The Malevolent

It sits on my chest. It holds my body down.

I know I try to call to J-, but I can't move my lips. I can't flail. I feel him sleeping next to me, but I can't reach him. What is that? I can't see it -- but I know it's there, I know it breathes close to my lips -- I know it smiles at me through the darkness. I don't know what it's after. I never do.

When I dream, I can move. I can speak. I have conversations with lost friends and old family members. We laugh, and we love, and we reconcile. But this is different. This is nothing that I know. I have nothing that it wants. But it comes for me. It comes when I'm restless, when I'm having trouble falling asleep, when the shadows in the corners of the bedroom begin to change and look like strangers, when I feel estranged from the world. It rests there on the outskirts, waiting for me to get close enough, to keep my eyes closed long enough.

And then it's on me. Is this kind of what rape is like? To have your most private possession -- your functioning, reasoning mind -- ripped away from you, without even knowing the nature of your attacker? Is that fear, just to not understand?