What Was It?

I was eating my dinner alone, sitting on the living-room couch watching a movie on TV for company when the forces your covetous presence prevents slowly crawled out in fibrous droves. Without you to follow me with your clipboard, or record the game my face plays, masquerading as a cryptic territory and your field of study, the energy maggots turned the furniture into an ectoplasmic mass with the weight of iron: soft but resistant, a taut balloon against the hand. Hypnotized by the atmosphere I fell asleep, and the chair took revenge on my psyche. I could not scream, so I focused my will on pushing back against the animate matter. I was near failing when I managed to utter the word "dove," and then you shook me awake. "Stop," stop fighting with the furniture, you said. Yet something I could not see pushed hard against me, and it was not a force for good. My vocal chords were paralyzed and the language of the living was the only way to stop it.