Pressing

My eyelids unshutter, and in the same instant, I know something is wrong. It's as if the earth has tilted on her axis; my room looks the way it always does except there is something... Something off. Something indefinable.

I make to roll over and find a more comfortable position but (this is it) I cannot move. The instant I realise this, I'm aware of weight pressing on my chest.

They say pressing is more horrible than hanging, and I believe it. This is the stuff of nightmares and worse. Being crushed, slowly at first, giving you time to relish what is to come in horrifying detail.

Each breath has become a struggle. Only my eyes can move, and I move them a lot, as if those tiny muscles around my eyeballs are doing all the running my legs want to do. As if I could somehow move by sheer effort, caterpillar myself along just by frantically moving my eyes.

Then... I saw her. She was probably about seven years old, and she looked out of place in my room because of her very old-fashioned clothes. The dusty-blue smock screams ghost. Her hair is long and straight, and her eyes are wide and empty. She is carrying a well-loved, vintage-looking teddy bear under one arm. The whole picture whispers doesn't belong here. She smiles a small smile.

Panic thrums through me, building to a tidal wave the wider those with rosy-pink lips stretch. I still couldn't move. I couldn't scream either.

The pressure on my chest intensified with each step she took. This only increases my terror. I drag in a rasping breath, and another. And another. She reached the edge of the bed and sat down, her presence amplifying the dread that gripped me.

The sensation of my chest being squeezed becomes unbearable. My gasps for air become feeble croaks, my vision blurs. Her stare bores into me. The room closes in around me, the weight of her gaze suffocates...

When next my eyes open, light is peeping through the curtains. She is gone, and my lungs expand freely in a sweet sigh of relief.