The Demon on My Chest
Some nights arrive with a stillness so deep it feels like a held breath inside the skull. I lie on my back and listen to the ceiling—no rain, no fan, just a pale square of moonlight that measures out the minutes like coins in a jar. Sleep lowers its drawbridge, and I slip through, not gently, but as a thief in a quiet hall. My limbs surrender first, then my thoughts follow, a slow surrender that makes time feel soft and wrong. Then the room tilts, not with gravity, but with a raw, ancient pressure pressing down on my chest. The weight is not just heavy; it is aware. It sits, it studies. It smiles without mouth. It is the Demon on My Chest, and it has learned my name and every rumor I told myself to sleep.
From the corner the shadow steps forward; not walked, but summoned. It is tall where doors end, ribs visible beneath a cloak of black velvet that seems to drink the breath from the room. Two eyes glow like coals in a grate, not red, not orange, just a slow, patient coal-warm gleam. Its hands hover over my sternum, as if testing the bridge between life and sleep. The demon does not strike; it observes. It leans in, and the starlight on the window frame becomes a lattice of bars locking me in place. I am a captive in a room that has learned my whispered childhood fears and keeps them as talismans around the bed.
“I am not here to frighten you into waking,” it whispers, a voice without mouth, a rustle of old pages. “I am here to remind you of what you forgot when you learned to breathe without thinking.”
The moments stretch, thick as syrup, and I search for a way to move, to push against the cruel gravity that pins me down. A list of small rebellions flits through my mind: flex a toe, clamp a fist, bite the inside of the cheek until the memory of pain becomes a guiding thread. The demon watches, and for a breath, it seems willing to bargain. I recall a grandmother’s lullaby, a tune I swore I’d forgotten, and I hum it inwardly, as if the notes could travel through skull and bone and unlock the iron door of the chest.
- The room grows colder, as if winter had crawled inside the walls and left a frost-lined footprint on my ribs.
- The air becomes still enough that even a whisper would sound like a scream from a distance.
- Time loosens and tightens, a carousel of seconds that doesn’t know whether to stop or spin faster.
- The demon’s gaze lingers, not with malice but with a patient insistence, as if waiting for a password I forgot to memorize.
Slowly, with each deliberate breath, the pressure loosens. The room brightens from the outside in, the way a lamp wakes with intention rather than fear. The demon tilts its head, no longer looming but almost respectful, and then dissolves into a chilly sigh that travels along my skin and leaves a fleeting scuff of sensation like frost on a window. Dawn slips through the blinds, and the weight evaporates into daylight. I rise, steadier than before, carrying with me the tremor of what happened and a stubborn truth: some memories, and some fears, arrive wearing a shadow and depart wearing nothing but truth.
On mornings after, the chest feels lighter, but the night remains a secret corridor behind the ribcage—a place I visit in whispers and careful steps. The Demon on My Chest returns whenever the weather turns, when sleep thickens and the house exhales like a sleeping giant. I’ve learned to greet it not with panic but with a nod and a memory brewed into song, a warning and a mercy all at once.