Can't even scream (sleep paralysis)

Sleep paralysis sucks.

(People are normally sort of paralyzed during REM sleep, but sometimes there is a bug somewhere and they continue to be paralyzed for a few seconds or minutes after waking up.)

I was seeing a particularly nasty nightmare last night. Not sure what it was about but in the dream my hands were slashed and bleeding and I was running around like that for about 24 hours because there were some people I needed to ask for some information before I'd go to a hospital to get stitches.

Anyway, at some point in the dream I started screaming and woke up to realize that the muscles of my mouth and throat were not obeying me, or any other muscles either. It was a very unusual sensation: not totally numb, like a lip can be after dentist's anaesthesia, or like I would expect a paralysis to be, but with sort of more-than-normal feeling: I felt myself trying to move my muscles, but at the same time felt them not actually moving.

The problem disappeared in about two seconds, but was not conductive to a good night's sleep.

I hate sleep disturbances. This one has never happened before (and hopefully won't ever again), and lucid dreaming happened only once, but I often get that sensation of falling down from my bed when falling asleep. Ugh.