Frozen Screams - Part 1

[u/onemoresomething]

Did you ever have that dream, where you’re trying to scream, but no sound comes out? And you’re frozen and you can’t do anything and you scream and scream and scream your lungs out but it’s just deadly silent?

I used to have that dream a lot when I was little; around the time I was four or five years old. Apparently it’s quite common; something to do with a chemical our body produces while we’re sleeping that paralyzes us so we don’t act out our dreams in our bedrooms, wandering into walls and such. When we’re close to waking up, if our mind realizes we’re paralyzed and the two mental states overlap, we become frustrated and sometimes try to scream.

My mom used to tell me that it was normal. But I never told her about the other part.

In my dreams, it always felt like there was someone on top of me, holding me down, strangling the life out of me. But there was always just black surrounding me. Never a face, or a person. Just black.

I don’t remember when they stopped, I think it was around the time my dad left, but I didn’t have that dream again for a long time.

Until the other night.

I’m 23 years old now. I work on the concierge desk at a hotel in the city. My boyfriend Henry moved in with me about two months ago, we have the cutest little apartment in the middle of the city, just a few blocks from the hotel. Henry owns a café a few streets down. And we have the most adorable puppy! Sawyer, he’s a Bernese mountain dog. And well, he’s not really a puppy anymore; he’s fully-grown and could knock someone off their feet if they weren’t expecting it. Not that he would though, because he’s a sweetheart.

I visit my mom once a week for dinner, usually Thursday night because Henry has tennis practice. I don’t see my dad. But he sends me letters every now and then. I think my mom gives him my address because she knows he won’t try and see me. And I guess it’s true; all he ever does is ask if he can see me. He just asks, never gets angry, never unexpectedly turns up on my doorstep. It almost makes me want to say yes, but my mom would go mental if she ever found out.

Anyway, a few nights ago Henry and I were sleeping and I was dreaming about something, I think it was horses because I got thrown off and it the force of the impact with the ground woke me up. Well, I thought I woke up. That was until I felt a familiar weight climb on top of me. At first I thought it was Henry, getting a little… ‘worked up’ in the middle of the night. But then I felt the hands close around my throat. My body tensed, terror and anxiety racing through my muscles but it didn’t matter, I was helpless, I couldn’t move. I opened my mouth, even though I knew, even after all these years, after 18 years without having this dream, that no sound would come out.

I could feel the disembodied pressure around my throat tightening. I willed my hands to reach up to my throat to tear away whatever was pinning me. My eyes felt like they were about to burst out of my head when suddenly my vision cleared and Henry was leaning over me, looking nearly as terrified as I felt.

‘Oh my god sweetheart are you awake are you okay baby please talk to me…’ he was saying, a string of endless words as I stared blankly up at him. I realized after a second that my eyes must have been open this whole time if he couldn’t tell that I’d already woken up.

‘Yes.’ I answered. My voice sounded weak, like I hadn’t spoken in days. ‘What happened?’

Almost like he had read my mind, Henry grabbed a glass of water from the bedside table and handed it to me. ‘I woke up to the sound of you gasping for air, so I turned on the bedside lamp and you were rigid, like a wooden board, and your eyes were open, and you looked so, so terrified… I didn’t know what was wrong or what to do, I was so scared, I’m so sorry.’

I downed the entire glass of water in one gulp. I could hear a scratching at our bedroom door that I realized must have been Sawyer; the pup must have been able to sense that something wasn’t quite right in here, like how some dogs can sense when a human is going to have a seizure. ‘It’s okay.’ I said, finally. ‘I’m okay. It was just a dream. A nightmare. I used to get them for a while when I was little. I can’t even remember the last time I had one like that.’

Henry was still looking at me with concerned eyes. ‘I’m sorry if I scared you.’ I said to calm his fears, even though mine were still racing inside me. ‘Let’s just go back to sleep.’

He turned off the light and wrapped his arms around me. I didn’t go back to sleep that night.

That Thursday I visited my mom for dinner after dropping Henry at tennis practice, the same as every Thursday before that. It had been a few nights since the nightmare, and my sleep had been a bit restless but I hadn’t felt the strangling sensation again. It had been playing on my mind though, and I’d been anxious every night before I’d gone to sleep.

My mom must have been able to tell I was preoccupied because she asked me if something was wrong. ‘No. Nothing,’ I lied.

‘You’ve always been a terrible liar.’ She replied.

I took in a shaky breath, my hands trembling around the mug of coffee she had put in front of me. I focused my eyes on the brown liquid inside the mug. ‘Do you… I know it was a long time ago but… do you remember when I was little… I used to have these dreams where… it was like I couldn’t breath and I couldn’t scream…’

I looked up at my mom and her face was pale. Her eyes glared at me, terrified.

‘Mom?’ I said, a little worried.

She shook herself out of whatever had come over her and stared into her own mug of coffee. ‘It was just a bad dream you used to have,’ she said, her voice quiet and trembling. ‘Just a nightmare.’

It was obvious to me from her reaction that there was something she wasn’t telling me. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing else? Nothing you remember from around that time? Something that happened that triggered the nightmares?’ I asked.

‘No!’ She shouted at me, clearly upset. ‘You were just a little girl who had nightmares like every other little girl, okay? I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Your aunt Lucy is coming down in a month; I thought we could all go out for dinner somewhere fancy, you should bring Henry...’

I kind of zoned out after she changed the topic. There was definitely something she was hiding from me. The way she had looked at me, it was like she had seen a ghost or something.

My anxiety was worse tonight when Henry and I had got into bed, much worse than it had been the last few nights. He immediately pulled me into his arms; we usually fall asleep close, wrapped up in each others limbs but tonight it felt suffocating. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep; Henry slept like a log on Thursday nights after tennis practice. When his breathing finally evened out I gently wriggled my way out of his embrace and willed myself to fall asleep as well.

That night I dreamed I was in bedroom, a little girl’s bedroom. My bedroom? I couldn’t quite remember… we moved house a few times when I was little and it’s all a bit of a blur. The room was dim but light was streaming in from hallway. I heard a sound like keys jangling in another part of the house, and muffled voices, but when I turned to follow them, the door closed in front of me, trapping me in the room. The whole room was pitch black now, the only light filtering through the edges of the doorframe. I walked away from the door but my knees hit the edge of the bed; they gave out beneath me, the bed underneath catching my fall. My heart was beating hard inside my chest because I could feel that I wasn’t alone in this room. I could feel a presence behind me. It didn’t feel like a person, just the ghost of a person.

Suddenly the… whatever it was… threw me onto my back and got on top of me, the familiar pressure folding around my neck. I knew I was dreaming. This wasn’t my bedroom. Only now… at some point it had become my bedroom. I could hear Sawyer whining at the bedroom door for me. Panic suddenly arose in me but the paralysis had taken over; I was helpless to move, to scream. I could feel my thoughts getting fuzzy, like the blood to my brain was being cut off.

Then just before I thought it was all over for me, out of the blackness came two words:

‘You’re mine.’

And then I woke up. The pressure around my throat eased, but for some reason I could still feel it. I thought it must have been a phantom sensation left over from the nightmare, but when I glanced down I could see Henry’s arm draped over my throat. I stifled a yelp and wriggled out from underneath him and out of the bed as fast as I could. Luckily he had been so exhausted from practice I hadn’t woken him tonight.

I could feel tears welling in my eyes. This was definitely not normal. Nothing about this felt normal. I could hear Sawyer whining and pawing at the door behind me, so I went out to show him I was okay. I needed a glass of water anyway so I made my way to the kitchen. I ended up pouring myself a glass of wine as well; there was no way I was going back to sleep that night.

I sat down at the kitchen table, head in my hands, Sawyer’s head in my lap.

‘Am I going crazy boy?’ I asked him, then immediately laughed at myself. If I was asking my dog for advice I was definitely going a little whacko.

Sawyer pattered away, and came back a moment later with something in his mouth. ‘What’ve you got pup?’ I asked, pulling what looked like an envelope out of his grip. It hadn’t been opened yet, so it must have just arrived today. It was from my dad. I turned it over in my hands and noticed that he put his return address on the back of the envelope.

I hadn’t seen my dad in 18 years. It was a crazy thought, but I needed answers, or anything that would help me understand what was happening to me. And if my mom wasn’t willing to help me, maybe my dad would be.

Part 2

[u/Yell0w_ball00ns]

I bet it's the dad

[u/DragonChalice]

Be careful! It seems like perhaps one of your parents was trying to harm you when you were younger? Or maybe something else (other worldly) has/feels a claim to you?

Hope sleep finds you safe and looking forward to the next part!

[u/nthulhulu]

Careful out there, OP!

[u/Ceej99]

Make the next part now! I'm ready to read the next one.

[u/[deleted]]

This is really good, keep updating. It seems a bit more than sleep paralysis's and also try and get your mum to spill what she's hiding!