Everyone went to their beds after getting each of our gifts. I too tried to sleep—forcefully. But my excitement at the thought of all the gifts I got from my sister kept exploding like a Diwali firecracker, keeping me from falling asleep. Eventually, I drifted off—or thought I did.

I woke up to find myself sleeping diagonally on the bed. Blood was throbbing in my head because the pillow had slipped off the edge of the bed. Lying in an uncomfortable position, I tried to adjust my head and body. I could not move. I tried lifting my hand. Nothing. Not even a finger. It felt as though every muscle in my body had been switched off.

At first, I thought all this was a dream. I foolishly told myself to wake up. Then it dawned on me that I was already awake, except I couldn’t move. But the thing is, I could see, I could think and reason—I was awake; only I couldn’t move my body. My consciousness was trapped in a sleeping body. I began to panic. I cried for help, shouting, calling names. It was silent. Every strain I put into making a sound produced not even a squeal. For a moment, I thought I was dead, and that it was my spirit experiencing this. My fear and anxiety shot through the roof. I tried my best to compose myself and focus on moving my right hand first—unsuccessful.

Then I saw it.

An unusual shadow on the ceiling. Unusual because there was no hard light in the room that could have been the reason for it to be the shadow of the fan. Or was it a shadow projected from outside the window? I know I am superstitious, but not without exercising my faculty of reason first. Only after my reasoning fails do I become superstitious.

What seemed to be the shadow was moving. It was occupying space, but somehow seemed to be a massless black cloud floating around. While I lay there looking at it, my brain tried to reason what it could be. As I did, I sensed that it sensed I had noticed its presence. Whatever it was, it didn’t like that I was looking at it. I could feel the malevolence, malice, and a sneer of superiority directed at me.

As time passed, the black cloud gradually turned into a little girl with no face except red eyes and a body covered in a black, web-like cloak. I closed my eyes to avoid the evil gaze, hoping that somehow, if I didn’t see it, it would disappear. I opened my eyes after a while to check. It was not there anymore—it was right at the foot of my bed.

Unable to move, unable to call for help, with an evil creature coming at me, the sound of my heart pounding filled my ears. I started praying the Our Father, Hail Mary, and all the prayers that I knew, and even the ones I half-knew. I only dared to peek now and then to check whether my prayers had been answered. But each time, the creature kept getting closer and closer. At last, it was beside me, kneeling and praying with me as if mocking my prayer. I just kept my eyes closed and prayed. My prayers grew louder and louder in my head.

With a loud ringing sound, I woke up drenched in sweat, trembling. The thing was gone. The ringing lingered in my ears before it eventually went silent. I had no sense of how long I had been there.

I looked at the clock—4:10 A.M.

What scared me the most wasn’t the evil creature in my sleep paralysis hallucination; it was the feeling of being lost in time alone. For what felt like an eternity, only ten minutes had passed since I last checked the clock.

I haven’t felt loneliness in the way I felt during the first few minutes of waking up—not before and not ever since. I can’t put it into words to describe that feeling. But it felt as though I was the only living soul on Earth. There was no family, whom I had just shared my joy with; no friends to talk to; no classmates to see when I go to class later—not even the fat neighbour aunty. And I felt it not in a way where I had a family and they were gone. No, it felt as though I had never had a family at all. For those moments, I was lost in a time where human civilization didn’t exist yet, some few millennia back—alone.