Open Your Eyes

Close your eyes.....think about something happy. Maybe food? Your crush? Or money! Now, open your eyes! Seems like a easy command, right? Well, until you can't. Until someone or someTHING is preventing you from waking up or opening your eyes. Maybe it's just apart of the imagination. Or overthinking. Or maybe it's because of stress, anxiety, or depression. Well, what if it were all these things and more?

While not being able to open your eyes imagine you feel yourself wake up or you know you're awake but you can't move. You see your room, you can see where your purse is on the dresser, the missing sock you've been looking for on the floor, and your bookbag on the other side of your room. You can see and think but you can't move a muscle.

You're awake but how can you be awake when your eyes aren't open? It's called sleep paralysis. Many people reported experiencing sleep paralysis where they are in the REM stage asleep but they feel like they're awake but cannot move. People stay in this position for about 20 minutes or less. Sleep paralysis is scientifically defined as "A temporary inability to move or speak while falling asleep or upon waking."
Many people experience this in their REM stage of sleeping.

Promise, a 17 year old high school student experienced her first encounter of sleep paralysis after a unexpected death. The death traumatized Promise so much that she started to experience sleep paralysis, but this is not normal sleep paralysis. There is a Demon coming after Promise and Promise takes everything in her to stay alive. Amongst her fight, Promise discovers secrets about the death, secrets about people she thought she knew, and secrets about herself. She must find out what happened the night of the death, and finding out meant she had to stay alive.