Seth Rogen doesn’t like me sleeping in
Imagine you wake up one morning but there’s something wrong with your body. You can’t move. There’s no one holding you down and you’re not pinned down by anything, you just can’t move a single muscle. You would try to call for help but your mouth won’t work either. Even worse you feel like you can’t breathe. You’re panicking and you need help but you can do nothing to help yourself.
I experience episodes like this every so often and you may have experienced something similar yourself. It’s known as sleep paralysis. Basically when you enter REM sleep you’re body puts itself in a state of semi-paralysis. The theory is that your body does this to stop you from physically acting out your dreams in your sleep as a way of protecting you from harming yourself and any loved ones sharing the bed with you. Unfortunately sometimes a person can wake up while still in this state of semi-paralysis and experience episodes very similar to what I described above. Scarily, some people experience hallucinations or see things when this happens. Often these are blurred shapes or some sense of another presence in the room. Sometimes they can take the form of a small demon sitting on your chest or an old hag above your head trying to smother you. Personally I’ve never experienced anything like that. Not until the other night.
So let’s go through the scenario again. You’ve just woken up in your bed and you try to get up but you can’t. You’re body feels rigid, stuck, paralysed. You’re having a bit of trouble with breathing but it’s not too bad this time. After all you’ve experienced this a few times before, you know what’s happening. Only now someone has just entered the room. It’s a slightly chubby, curly haired, loud American guy. But this is no random face, it’s comedy actor Seth Rogen from the movies Superbad and Pineapple Express. At this point you realise you’re dreaming, but there’s something slightly different. You’re kinda lucid and you’re aware of your actual body lying in your bed, but like I said it’s not moving.
Seth’s coming over and he wants you to wake up. You try to answer but you can’t. Your mouth’s not moving. He threatens that you better stop playing games and get out of bed or else. You don’t answer so he shows you what ‘or else’ means. He’s getting up on your bed and loosening his trousers. You try to tell him you’re awake but you can only hear the words in your head. The trousers are round his ankles now and he turns his back to face you and starts to squat. You’re screaming ‘stop!’ in your head as the pale pimply arse of Seth Rogen closes in on your face like a big fleshy eclipse. It stops and Seth throws you one last warning over your shoulder. You can do nothing but pray that you wake up in the next second as you scream obscenities at him in your mind. But then it comes and the sound of your own thoughts are drowned out by the sound of Seth’s bottom burping and hot air blasts in your face.
You lay there experiencing this terror for what feels like forever before you finally wake up.
No, it wasn’t at all pleasant for me either.
