I’m slithering down the side of Martin Elstree’s kitchen cupboards to rest on his polished tile floor, because I literally cannot stay awake right now.

I have to take the earring out. With every scrap of will I can muster, I force my hand up to my head, slip out the earring. He can’t make me sleepwalk if I’m not on Sweet Dreams.

As I’m floating away, I feel him open my hand and take the earring.

‘Shh,’ he mocks. ‘That’s right, you rest now. We’ll look after you.’

Secret Diary of a Prawn Star

Entry #55

Codename: Chaplin

Date: 26 September 2027

Client: Martin Elstree

Payment in advance: N/A

Session Goal: Survival

Location: Martin’s flat at Convoys Wharf

Narcolepsy status: Total collapse

Nutrition/stimulants: Can’t remember

Start time: 8.02 p.m.

End time: ?

Note: Not much point in keeping this, is there, now I know I’m being spied on. Fuck off, if you’re reading this!

The weight on my chest is the worst this time. Like being buried alive. At first I think I can’t possibly ever move again. I think my eyes are open but I can’t seem to move the muscles that control them, and I can’t breathe.

It’s very strange not to be able to move your eyes. I can’t even focus. I see a blob of black and grey shifting around like oil on water before the image resolves into the hooded Creeper with his white ‘The Scream’ face and dark slash of mouth. He is on top of me, pressing on my chest to stop me breathing, to stop my heart if he can.

You’re not real. You’re just a representation of sleep paralysis and it’s a good thing because I don’t want to get up and walk around when I’m asleep. You can’t hurt me. You’re not real.

The face doesn’t change expression but it judders from side to side with the rapid, jerking kind of movements a wasp makes when it gets blocked by a windowpane. I find this super scary, maybe because it’s unnatural for anything that big to move that fast.

The white face opens its mouth and bends towards me, as if to kiss me. No matter what I say to him, to myself, in this moment the Creeper is more real than anyone I’ve ever met. More real than I am. More real than the whole waking world. I feel its lips on mine. They are cold, not just physically but psychically freezing, and now it’s sucking the breath out of my lungs, draining the life out of me. I want to wake up now. I have to breathe. I want to wake up. I—