The Writers' Circle

Fear, I know what fear is. I know fear intimately like a snake curled around my throat with its fangs on my jugular hovering letting me sweat some before the strike. I have night terrors and the fear plays on my senses at least once a week. My last terror, last night actually, lasted about fifteen seconds. Those fifteen seconds transformed my night into another sleepless one.

It started with a high pitch screech that resembled a cat's growl. The sound was not outside the house or even my room. The sound was coming from directly beside my ear. The sound startles my brain into full consciousness.  I try to escape from the horrible death rattle, but I'm stuck due to body paralysis from waking up directly out of deep sleep. The screech travels around the top of my head tickling every hair follicle creating a wave of goose bumps before retreating into the shadow figure next to me.

When I make eye contact with the shadow, it jolts as if it received an electric shock and flattens into the covers and travels to my feet. The prickling sensation travels over my legs as the shadow passes. At the foot of my bed, another shadow stares. It stares, not with eyes like an animal, but with its essence. In my current state of panic, I sense things on a primitive level and this shadow did not want me to see it. 

I try to scream but my body is still in shock from my direct exit from deep sleep. The temporary paralysis is still commanding I lay still or is it the demon shadow now crawling up my covers. I open my mouth, a dry scream escapes, and my body quickly floods with energy. The demons power over me is broken. I begin swinging and lashing out at the demon crawling into my bed with its evil intent.

I make contact and it begins yelling my name. It knows my name! "How do you know me?" I yell repeatedly while I continue to pound the shadow. It wanted to kill me. I had to protect myself.

"Justin! It's me! Its okay!" the witch's voice continues to taunt me.

.and then it is over and I realize I was beating my girlfriend.

She had managed to get a pillow between us just in time. She tried to escape the bed before I began my fit, but stumbled on the covers near my feet. She told me when the bedspring squeaked, my eyes shot open and she knew time was out. She grabbed the pillow and tried to escape, but I was already dry screaming and kicking my feet around. The kicking threw her off balance right before she shifted her balance off the bed, which pulled her back into bed. She said my screaming was incoherent rambling of non-words.

-----------------

I try to explain to people that night terrors don't happen when you are asleep. The fear follows you out of deep sleep and transforms your immediate surroundings into a sense-manipulated reality. Everything takes on a primitive fear with baseless confusion. Your senses lie to you telling you to flee, when nothing anchored in reality would justify it.

Did my quick writting give enough imagery to make you feel it?