sci fi kid

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• August 21, 2016

Oh boy! A sleep paralysis episode!  It’s been months.

I’ve been doing this sleep paralysis bit (to be honest, it’s been hit or miss, it’s a work in progress) and now I have had so many people telling me their sleep paralysis stories, which is equal parts cool and terrifying, just like sleep paralysis.

In case you haven’t seen me do stand-up in a while (and what are you waiting for?) or haven’t read my blog (c’mon, my blog is more interesting and definitely more honest than the election), sleep paralysis is this half asleep state, where you think you’re fully awake, and can’t move your body, and start hallucinating things happening around the room.  I predict that most ghost sightings and alien abduction experiences are actually sleep paralysis episodes, because they seem so goddamn real.

I’m going to start off with the dream I had the night before.  Which went something like this:

We were in a post-apocalyptic United States, which, I was under the impression was due to a third World War against China (though I had not seen any Chinese people in this dream).  The “fort” I was bunkered in was a Queens-like neighborhood, with boarded windows.  Everything had gone to shit.  I was with a guy I know, and we started having sex, because apparently the end of the world turns me on.  What could have been a good sex dream was interrupted by someone coming.  Naked and vulnerable, we reached for our weapons (bludgeoning objects), and that’s when my Uncle came through the door.  He immediately saw what was going on, and yelled at me for fooling around in such dire times.  And I got pissed off, and left.

Outside, there were fences, everywhere.  Like an elaborate labyrinth, to confuse our enemy, I suppose.  So I started going through, and then, I saw my old neighbor, and childhood friend, Kyle, running away.  I yelled for him, and he yelled back, “run!” I turned, and ran, hopping fences, trying to get away.  But I wasn’t sure what we were running from, and I turned, and there was a mob of kids, maybe 12-15 years old.  They looked normal, but their actions were zombie like.  One girl was faster than the others and she was closing in on me.  I just stood there.  They didn’t look dangerous.  They weren’t foaming at the mouth, they didn’t even have weapons, for christsake.  So I stood there. Until this girl closed in on me, and I panicked, and then I kicked her in the chest, and ran into a building.

I’d lost Kyle.  And now I was running through these narrow halls, trying to find a way out.  I reached a dead end.  There was a broken bar, and broken bar stools.  I armed myself with a piece of wood, and then the kids starting running in, and one by one, I beat the shit out of them.  I felt guilty doing it.  But they kept coming.

So… that was that dream.

The following night was the sleep paralysis episode.  It started off as a normal dream, where I was at the beach with, once again, Kyle, and his brother Wesley, and Wesley’s girlfriend.  We had plans to go surfing (as we often do in real life).  There was an issue with the boards.  One of the boards were missing or broken, I’m not really sure.  It’s hard to remember.

Then, I’m in my apartment, in my bed, “awake.”  And there’s a horrible noise coming from the opposite end of my apartment near my kitchenette.  This horrible noise was none other than my AC window unit, but it sounded like it was talking to me.  It was talking to me.  I honestly do not remember what it was saying, but the voice was deep, and muffled, almost Darth Vader like.  It then occurred to me there was someone in my bathroom.  Not someone, something.  My bathroom door was open a crack, and I could only catch a glimpse of some tall, un-Earthly creature, standing there, telling me something, that I can’t remember, but it was making me upset.

There was a little part of my brain that recognized what this was.  “It’s sleep paralysis, Lori. Remember, this happens to you.”  I was ignoring this, I think, impart, because I wanted it to be real.  Even though I couldn’t get up, my arms were moving about, and I was challenging the creature to leave my bathroom and show itself.  I wanted to see it.  I felt as though my arms had been moving freely, but then I saw they were at my side.  I had ghost arms.

It’s really hard to explain this, because it’s so surreal, but I’ll try.  Let’s say, this is a Science Fiction movie.  In the world of Sci-Fi, other dimensions aren’t theory, they’re fact, and they can be contacted.  Right?  In this Sci-Fi story, there’s a lens.  A lens, that if you look through, you can see parts of other dimensions.  It was as if through one eye, I saw the reality, and through the other, I saw this creature, and my arms moving.  But I saw these realities on top of each other, simultaneously, as if you put a screen over the other, and were able to see both.  Does that make any sense?  It shouldn’t.  It really shouldn’t.

Anyway, I’m able to see what is AND what isn’t.  And the creature is talking to me, and upsetting me, and I’m thinking, I have to get up.  I hear Kyle, Wesley, and Wesley’s girlfriend talking to me as well, but I can’t see them.  They’re not here.  I try to move  my body, but as if I’d just completely 500 sit ups, my torso felt weak.  I tried again.  Failed.  Shortly after this, I woke up, knowing full well that I just got out of a sleep paralysis episode.  Despite having slept for seven hours (which is a long nights sleep for me), I was totally exhausted, and trying to remember what the creature was saying.  For the life of me, I couldn’t.  I remember having a back and forth conversation but whatever it was about completely vanished when I woke.  For fucks sake.  It bothered me I couldn’t remember; for one, because I’m good at remembering my dreams, but mostly because I was scared.  I really only remember feeling really scared.  It’s what you feel that lingers in the quiet hours of the morning.

Sleep paralysis is your brain being an asshole.  I’m also an asshole, so we work well together.  And even though it terrifies me, it turns a gear in my head, and for several days, I’m fantasizing Sci-Fi stories, and Stranger Things spin offs, and then, later that day, I’m doing a gig, literally, in the middle of farmland New Jersey, where there’s nothing in town except the venue, a creepy gas station, a Wendy’s and a military base.  Plus, it’s a full moon.  It’s just the perfect setting for a Sci-Fi story.  Like a kid, my head is reeling, in a creative, magical way.