Hi. I've complained about this particular subject a fair amount, haven't I?

Ah. I have. Well then, might as well keep up the tradition...

I'm starting to think I shouldn't have mentioned my worst SP episode in the previous entry. It seems my subconscious is determined to better itself, as I recently underwent a string of even more vivid episodes. Had my first real hypnagogic hallucinations, too. Yahoo.

Bloody disconerting. Broad daylight, too, and Roommate #2 was in the room with me. Either physically or subconsciously (I'm betting on the latter), I finally managed to move my tongue enough to call for my RA, whose name is easier to pronounce. Except it came out in a wheezy whisper, if it even came out at all. Roommate #2 didn't notice a thing.

There are all sorts of dramatic accounts as far as these things go--people feeling as if they're ascending to heaven, that the most evil agent of the netherworld is watching them or causing them to suffer, that they've actually been able to astrally project themselves from their bodily state. Supposedly, there are people who try to attain paralysis deliberately in order to broaden their psychic range, or whatever it is they do.

Me, I'm jittery enough without bringing it on myself. Though I must be already, somehow. Stress and insomnia are said to be the primary causes of it, which could explain a lot.

And then there's the medical description that claims victims usually feel a sense of terror during an episode. Do they, now... Let's see, you fall asleep; your mind wakes up but your body doesn't; you can't move a thing, except maybe your tongue or your head, and then only if you strain as hard as you can with every muscle in your body; you can't cry out even if your tongue is free, which doesn't improve things at all; you lie there, trying to move until you exhaust yourself all over again... Yes, terror does seem like a relatively reasonable state to fall into at this point.

I have yet to be blessed with visions of the Almighty. I'd have settled for a vision of my RA at the time, though, not that my request was granted. I did, however, think I'd managed to attract Roommate #2's attention, as someone was standing beside my bed, kneading at one of my arms as if to wake me up or soothe me back into sleep. Then I intelligently made a few connections, such as the fact that my bed is six feet off the ground and therefore impossible for anyone to stand beside. And that I could still hear Roommate #2 humming on the other side of the room. And that whoever was next to me was wearing yellow, not the magenta top Roommate #2 had on.

Dull person that I am, I didn't get any "vibes" or whatever it is the cool kids get. If anything, the newcomer seemed pretty darn human, in a sense that I was sure I'd be able to wrench myself away from her if I could just move. Nothing particularly demonic, you see, but nothing particularly comforting either. And then I finally managed to drag myself out of my stupor. I was lying there, congratulating myself on recovering the ability to move again, telling myself I'd get up as soon as I'd collected myself a little more, when I realized I'd fallen back into another episode. This occured a few more times, after which things started getting old. That and I saw a door open in the wall (where, needless to say, there is no door) and a smiling, sandy-haired girl I didn't recognize poke her head through to address me and two other figures I couldn't make out. "Hi," she said, and then something that could have been, "I heard all this murmuring," "Esmeralda murmuring," or something similar. I was irrationally hoping for the former, and that this meant she was going to do something to end the murmuring--which was me, idiotically attempting to utilize my tongue yet again.

But that was it for the HHE, as she disappeared back through the door, while I glimpsed a quick flash of water--sunny and summery, like a pool, where the sandy girl came from, and then another girl, brown-skinned and also in yellow, the one I'd mistaken for Roommate #2.

So now I'm up, having quite unintentionally slept through soc. Bloody paralysis...

It's scary as anything, in case I haven't made that clear, but also addictive. Every time it happens, part of me perks up, while the rest of me is having a heart attack, and wonders what's going to happen this time. Maybe I'll fall off the bed sometime soon; that'll shut up the annoying vestige... Maybe my dorm really does have a ghost. How quaint. Maybe I'm a latent seer. Or maybe this sort of thing is just what happens when I sleep with a sketchbook under my pillow.

Adieu.