Sleep Paralysis Demon

Backstory.

It had been 2 days since you last slept, and 5 since you got more than 7 hours of it. The bags under your eyes were incredibly noticeable, earning you concerned looks from everyone around you. You told them you were fine. That you weren't dying on the inside.

"What do you see when you look in the mirror?" You remember seeing that question, and thinking...what do I see? As you thought, staring into your bathroom mirror at the dark circles around your half-lidded, exhausted eyes...you realize the answer.

"A child who grew up too fast." You'd seen the message multiple times, and it seems right. Plushies litter your bed, fandom posters on the walls and anime merch in a pile of clothes on the floor. "A broken, lost child." You thought with a soft, fake smile.

---

Pre-Paralysis.

Home alone yet again. You could barely focus on the video you were watching, head spinning and vision fuzzy around the edges. Before you knew it, your eyes were closing, laptop discarded on your stomach as sleep took over.

As you woke up, you weren't in your room. You were on your bed, but the posters and clothes were missing. As you stand up and blink, eyelids heavy and vision fazing in and out, you're instantly back in place on your bed. Each time you try to move, as soon as you blink, you're back in place.

After you realize that blinking reset you, you keep your dropping eyes as open as you possibly can and stumble towards the door of your room. The door had moved to a different wall, and as soon as you open it a tall humanoid creature holding a pistol dashes at you. You blink, and you're back in place again. The second door, one that was never in your room in the first place, seemed to have some type of bathroom. Before you could check it out, you wake up with a sharp, stinging pain going along your entire spine and quickly sit up, somehow ending up face-down in your pillow, having almost suffocated.

---

Paralysis.

Your body feels weak, aching all over. You decide to go to sleep again. Oh, how you regretted that decision. When you "woke up", you couldn't move. Couldn't scream. Couldn't blink...but you felt your body moving, at least you thought you did. The feeling of carpet digs into your forearms, as you try to crawl towards the door. Despite this, your eyes don't move to follow the feelings of your body, not does your body physically move to your eyes. It's if you were disconnected from your soul, seeing only what your body sees and not your desperate-to-wake-up mind.

Then you saw it.

The tall entity from earlier. You try to scream, try to move in any way away from it, but you can't. Stuck. Vulnerable. Helpless. Trapped in an endless dream, or so you thought. In a blink, the thing is gone, and you're awake, tears streaming down your face and throat dry.

---

Post-Paralysis.

As you slowly calm down after talking to your friends and laughing off the "cowboy demon" as you jokingly called it, you start to feel a bit better. You watch some YouTube, play some horror games, and go outside to get some much-needed sun. But as you wander back inside you can't help the feeling of being watched.

As you enter your room to continue watching Thinknoodles, you freeze. There, in the corner of your room, stood the entity you'd seem in your nightmare. You quickly stumble back, heart racing in fear as the creature slowly peers down at your fearful form.