Sleep Paralysis: A Short Horror Story about Mental Health

He stared out from behind his eyes wide shut. In front of him, displayed like countless myriad millions television screens laid one next to each other, were the lives of everyone he’d ever lived — partially, completely, not at all or fully.

He focused on one where he was little Jane being picked up and twirled by her dad. In ecstasy, Jane laughed in joy and giggled in fear as she twirled higher and faster. These are the moments she would remember with elation for the rest of her life, years after her father died in a tragic motorbike accident that could have been avoided — years after Jane has her own kids, twirling them with the same gusto every opportunity she’d had.

Focusing again, James was Ira being raped by four men in a back alley. The pain, anguish, fear and feel of the knife built anxiety and pain, paranoia and shame for a lifetime — never to be forgiven, forgotten, and never to be repaired.

He was the rapists, exacting dominance. Both the shameful and the shameless.

He was the onlooker, too scared to intervene. Coward. Dastardly.