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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/northerndreamer1 on 2024-11-05 00:40:51+00:00.

It all started when I woke up in the middle of the night and found a strange, suffocating weight on my chest, like someone was sitting on me. I could make out an outline of someone’s figure above me, their back outlined by the orange light from the street lamps seeping through the window.

I tried to scream for help, or turn my head to look at my husband, but I couldn’t move. I didn’t regain control of my body until after the weight had lifted, and I heard a deep, male grunt, from a man pulling himself off me. I heard his footsteps too. I saw his silhouette leave through the door.

And it was only hours later of laying in that same position that I felt I could move again. It started with a pinpricking sensation through my toes and fingers, then spread through my entire body – like the feeling you get when your leg falls asleep and you have to wake it back up. 

I immediately went to my husband and shook him awake. He was distraught and confused, asking me to slow down, to tell him what happened. He was so scared by my hysterics he was moved to tears. Even still, he didn’t believe me. He said he was right next to me, he’d have woken up if someone came inside our room. He assured me it was all a dream and rubbed my back to soothe me until I could fall back asleep. 

But a week later, the same paralysis came for me. It was after an argument with my husband over finances. The same terror, the same feeling of someone sitting on my chest, then getting up and leaving the room. This time, I saw something in their hand. A knife? I couldn’t know. It was far too dark. My husband again told me it was just a bad dream, that I couldn’t afford to keep stressing myself out so much over money. 

 Ever since I lost my job, we’ve been struggling to make rent. My husband keeps telling me he’ll take care of it, he’ll take care of us. I think that’s some weird masculine bullshit from his time - (he’s 43, I’m 26).

 That’s the other problem with all this: I’m pregnant. Five months around this time. The financial strain had been weighing on my psyche and causing me so much stress that I’d resorted to my own means of making money for us (since I couldn’t seem to find another real job). 

 I’d been participating in paid clinical trials in order to make ends meet for us. My husband never asked where the extra money was coming from, he had no idea. He’s always been so protective over me, he would’ve died knowing I was “selling my body” to “big pharma.” It was a clinical drug trial for preeclampsia, and all they did was give me a small pill, take my blood and my vitals, and send me on my way once a week. 

 Maybe the pills were causing these sleep paralysis episodes. I wasn’t sure. But I could never confide in my husband about it. 

 Anyway, a week ago I went over to my neighbor’s house with my husband for a little Halloween party. My neighbors Sara (40f) and Tom (40m) are both so, so sweet. They left baked goods on our porch every Saturday since I announced my pregnancy. Sara checked in on me almost daily, texting me asking me how I am, how I’m feeling, if I’m having any morning sickness. 

Their kindness makes this whole thing all the stranger. 

At the Halloween party, I asked Sara for a soda. Everyone else was having beer, but, you know. She told me they have some in her outside fridge – down the stairs in the unfinished basement / garage. So I headed away from the party, fumbled for the string light and made my way down the creaky wooden steps to the basement. The floor was concrete and cold on my bare feet, so I tiptoed past Tom’s latest mechanical mess to the kitchenette and old, rusted white fridge in the far corner.  

The first thing I noticed here was a red splatter of what looked to be blood on the inside of the washbasin. There were power tools and saws and such down here, as the basement is also Tom’s workshop. He could’ve cut his finger, washed his hands and not the sink?

I shrugged it off and opened the fridge. I was immediately hit with a strange whiff of iron as I swung the door open. There were at least a three dozen milk cartons coating the shelves inside, with two Sprites in the fridge door. 

I don’t know what compelled me then to reach for the milk. Maybe I was really thirsty for it. Some pregnancy craving. Maybe I knew something was wrong, I had some intuition about it. But I grabbed a carton. It was heavy, and the liquid inside didn’t slosh the way I expected it to. It sounds strange, like something you wouldn’t be able to notice, but I did. I placed it down on the single countertop of the kitchenette, found a glass in the top shelf of the cabinet above, unscrewed the cap of the milk carton and began to pour. What came out wasn’t milk. It was red. 

It was blood. 

I vomited in the sink. Tom must have heard me, or knew I was digging where I shouldn’t have been. He came down and held back my hair while I emptied my stomach, whispering calm words like easing a brood mare. He called down my husband, who took me back upstairs. He threw my coat over my shoulders and talked quietly with Tom and Sara by the door. She’ll be fine. Just scared is all. No worries. Thank you, yes. 

I stood there with nothing to say, eyes wide, unsure of what to make of it all. My first ridiculous thought was that Tom and Sara were vampires. It wasn’t till we were walking back across the street to our house that I was able to ask Tom, “What was that?” Tom looked at me strangely, his brow furrowed. 

“Why were you poking around where you shouldn’t be?” 

 “Are you serious? They had blood in their milk cartons!” Tom sighed, pulled away from me. He was obviously frustrated.

“They own a farm, Liv.” 

“Okay?”  

“You don’t know how slaughtering an animal works, do you?” He was so so angry, I could see his hands bunched into fists, shaking slightly. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“They drain the pigs of blood after slaughter.” I chewed on this, shaking my head, both of us standing at odds with each other in the middle of the road. 

“So? Are you trying to tell me they’ve filled milk cartons with pig’s blood?” 

“Yes.” 

“Why the hell would they do that?”  

“Because it’s a thickening agent, high in protein. It’s used in a wide variety of dishes. You’ve probably eaten it before and haven’t even known it.” I stared at my husband indignantly, feeling shame rising up in me. The last thing I wanted to do was apologize. But here I was, saying sorry in the middle of the street, just to get us back inside the house.  

My sleep paralysis stopped for a few months after. At my seventh month of pregnancy, it started again. Once a week, usually Sunday nights. I would take my prenatal vitamins before bed, and wake up around midnight to find it almost impossible to breathe. At this point, I was no longer sleeping on my back. I was sleeping on my side. Still, the sleep paralysis demon, or, “man,” would straddle my shoulders, his back rising above me like a mountain so I couldn’t see anything but the bottom of his feet. Bare. Black soles. Long toenails that scrapped against the sheets. Dirtied jeans. 

Sure enough, it should’ve been a dream. But one night I woke, crying once again, and after I settled, I found dirt rubbed off on the white pillowcase by my head. A deep red stain on the bed. That same morning in the shower, I checked myself for any hints of damage. When I was paralyzed like that, I couldn’t feel a damn thing except the relentless weight on top of me, the inability to fully breathe. 

The only injuries on me were the bruises on the inside of my elbows on both sides, right where I had weekly blood draws at the clinical trial. The clinical trial my husband still didn’t know about. Though he should’ve seen the discoloration on my arms when we had sex, which now, was more and more frequent. 

Leading up to my birth, my husband’s behavior toward me became even stranger. He worried incessantly over me, taking me to sleep trials which revealed no abnormalities, arguing with doctors that something was wrong. Describing my dizziness, my fatigue, the bruising on my arms (the first time I realized he’d noticed). The doctors said this was all normal for someone during pregnancy, especially nearing the end.

I remember at the end of my seventh month of pregnancy, I again had a bout of sleep paralysis.

This time, during it, I swear I could hear my husband crying softly. It was hard to make out over the grunts and heavy breathing above me. I asked him over breakfast what he’d been crying about. He was very, very quiet, and told me only that he had a bad dream that I was being hurt.  

Maybe, at the time, I thought my paranoia a problem. Either way I obeyed it. I no longer trusted my husband. Nor did I trust my neighbors, even my own parents. I stopped eating any food anyone made for me, and cooked only for myself. I lost weight, became even paler and weaker than before. I stopped attending the clinical trials, and my husband came home with more money, having recently gotten a promotion I didn’t believe, as he clocked out of work hours early every day to come check up on me. 

Except, strangest of all, my sleep paralysis stopped completely. Instead I slept dreamless, and it was nearly impossible to wake me. I slept for twelve, thirteen hours at a time without waking up once.

One morning, in the shower, weeks after I’d stopped attending the clinical trials and getting regular blood draws, I found strange bruising over my inner …

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