Hello! This is the first piece of writing I've shown anyone outside of some short stories on twitter. I hope you like it, and if you do I'll write more!
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An alarm chirps, painfully piercing my deep sleep. With my eyes closed I try my best to instruct my body to swing at my bedside table to hopefully hot and snooze it. All I need is another half hour of sleep I tell myself.
My body doesn't respond. The alarm chirps faster but I still can't being myself to open my eyes and deal with it. It takes a few more chirps as my mind crawls out of hibernation for me to realise - that's not my alarm.
"Ughh" someone groans and I finally feel myself moving. I hear a hand hit the alarm and the chirping stops, leaving me with my thoughts which quickly turn to fear at who might be in my bedroom. That fear only escalates when I try to open my eyes and move again but fail to do both. I try to talk, just to say anything, but it feels like I'm in a dream and as much as I will it, I can't even make a sound.
More movement, but not in my control. I hear the sound of something crawling beneath the bed covers, and I get the strong sense something is approaching. Oh god. I can't move and I can feel it now. It's something big, something warm. It's got fingers like a giant hand and it's... giving me a scratch. Not like a scary painful scratch, like my whole body had been itchy and this was the relief. What the fuck is going on!
"Hmm?" I hear somewhere over me. It's the same voice that groaned before. The scratching stops and whatever it was that touched me retreats.
"I didn't say anything babe" says another, manly voice, again somewhere above me, maybe over my head? Only this time I feel like I recognise it.
"Oh that's weird, I thought I heard someone saying fuck" says the groaner. I definitely recognise this one now, but my mind can't grasp why I would be hearing it now, like I'm still asleep and stuck in some difficult-to-follow nightmare.
"Oh. Do you want to fuck?" the other voice responds. I know who that is. Why do I feel like I'm eavesdropping, this is my own bedroom!
"Ughh no. I just woke up. I just thought I heard someone."
Oh my god. It clicks. That's Maria! And the other voice, that's her boyfriend... Dan was it? What the fuck are they doing here?
"Hmm?" asks Maria again.
"I didn't *say* anything. Are you alright?" Dan asks. I can hear the frustration in his voice beuond the tone you'd expect from someone being rudely awoken by an alarm.
"Huh. Yeah I'm fine. Sounded like someone said my name that time."
Dan doesn't respond.
I try again to make a sound but it almost feels like I don't have a mouth to open. Maybe I am actually speaking, Maria heard something, it must have been me right? "Maria!? Can you hear me?" I put all my willpower into getting those words out.
No response, but then I start to move again. This time I'm going somewhere, or I'm being taken there. My own limbs aren't doing this, so I think must be being carried.
Suddenly, without consciously opening my eyes, my vision is filled with a gentle dark pink glow. I feel like I've been uncovered as cooler air washes over me while someone or something carries me out of bed.
I hear soft footsteps on the floor beneath me. Yes, the floor is beneath me and I am being carried, I confirm to myself, trying to keep my spiraling catastrophising mind grounded.
The sound of a switch. The gentle pink glow gets brighter, but no clearer. The solid colour completely surrounds my peripheral vision. Is it some kind of blindfold I wonder?
I hear my abductor take a few more footsteps in this brighter space, then the sound of a door closing.
"Hello? Maria? Dan? Anyone?" I bounce around in my mind in desperation, hoping that maybe if ai can convince myself I am speaking out loud someone will hear me.
"Umm... hello?" says Maria's hushed voice. I can hear she's confused.
"Maria? Is that you? Can you hear me?" I try to ask. If i were able to speak, I think I'd be yelling.
"Yeaaahh? Who are you? Where are you?"
It throws me when she asks where I am. She's not the one carrying me? Surely she can see me.
"Maria! It's me Nicole! I'm right here?"
"Nicole?" Despite being so hushed, her voice carries a lot of concern.
"Oh thank god you can hear me. Can you help me? I can't move or see!"
"You... what? Why are you talking like in my head?"
"But I'm just talking, can't you see me?"
"Umm, Nicole, this is my bathroom. It's just me. Why would you be in here?"
I'm mind freezes, totally stunned.
"Nicole?"
"I'm... In your head" I admit. It makes sense then why I can't move, why I woke up in Maria's bedroom, why I'm not bre... oh god I'm not breathing. I panic, so much that if I could breath, if I needed to breathe, I'd be hyperventilating. Being reminded of breathing makes me desperate to feel my chest rising and falling and air rushing in and out of my lungs, but the same innate muscle movements that would have done so before do absolutely nothing now.
"Why the fuck are you in my head?" Maria lets go of her control over her own volume and raises her voice.
In a moment of meditation that I didn't know i was capable of, I manage to gently ease out of the near panic attack and mental hyperventilating. I'm alright. I'm not in pain. If I got into this I can get out of this. Someone can hear me. Maria is my friend, she'll take care of me. She'll be just as worried as I am.
"I'm so sorry Maria but I don't know. I promise we'll figure this out though."
"Everything okay in there?" Dan voice says presumably through Maria's bathroom door. He must've heard her talking to me.
Maria clears her throat. "Mhmm yeah fine, just a sec" she reassures then "god you're annoying" except the second part didn't sound like the first. It wasn't loud or quiet, it was just as if I'd thought it in her voice.
"Did you just call him annoying?" I ask
She has to whisper now "oh fuck, did I say that out loud?"
"He didn't seem to notice. Maybe I just heard you think it?"
"Heard me... think?"
"Yeah like, you must be hearing me think, so maybe I can hear you"
"Can you hear this?" I hear but in that same internal talking voice.
"I can!" I say with both relief and excitement over a piece of the puzzle being figured out as if I'm trapped with Maria in some surreal escape room.
"Wow I need to be careful then. Sorry if I think anything bad."
"I can't hear everything, like maybe it's just the stuff you want to say."
"Sorry if I want to say anything bad then."