A Stranger Keeps Visiting Me At Night

When I was young, I used to dream about a man I could swear I’d never met.
I made drawings of his face, but they never matched my dreams.
As I grew up, I started to get used to him.
He kept appearing in my dreams from time to time, but I stopped paying attention to it.

Until a couple of months ago, when everything changed!
I had moved back with my parents to the town I was born in.
And after a while, he started visiting my dreams again, all the time!
I would never get rid of this stalker. He was inside my head.

When I talked to my mom about it, she told me not to pay attention to it. If he was only in my dreams, then he wouldn’t harm me.

The other day, I was coming out of school and I felt that someone was staring at me.
I looked instinctively and saw him on the other side of the parking lot.
I got goosebumps.
I turned around to tell my friend, but when I looked again, he was gone.
Was I going crazy?
We went to the mall and I saw him behind every column and inside every shop.
But when I looked closely, he disappeared.
My friend got really worried about me too. She couldn’t see him.
I was definitely going crazy.

That night, the real nightmare began.
I went to bed knowing that I would dream about him.
But I wasn't ready for what was actually waiting for me.
I was in an open square and I was completely alone.
I looked around and saw him approaching.
But, when I tried to move, nothing happened.
This was new.
I was stuck in my place, frozen like a statue, as he started to walk towards me.
I could feel a tickling in my arms and my legs as I tried to turn around and get the hell out of there.
But I couldn’t move a muscle, I don’t know why.
I was paralyzed.
The man got closer and closer and I could feel my heart racing.
He didn’t look mad or dangerous, but he didn’t look kind either.
His face had no expression.
As he got really close, he stretched his arm to touch me.
I tried to scream but my voice was gone too.
A second before he touched me, I got up screaming and sweating.
My parents got into my room and hugged me.
‘Are you alright?’, my mom asked.
‘I couldn’t move… I couldn’t move…’, was all I could say.

The next day, my dad drove me to school.
I struggled to get out of the car.
I was trembling, looking everywhere around, terrified that I might see the monster in my dreams.
My dad saw my tears coming down and sighed.
We went back home.
My mom asked what happened as she saw us, and dad said that this was not ok, that something was very wrong.
I was already drenched in sweat and I hadn’t seen the man once yet that day.

We went to the doctor.
I knew what kind of doctor it was.
A shrink, the one for the crazy people.
But I didn’t mind.
I was ready to accept I was crazy as long as he freed me from my nightmare.
I wasn’t as concerned about the man as I was of the fact that I couldn’t move.
I was used to seeing the man, but this was new and it scared me to death.
After he heard the story, he simply shot me with the news:
Sleep paralysis.
What?!
But he told me not to worry. It had a solution.