I Have Never Been Good at Sleeping

Chapter 1: Echo

I had never been good at sleeping.

Even as a child, nighttime felt less like rest and more like a place I had to survive. I would lie awake beneath my blankets, listening to the ordinary sounds of the house become unfamiliar. Pipes clicked inside the walls. Floorboards settled without warning. Wind brushed against the windows like fingertips searching for a way inside.

Sometimes, after hours of struggling, I would finally fall asleep—only to wake and discover that my body had not awakened with me.

Sleep paralysis had followed me for years.

I knew what it was supposed to be. My mind woke before my muscles did. The fear, the pressure, and the strange shapes were only products of a brain trapped somewhere between dreaming and reality. That explanation made perfect sense during the day.

At night, it offered very little comfort.

Whenever an episode happened, I reminded myself that it would pass. I counted my breaths and tried to move something small. A finger. A toe. The tip of my tongue. Eventually, my body would release me, and I would sit up gasping, exhausted and embarrassed by how frightened I had been.

But the episode that happened a year ago felt different.

That night, I went to bed as usual. A small blue night-light glowed near the wall, filling my bedroom with a dim, watery color. I had kept it there because complete darkness made the paralysis worse. The light was not strong enough to illuminate the entire room, but it allowed me to see the familiar outlines of my furniture.

My dresser stood against one wall. A chair held clothes I had been too tired to put away. The corners of the room remained shadowy, but they were ordinary shadows. I knew what belonged in every part of that space.