Nighttime Terrors
written by: Fatima Nazifi
It’s past 11 at night already. My eyes feel heavy with sleep, and my body is down to its last reserves.
Still, I am awake because that one part of my body won’t shut down as easily as the rest of my body does. The racing of my mind does not allow me to go to sleep. Everything that seemed natural during the day suddenly seems different during the night. Suddenly, all the spaces I used without second thoughts during the day appear off and foreign instead of the familiar objects I used hours before. Suddenly, my wardrobe and mirror emanate danger. Suddenly, I don’t trust them to only house my clothes or show my reflection. Suddenly, I don’t feel safe. Every nook and cranny looks strange and dangerous. Every shadow makes me flinch and frantic. Every positive thought flies past and dissolves. Darkness remains. A veil made out of shadows falls over my mind, and all I can feel is fear. It whispers ever so silently of all the dangers that lurk in my apartment. While my body begs me to rest, that voice is the sole reason I’m awake. The whispers grow louder and more urgent. Telling me to keep looking, to keep checking and rechecking, doubting me, scaring me….
And when I can’t take it anymore, I stop. I stand in the middle of my apartment and just stop. The whispers are still there, but I don’t listen, I just stand there and watch my frame in the mirror.
All I see now is my skin. My skin that is lined with tiny scratches from yesterday, the day before that day, from a week ago, years ago… Tiny scratches which try to heal or turn into scars.
And then I lift my hand as if in a trance, and another torture begins.
I start touching my skin, first lightly, peeling off crusts of almost healed wounds, telling myself I’ll stop soon and get to bed. However, what first starts as a gentle caress soon turns frenzied and cruel.
I pick at my skin.
Scratching and pinching open old wounds and causing new ones. My skin turns an angry red, and there are bumps everywhere, bloody and swollen alike. Still, I keep going without feeling any pain. It just pricks lightly. It’s a relief to watch the skin give out under my nails. It feels like success.
Minutes fly past, and I don’t stop. I keep pinching and scratching until everything is sore, although I still don’t feel it. I’m past the point of pain. It’s just numbness that greets me.
When I finally stop, I realize those minutes had turned into hours, and it’s late in the night. I breathe heavily by now and jerk myself out of the trance to look into the mirror again.
I see myself and not.
The skin on my arms is red and full of fresh new scratches and bruises, bloody and swollen. When I run my hand down my skin, all I feel is the raised skin from the recent torment that happened hours ago.
- Nighttime Terrors - June 8, 2026
- Hand in Hand - February 23, 2026
