My breath was soft, trembling, the only sound in the dark bedroom. Exhale. 'Relax.' I closed my eyes, fighting the paralysis that held me still. Another night, another waking nightmare. His eyes were on me, consuming me just as ravenously as if it were his lips dancing across my skin instead. How could I focus? His very existence was a distraction, as sweet and forbidden as Eden's own fruit.
'Relax, Sienna, breathe.'
How, though? Every muscle in my body was tense with a strange expectation. Tonight was different, I could feel it.
Ever since I was young I'd suffered from sleep paralysis, the strange state of semi-wakefulness where my body was still asleep, but my mind was stirring to consciousness. Psychiatrists and therapists alike had tried to help over the years, providing various sleep aids and meditations to counteract the nearly nightly occurrences, but they had always failed. Over the past five months, though, my usual struggles had begun to be accompanied by a ghost. A man, I thought, though I hadn't ever seen him fully. He had always simply stayed in the shadows, watching until I woke.
He was a sleep paralysis demon, my therapist had said. A common manifestation for people who struggled with sleep paralysis, but purely a figment of my own imagination.
My heart hammered, painful, and I was certain he could hear it in the silence of the room. I couldn't see him, only feel him, but I knew he was there. It's only a dream, I reminded myself, he isn't real. Even if he was, would I be frightened? He had never done anything to me, not yet.
Close your eyes, I ordered myself. If I closed my eyes and kept them closed, it normally allowed me to progress through the nightmare. But I couldn't. Wouldn't. If I looked away from the darkness, would he be gone again?
Part of me hoped not.
I tried to pull the sheet up over my body, to hide my nudity from the eyes in the darkness, but I could only sigh as my body still betrayed me. Not yet. How long until I woke from it this time? My sigh drew his attention, his eyes flicking in the darkness from my body to my face. I heated, realizing he had been observing my nudity while I slept.
"Who are you?" I whispered, my voice husky from sleep. Cobwebs clung to my thoughts. Silence was my response. I tried again, "What are you?" It felt as if only my mouth would cooperate within the dream, challenging him. It sounded weak in the emptiness of my room.
The shadows moved, and I saw him watching, only his eyes glowing from the depths of the corner he had chosen to hide. His were dark, black, but somehow, they were brighter than the shadows he hid himself in. Part man, part not. Was he a monster? Beast? Something else? How many nights had we repeated this game? How many more? I sensed his desire, his hunger, his loneliness.
I ached with it.
"Please," I whispered, trying to reach one hand towards the darkness. My fingers trembled at the effort, but I couldn't quite lift my arm. I wanted to cry aloud, but instead, I said, "I want to meet you." As I said it, I knew it was true. For so many months he had stood in the corner and watched as I slept, watching over me? Was it my desire that urged me to reach for him? Or was it his, somehow permeating my thoughts and body? I didn't know anymore. I just knew that I tired of it. The aching was exhausting, and I craved a release.
My declaration seemed to startle him. It was the first time I had tried to speak to him; before, I had simply lain in the darkness and waited for my body to finish waking. For a second the air seemed to grow heavy with intention, as if he were going to respond, then suddenly his dark eyes vanished from the shadows, and the room was empty aside from myself.
Surprise, then fear flooded through me.
"Wait!" I cried, trying to sit up, but the paralysis held me completely. The realization that I was still stuck in the dream made the terror grow. My attempts to wake failed; if anything, it felt as if the thin sheet I'd been wearing started to wrap itself around my waist, binding me tighter, constricting my movements even more than they'd already been. Panic surged as I realized the helplessness of my situation, unable to move, unable to fight back. Was it a dream? Reality? I didn't know anymore, I didn't care. "Please, don't leave me!"
I stopped thrashing, waiting. Silence, again. I held my breath, listening for a sound, anything to reveal that I wasn't alone. I didn't think he was gone, not entirely. I could still feel him nearby. Did he hold his breath, too, waiting to see what I said? Something was different tonight, a hovering aura to the darkness that held anticipation, but also anxiety. Mine and his both. "Please come back," I whispered, wetting my lips with my tongue, "I'm scared."
For a moment, nothing. I felt hesitation, then, the darkness melted away, revealing the nightmare that had haunted my dreams.
I gasped as he stepped out of the shadows and into the light of the full Halloween moon, illuminating himself for the first time since he had begun to stalk my dreams. He stood before me, his eyes shards of black glass within a shadowed face. A light tracing of oily black feathers covered his skin, looking like the plumage of a raven, though his body was that of a man's.
Two black horns bearing thin, delicate golden rings swept back over long, shoulder-length black hair. He was nude, aside from the light feathering that led down his chest to meet dark, scarred skin, and several pieces of gold jewelry. The eyes that regarded me were intelligent, and that seemed to linger on me with a hunger that I understood. I felt it.
He was handsome, in a carnal, semi-demonic sort of way.
