The Demon on My Chest
Night after night, sleep folds over me like a heavy blanket of iron. The room grows colder, the air thinner, and the clock on the wall crawls backward just enough to make time feel sleepless. Then the weight arrives—an invisible hand pressing down on my sternum, pinning me to the mattress as if the night itself is sitting on my chest. I open my mouth to call for help and find no room for air, only the steady, merciless rhythm of a demon’s breath in the dark.
The first times, I blamed a nightmare, a trick of tired eyes and the fear I carried from dreams into waking hours. But the demon never leaves with the morning light. He returns with the second heartbeat of dusk, taller than shadows, wearing a suit of silence and a smile that never reaches his eyes. He sits there, not beside me but upon me, as if I owed him a debt I forgot to pay in my sleep. The room becomes a stage and I, a frightened spectator, watch the ceiling rearrange itself into a map of old memories I did not understand at the time.
“Tell me a truth, and you may breathe again,” the voice whispers, not spoken aloud but pressed into the air like frost on a window. The words do not come from anywhere and everywhere at once, a sound that sounds like you and yet not you.”
In childhood, the visits were shorter, the hourglass of sleep never quite emptied. My parents slept through the night, unaware that a pale, patient figure perched on the edge of my dreams. He kept count of every frightened breath I failed to release, and when morning finally pressed through the curtains, he stored those memories away like coins in a jar labeled with a name I could never pronounce. It wasn’t until I learned to listen that I understood why he stayed: the demon was cataloging a life I had yet to live aloud, saving the chapters I was too afraid to tell.
- Weight that makes the chest feel like an anvil and the lungs like folded wings
- Whispers curling around the bones of the room, shaping shadows into familiar faces
- A breath that tastes of rust and rain, a cold draft that travels down the spine
- A steady, patient gaze that never blinks, even as the world dims to a single point of fear
The moment of release never arrives with a shout or a scream. It arrives as a choice: stay and narrate the terror, or surrender the narration and pretend the night is merely an old blanket you’ve grown too weary to throw off. Tonight, I decide to answer the demon with a story of my own, a truth I have never spoken aloud. The words spill, unevenly at first, then with a growing rhythm that matches his measured breath.
As the tale unfolds, the demon’s grip loosens, not in surrender but in recognition. He shifts from observer to a kind of accuser who becomes a reluctant audience. When the final sentence lands in the quiet between heartbeats, the pressure eases just enough to let a single, fragile exhale escape. The room remains dark, but it is not the same darkness; it is aware, listening, perhaps even grateful for a story that finally belongs to the night as much as it does to the waking world. The demon does not vanish; he redefines himself—no longer a creature of conquest, but a curator of memory, a keeper of the stories we insist on locking away until we are forced to tell them to the darkness itself.