an essay by Lance Marwood

“A childhood nightmare, Polyvagal Theory, and mythic echoes reveal why terror turns the body mute.”

I remember the floor more than anything else.

My parents were trying to transition me into sleeping in my own room, which is why I was placed on the floor beside their bed, close enough to hear them breathing, just far enough that it felt like an ocean away. I was four. I struggled with being alone in the dark.

Their room at night didn't feel like the daytime version of itself. The furniture felt wrong. The shadows looked sinister. I couldn’t talk myself out of being afraid. I tried. Instead, it was physical. It filled my mouth, my chest, my hands. My throat.

One night I woke up from a nightmare.

I tried to call for them.

My mouth opened. My lungs gathered air. And then, nothing.

No sound. No cry. My body refused to make one. Something had already decided that silence was safer.

If you’ve ever had the dream where you try to scream and nothing comes out, you know what this is. Your body refusing to help at the exact moment you need it most.

Why? What mechanism decides that the moment you most need a voice is when it should abandon you?

Years later, I wrote The Cherale, a novel built around a generational curse that revolves around that theme of voice.

Only later did I understand what I’d done. I hadn’t invented something new. I’d gone back to that floor. I kept rewriting the same moment from the inside, trying to make it explain itself.

This essay is my attempt to understand why it keeps coming back.

We talk about “fight or flight” like fear always makes the body loud and fast. But there’s another move the body makes when speed won’t solve it.

If escape doesn’t feel possible, the nervous system can slam on the brakes. The body goes still. The goal isn’t victory. It’s not being detected.

It’s the kind of defense the body reaches for when there’s no room to run—like a rat backed up against a wall with nowhere else to go. In that state, the voice is a liability. Sound draws attention. Sound escalates.

That’s what I recognize in the floor memory. I wasn’t deciding to be quiet. My body was.

To put a name to what I’m describing: this is the nervous system’s threat gearshift. It’s the part of you that changes breathing, heart rate, and muscle tone before you’ve had time to think.

One of the main switches in that system is the vagus nerve. It runs from the brainstem down through the neck into the chest and gut. It helps regulate breathing, heart rate, and the muscles that make voice possible.

Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory describes threat response as a sequence. First the body looks for safety through connection: face, voice, and other social cues. If that doesn’t work, it shifts into fight or flight. If action still doesn’t work, it drops into shutdown.

That shutdown can lock the body up. One clear sign is the voice going quiet.

The body is trying not to draw attention.

That moment on the floor beside my parents' bed trying to say something wasn't a conscious choice. My nervous system had already decided that silence was the safest option. Learning the neuroscience years later didn’t make it feel better. If anything, it made it stranger. My body had been running a survival calculation I wouldn't have a name for until I was well into adulthood.

Voice is fragile because it depends on tight coordination. Breath, muscle tone, and timing have to line up. Fear throws all of that off at once. The throat stiffens. The glottis clamps to seal the airway. Breathing goes rapid and shallow, useless for the steady exhalation voice requires. And sometimes nothing is physically “wrong,” but the signal from intention to sound just cuts out.

You try to speak. The signal is sent. Somewhere between cortex and throat, it's blocked.

What scares people is that it can last after the danger is over. The voice goes quiet in a moment of fear and stays quiet long after.

A learned silence.

Continue reading: Why silence feels like erasure // A myth with teeth // Trauma's long echo // The new mutation // Reclaiming the signal

Click here to read the rest on V13.net →

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You're reading Lowkey Hellish — essays on folklore, horror, philosophy, and the strange places where ancient fears meet modern anxieties.

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