The hands

My eyes flew open — sure I’d heard it again. It took longer than I liked for them to adjust in the dark. Everything in the room seemed to elongate, shapes stretching into something hungry. Tendrilled shadowy fingers reached along the walls. I pulled the blanket over my head.

There was nothing out there. I told myself I was alone in the room, but the hairs on my arms rose. Pressure landed on my chest and my throat went tight. I reached for the hands closing my throat and grabbed nothing but air. I tried to scream and thrash but nothing came out. Finally, I found a strength that got me free from the grasp and out of bed. I clicked the light, and the room flooded with brightness. I squinted as my eyes protested. The closet shadow was just my coat; the figure on the chair was only a pile of laundry waiting to be folded. My breathing slowed, but it was hours before I could sleep. By the time I doze off, the alarm was almost due to go.

I screeched into the carpark, raced out of the car trying to finish a piece of toast while pulling on my jacket. I was so exhausted from the troubled sleep that I hit snooze more times than I could afford. I grabbed my name badge and hat out of my locker and checked the mirror before heading out to the floor.

‘You look like shit,’ my colleague Susie said as I passed her in the aisle.

‘Wow, thanks,’ I replied.

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ she said. ‘Did you get any sleep at all?’

I shrugged and kept walking to my register. I was about halfway through scanning the third customer’s items when my hairs stood on end again — that same prickling knowing that someone was looking at me. I tried to ignore it and kept scanning.

Blip.

Someone’s eyes were on me.

Blip.

Where were they watching from?

Blip.

A hand began to crawl up the back of my legs.

Blip.

I tried kicking it off.

Blip.

The hand found my throat.

How was this woman not seeing it as she rattled off a list of boring things she had to do? I grabbed at my neck. She didn’t notice.

‘Oh, that’s rather expensive,’ she announced accusingly, like I’d personally set the prices.

When the payment went through, Susie came over and started closing my register.

‘But I just started,’ I said.

‘You can go stock some shelves — you’re not having a good day,’ she said, and had already taken the till drawer.

I went out the back to grab cages for stock and began moving boxes. The shadows between the shelves seemed to reach for me. I jumped when one nearly grabbed me and stumbled into another. A weight slammed me into the wall. One strong hand crushed my chest, the other wrapped around my throat. I tried to call for help. I clawed and wiggled but the hands wouldn’t let go.

Susie came out the back at just the right time and ran over. She grabbed my wrists and the creature — whatever it was — let me go. She helped me breathe.

Next thing I knew I was sitting in Susie’s office. I kept forgetting she wasn’t just a colleague now that she’d been promoted; she was also someone who could do more than gossip at morning tea. The glass of water she’d given me sat untouched in my hands, the surface rippling with every tremor.

‘I think you should see someone,’ she said.

‘I’d love to see them,’ I whispered, wanting to mean ghosts, ‘but all I feel are the hands.’

‘I mean a doctor. I’ve booked you in — he had a cancellation this afternoon.’

‘But my shift—'

‘It’s sorted.’ She had already sorted it. There was a part of me that wondered if she was working with the thing, taking me to its lair. The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur — a doctor and a chemist and Susie driving me home.

The doctor gave the thing a name: panic attacks, anxiety — words I’d heard but never pinned onto my nights. He started me on medication to quiet the edges and referred me to a psychologist. Slowly, with pills and talking and learning to breathe in a way that didn’t feel silly, the hands left me alone more often. They didn’t vanish overnight, but they became smaller, farther between.

It was a lot of work to find myself again: appointments, missed shifts, moments where laughter felt like a foreign language. I learned to notice the first prickles — the small tells before the full squeeze — and to call Susie or my doctor instead of pretending. I’m forever grateful to Susie for recognising the signs and getting me help. She didn’t pull me out of the dark with some dramatic revelation; she steadied me, swapped my shift without fuss, sat with me in a waiting room and squeezed my hand until my breath returned.

The hands had been unreal in the sense that no one else could see them. But they had very real impact: missed work, anxiety over bills, the tiredness that never quite left. The diagnosis didn’t make them fantasy — it put a name to them and a path out. Naming them allowed tools: medicine, therapy, a friend who stayed. The phantom reach became, finally, something that could be kept at bay.

I still flinch when a light goes out. Some nights they come back soft and apologetic, as if rehearsing. But now, when the pressure starts, I breathe slow and I call someone. The hands are quieter. And when Susie slips her hand into mine — real, warm, steady — there is no doubt which one I hold on to.