A: (simultaneous buzzing)
K: Usually it starts with the buzzing
faint at first
a hollow friction organ grinding inside my eardrum
electric like TV static
until it dances its way to a sound only the devil is capable of making
A: Imagine your body being melted
metal bent twisted till your fingers burn glowing
you try to scream but your jaw bones been broken
and you’d run but your arms are nailed to your bedpost crucifix
by something you can only describe as ungodly
something you can’t see or smell but know its hunched over your half sleeping body
as it tries to drag you rag dolled back to hell with it
B: Sleep paralysis- a condition where after a period of sleeping, the conscious person is unable to move upon waking up
A: But it’s so much more than that
K: I don’t blame my mother for not understanding
who wouldn’t try to rationalize the possession of their daughter?
A: Take it easy on the caffeine before bed
and try to lay off the sugar
K: But nothing in this natural world can make it go away
A: A nightlight will keep things from taking shape in your mind
K: The darkness isn’t even what scares me anymore
A: Night terrors are common in children
K: I’d be happier with a night terror
A: It’s nothing [sternly]
K: If nothing is the pressure of evil weighing dense on your chest
till you’ve sunken through your mattress down to hell
as you desperately try to cling on to your bedpost
but your ancient limbs are arthritis ridden
like porcelain joints
that even if you could move them
would snap
Then yeah, it’s nothing
B: There are things that go bump in the night across state lines
A: Different demon
K: Same intention
A: Kurdish people speak of the Mottaka
an evil spirit that lies on top of its victim in the middle of the night and suffocates it as a result of committing sin
K: In New Guinea, people refer to this phenomenon as "Suk Ninmyo", believed to originate from sacred trees that use human essence to sustain its life. The trees are said to feed on human essence during night as to not disturb the human's daily life, but sometimes people wake unnaturally during the feeding, resulting in the paralysis.
A: En
K: In St. Lucia the kokoma will take you
B: These shape-shifting figures have hand picked their victims
and we can do nothing to stop it but sleep
K: It’s all in your head they say
B: Just a post synaptic inhibition of motor neurons in the pons regions in the brain
K: Yet I swear
the sulphur still lingers
A: I’ve been to the ninth circle and felt my wings freeze
K: Dante ain’t got shit on me
A: I can’t say I’m sure what to believe in anymore
too many times I’ve tightrope walked the line between rationalization and madness
and wake to find myself straight jacketed in silent repose
undulating in pools of my own insanity
as the incubus perches himself a vulture on my chest
and tells me he is everything but the dream I wish for him to be
K: Not everything reduces itself to prime numbers
can’t condense my quench for an explanation
Cause no matter how hard I squeeze The Holy Bible to my chest, with a dream catcher in my palm
It
Doesn’t
Help
all I can do is clutch onto reality with half closed eyelids like a lunar eclipse
as I accept the grey vulnerability I expose when I slumber
B: There are things that haunt us in their translucence
K: Things that cling to our skin like shadows when we sleep
A: And have trouble letting go by morning
but I’ve learned to let the blackness overtake me
K: Strip me of a half waking reality like a heat wave
A: Swallow me whole like Jonas
as I float in the whale belly of night
K: Drown me in a liquid darkness suffocating with death riding on my breast
A: Because the friend of the devil is a friend of mine
B: Take my hand child (hold hands)
trust in the matter of my flesh
for there be nothing to fear but…
(let go of hands)
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