Night Terrors
There is little point in resisting.
When she wakes, seeing the room around her still bathed in darkness she knows what is to come.
In a few moments there will be a faint tickling of hair moving by her right ear, of breath huffing over her face. Sometimes it has a scent, other times there is nothing to note other than the chill that it brings. This breathing will move closer still, close enough that mere atoms separate her and whatever it is that has come to her again, tempting and terrifying all at once.
But, it is a distance that always remains.
When it does come that close, which it will, this she knows, it will also begin to growl. When its breath settles in, when it is close enough to touch, it will stop, slow down, so much so that the silence left behind is more terrible than the breathing and when it takes a deep, rattling inhale she will feel her heart begin to hammer in her chest and sweat bloom over her skin. It will inhale her, will continue to hiss and growl and move her hair with its breath for as long as it pleases and she will spend that time frozen with fear, tears rolling down the sides of her face while she is unable to move, despite her mind pleading her to do so.
But, the sun will rise.
When it does, the breathing will stutter. It will watch the pitch of night shift into an inky blue and the colour warm slowly, just as she does on the small patch of wall that she can see. As soon as a tinge of orange or yellow break through she will feel the thing vanish, and her body will be released back into her control.
This is common practice now, these nights spent locked in a paralysis, as are mornings spent stripping soaking wet bed clothes from her body, the sweat sharp and heavy with the scent of her fear.
But, there it is. She can feel a faint tickling by her right ear now.
There is little point in resisting.
Thank you, dear Reader.
-R
Cover image: Krista Mangulsone
Rebecca Morris 2024©, All Rights Reserved.
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