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Deafening silence.
The world could have been at war, the sky could have collapsed, thunder could have stroke but Lorelei Cliff could only focus on one thing and one thing only: deafening silence.
The first wave hit before she could open her eyes.
Limbs frozen, body imprisoned in her own bed, she tried to move. She was dreaming, she had to be, but she couldn't shake herself awake. She could feel her mouth open, trying to scream for help, pleading, but there was silence. She could feel her breath come out in noiseless pants, her chest heaving with each release puffs of air, but still, not a sound.
It was so quiet that it had been deafening.
Sweat built on her forehead, dripping down the sides of her face. Her grey eyes have yet to open, and for a moment she wondered whether she had been paralyzed. Certainly there was a medical explanation for what she'd been gong through, right? Just as she started to hear a buzz building up, she jolted awake.
Lorelei sat against her dark wood headboard, hugging her tights-covered knees to her chest and resting her damp and clammy forehead against them. Panting softly, she chanced a look at her bedside table, the digital clock displaying what she had predicted all along.
4:17 am.
The green digits glared at her, bright against the stark darkness of the room save for the moonlight seeping through her blinds. The streets below were quiet and relaxed as opposed to the busy noise that welcomed her every morning when she goes for a run and get coffee. She could imagine the empty highway and the occasional car that would drive swiftly by. She could picture the few 24-hour fast food chains and convenience stores, no doubt filled with drunks trying to be sober and the usual nocturnal souls that littered them. Lorelei looked at the clock again just to make sure.
4:17 am still.
It has been happening for three straight weeks now. Every night she would be paralyzed in bed, unable to move, feeling as though something was sucking the life out of her body slowly, taking her breath and draining her soul but she could not move. It didn't feel like restrains on her or handcuffs on her wrists and ankles. It felt more like her body wasn't listening to her brain signaling for it to move, to wake up. And when she did wake up, she did so gasping. Then like clockwork, the time would be 4:17 am.
Lorelei was not stupid. She knew that undergoing sleep paralysis every night was not normal. She had been a med student before she dropped out sophomore year, after all. She knew that it wasn't just fatigue or overconsumption of food like the youtube videos she spent hours watching were saying. Something was very wrong.
She also knew, from years of having to listen to her mother tell the story of 'one of the hardest things a woman could go through' aka childbirth, that she had been born on the 28th of June at precisely 4:17 am.
Shaking off her thoughts, Lorelei clambered out of her bed, kicking off the layers upon layers of comforter and duvet and extra blankets that kept her warm all evening. She might as well do something productive now that she's awake.
She pulled her newly dyed jet black hair into a tight, high ponytail before changing into her running gear. She spent approximately six minutes trying to locate her white earphones (they were in the hamper) before exiting her apartment.
It's going to be a long day, she thought to herself before dread filled her system at the thought of sleeping and being paralyzed again later on. And an even longer night.
