It took months to tell the doctor about the shadowy creature that stalks around my room at night. I was terrified that I’d gone crazy.

I’d lie in bed, paralysed and conscious as it meandered around my room. It was hard to tell exactly what it did: the light around it blurred, as though pulled into the darkness of its silhouette.

When my doctor explained sleep paralysis, I felt relieved. It was common, she said, to see shadowy figures and feel a sense of dread. She also prescribed something to help and I filled the prescription happily.

Last night I woke, paralysed but unable to see any figures in my room. The medication had worked!

I will never take it again.

I could not see the figure, so I could not see what turned the pages of my book, or stirred the water in my glass, or brushed the hair out of my unblinking eyes.