7
7
F lora has just fallen asleep when a crushing, deafening noise fills her ears. Like metal gears screeching and clashing. She tries to stand and investigate, but she cannot move.
And then it hits her.
it's happening again
Her body is deadweight. Her legs, arms, torso, head—all of them frozen in place, stiff like rigor mortis. Only her eyeballs can dart around in their sockets.
Sleep paralysis.
She hasn't experienced this since she was a child. She figured she had outgrown it long ago. But as the familiar feeling sinks in, fear snakes itself around her limbs like living ropes. Flora tries to use her rational, adult brain to will away the terror.
this is just a nightmare just your brain playing tricks
But the fear lives in her body, which is now rigid with memory as the paralysis attack follows the same pattern it always did when she was little. Her arms are tight against her sides, as if she is wrapped in a cocoon, her chest tightening. She feels the warm trickle of a tear down her cheek.
And then comes the peak: a heavy weight she has long thought of as the Night Hag, who sits on her chest and stomach, crushing her organs until she knows the insides of her body will soon be on the outside.
Flora can't help but picture the scene: her flesh and guts and torn skin exploded all over the room, like an overfilled balloon that finally burst. Even the smaller parts of her, the fingers and teeth and eyeballs, strewn about like forgotten candy from a broken pi?ata. And her baby, helpless and alone, crying, smelling the coppery fresh blood of her mother mixed with splashes of breast milk that erupted from Flora's exploding ducts.
WHOOSH! Now, just like when she was little, the sound of running water deafens the world around her—louder and louder—as if the sound itself could fill and sabotage her lungs—until finally: the release.
As quickly as the paralysis came on, it recedes.
Breath escapes Flora's lips, and her entire body buzzes as blood returns to circulation, the weight lifting, the chest un-squeezing. Her head is light with the dizzying speed at which all of this just happened.
She brings her fingertips to her face, touching her warm skin and wiping away the sweat that has accumulated on her hairline. Her fingers trace the shapes of her profile, confirming that her body is still whole, half expecting to feel slimy muscles and tendons there, as if she has been turned inside out.
Now wide awake, Flora feels suddenly persuaded toward productivity. Plus, she needs to get out of that bed, out of that room.
She slinks quietly through the hallway and down the stairs, like an intruder in her own home. The house is so quiet, it seems that even the furniture itself is sleeping. The floor complains with every step, and Flora feels strangely unwelcome down here.
She decides to organize the pile of toys on the armchair. As she begins, she considers what just happened. Why, after all these years, has her sleep paralysis returned? Why is the Night Hag back? It's like she spent a lifetime believing in the boogeyman, only to finally outgrow that belief and now be told as an adult that she had been right all along. And what's more—that boogeyman is back. Here. In her house.
Flora shivers.
She focuses on the toys, packaged in fortresses of plastic and cardboard and zip ties. The waste of it all is depressing, but Flora must admit that gathering the refuse and collecting it in a trash bag is oddly satisfying. She feels quite accomplished.
She arranges the toys into piles: things Iris might use soon, things worth sticking in a closet until she's a few months older. Suddenly, her bubble of awareness expands as the dark around her is lit up like a rave, flashes of colored lights assaulting her unadjusted eyes.
"IT'S A BARNYARD SINGALONG!"
Flora's heart rips through her chest. She must have bumped one of the large buttons on the activity cube. She didn't realize it even had batteries; Esther must have put them in while she was here.
shut up shut up shut up
Though she knows Iris is far enough away and buffered by the blasting sound machine, Flora's brain is still wired to maintain quiet in the house. She scrambles for the off button but can't find it. Instead, she plunges toward the nearby coat closet under the stairs and tosses the singing cube into its dark depths. The lights and music continue, unfazed, but their effects are muted by the thick puffer jackets around them. She closes the door and abandons the toy.
Any hopes she might have had of returning to sleep are now dashed. Her heart is racing like she's had three cups of coffee. She returns to the toys—the mercifully silent ones—and finishes her organizing.
Flora holds a wooden abacus, feeling its edges and weight, which are surprisingly familiar. Then she realizes: they had this same abacus in the lobby at the office. A tug of nostalgia takes hold. She doesn't miss that job, but part of her does miss the kids.
After getting her master's in genetic counseling, Flora decided to work in pediatrics, consulting with parents of sick infants and children to recommend genetic tests and interpret the results for the families. But Flora grew to dread the job as her main role quickly became Deliverer of Bad News. She spent hours on the phone with grieving parents, often acting as their therapist. Telling a parent that his child has a lethal diagnosis and probably won't live beyond the age of seventeen—well, does that ever get any easier?
It was Connor who was the first to point out how unhappy it made her. "It's wearing on you," he said.
"Okay, sure, but how must those families feel? Their children are dying. Me being uncomfortable seems irrelevant in comparison."
"Does it?" he asked. "Why?"
Flora didn't have an answer. As was his point, she realized that her suffering didn't lessen the families' suffering. And by convincing herself that it did, that it somehow paid some moral price, she was putting herself on a pedestal that she hadn't earned. And it was coming at a cost—one that seemed to be unique to Flora. Her coworkers could perform the job without holding their hands below the table to hide their shaking. They did not run to the bathroom post-meeting to vomit into the toilet. And they did not lie awake at night envisioning with imaginative detail their patients' next few years of grief.
She called her mom soon after putting in her notice.
"I'm just disappointed," her mother said. "For you, " she added as an afterthought. "Since, you know, you spent so much money and so much time."
"I know, but I'm not happy," Flora said.
"Okay, Flora," Jodi replied tiredly. And somehow, hearing those two words, Flora felt as though she had broken her mother.
Flora's father had always been the translator between the two key women in his life, softening Jodi's words in midair as they made their way to Flora. He was the joint that connected two immovable bones. But when her parents divorced just after Flora's high school graduation, her relationship with her mom became even more fraught. Suddenly, they had no referee, and no holds were barred.
"Was this Connor's idea? Leaving the job?" Jodi asked.
Flora felt a screw loosen within her. Her mother saw her as weak. She believed Flora needed someone else—a man, no less—to tell her how she felt. "Mom, what ?"
"It's just not like you. You're usually so indecisive."
Flora snorted. "Okay, and for once I'm putting my foot down. Maybe we could see that as progress." But as soon as the words were out, Flora knew they were all wrong. She was suddenly a child again, so small. "I mean, not putting my foot down per se, just… looking out for myself. You know?"
"It's so uncharacteristic of you to give up; that's all I'm saying."
Flora lay awake that night scrambling her mother's words on the ceiling. Was her mom right? Was Flora giving up?
When she asked Connor the next morning, he took a bite of his everything bagel with a thick layer of cream cheese and chewed slowly. So slowly, in fact, that it became obvious he was holding something back.
"What is it?" Flora asked.
He held up his hands in surrender. "I'm not saying anything."
Flora's relationship with her mother was a typical point of contention between them. Even though she usually agreed with Connor, she often felt that primal need to defend her mom and make excuses for her. Even at Flora's own expense.
"Tell me," Flora said. When he again shook his head, she added, "You're not saying anything, but you obviously have something to say."
"Sometimes," he started, "I worry she doesn't…" He paused, choosing his words deliberately. "You're such a bright light, Flora. And when she's around, or whenever you talk to her, that bright light dims."
This time, she didn't argue with him. She chewed on his words, tasting them for days. It wasn't just that she knew he was right. It was that his sentiment birthed a new worry within her. If she continued to enable this dynamic with her mother, at some point her light wouldn't just be dimmed; it would be altogether extinguished.