Old Hag:

Around the later stage of puberty, there would be odd occasions whereby sleep would be rudely interrupted. Rather than entering into a full state of consciousness/wakefulness; there would occur a state of somatic arrestment/ bodily paralysis. Only the eyes were left free to move. An overwhelming fear would quickly ensue, not merely because of the shock at the paralysis but rather the sense of another presence not visible to the eyes.

 This presence was unmistakably sinister (perhaps left handed?). The soma motors were defunct but every nerve ending was alive with an acute sensitivity to its surroundings, a kind of body thinking. Although the eyes saw nothing out of place, the aural senses detected sounds which, if isolated could be quite easily normalised in the every day. But in the night drenched bedroom the familiarity was reduced to a cognitive map and difficult to make concrete, even so; within the remaining abstract familiarity, these sounds did not belong. Becoming as fear inducing as the invisible presence…

The sound of ticking where the led lights of the digital alarm clock attested to the contrary (for some reason the ticking clock registered as a cuckoo clock even though it never made the cuckoo sound). A motor bike repeatedly revved past the window where no lights swept through the curtains, this registered as someone attempting to attract attention; familiar yet unidentifiable …

 The invisible other was, by this point, weighing down upon the sternum, hands around throat, as though to strangle but never actually applying pressure. Every follicle springing hairs to attention, like chicken skin