Night Terrors

At first, we thought someone broke into our house. On the first night it happened, my wife and I were jolted awake by a deafening boom and screams from Jonathan's bedroom. Panicking, we burst into his room and saw toppled furniture and dented walls. On the floor were clothes and shattered glass from a picture frame that fell off a nightstand. And in the corner of the room sat Jonathan. His face deathly pale and his eyes wide open, mortified. His knuckles dripped blood which stained his bedroom floor. And his fingers pointed to something inside of his closet.

I threw open the closet door, but there was nothing inside. To be safe, I checked behind the curtain of clothes hanging on coathangers. No one. I opened the blinds and found that the windows were still intact. No one had entered the house. And yet Jonathan continued screaming.

"Jonathan!" my wife yelled, but Jonathan ignored her. He kept screaming. Amy approached Jonathan to try and comfort him, but Jonathan lashed out. He scratched and clawed and threw punches at my wife, hitting her in the eye. Amy screamed and stepped back, covering her eye with her right palm as Jonathan continued shrieking.

I was frustrated. My hands had balled up into fists on their own and I was just about to explode when...

He stopped. His eyelids closed and he fell back on his bed, asleep.



The next morning, we talked with him about what happened last night. But he had no recollection of anything. Amy and I thought that he was lying and told him to tell us the truth. And no matter how hard we pressed him, he always said

"I don't know what you're talking about, I don't remember ever doing that!" with wet eyes and sniffles. But we didn't believe him.

And then it happened again. A month later, there were more screams. More broken furniture, more dents in the walls, more blood. Two weeks after that, there was even more. His screaming became more and more frequent, yet every time we asked, Jonathan would never remember a thing. So we looked for help. Eventually, we found Dr. Prescott.

Dr. Prescott said that Jonathan was experiencing night terrors. Episodes of fear while sleeping. They weren't nightmares, because they weren't dreams. And people that suffer from night terrors sleep through the entire session, unaware that they might be screaming or thrashing.

"Is there any way to prevent it?" Amy asked.

"No. But night terrors are common for children Jonathan's age. The best thing you can do is ignore it and wait for him to outgrow the night terrors," he replied.

"So there's literally nothing we can do to fix it?" I asked.

"Well, night terrors can be caused by stress, fatigue, and sleep deprivation, so you could make sure he gets more rest. But it's not a 100% fix, so again, the best course of action would just be to ignore him." He later added, "You might also want to take out anything dangerous in his room to reduce the chances of him getting hurt. You saw the marks on the wall from his punches. Wouldn't want him punching scissors now, would we?" Dr. Prescott laughed at his own joke.

With no better options, we followed Dr. Prescott's recommendation and put Jonathan to sleep half an hour earlier than usual. Then, with some free time at hand, I decided to play video games while Amy read a book.



I checked my watch. 11:30 PM. Shit, I had lost track of time. Amy had already fallen asleep next to me, snoring on our bed. I turned off the PS3 and the TV in our bedroom, slipped into bed, turned off my bedside lamp, and fell asleep.

Jonathan hadn't screamed in his sleep. I woke up the next morning groggy, but relieved. Amy had already woken up, and was applying her makeup when I got out of bed. She was just about to leave for work when I noticed something.

"Amy, are you limping?" I asked. She turned around and looked at me.

"Oh. Yeah," she replied. "I just banged my knee on the table when I went to eat breakfast this morning, it's no big deal." She gave me a weak smile and walked out of the door.

That night, Jonathan had another night terror. His screaming woke me up at 2 in the morning and no matter how hard I closed my eyes, no matter how hard I covered my ears, the screams would not stop. They were unignorable and even though I knew it wasn't Jonathan's fault I wanted nothing more to pound his head in just to make him quiet down.



I woke up the next morning with sore knuckles. I could hear the faucet running in the bathroom. Amy was already awake.

When she left the bathroom, she had a cut on her lip that she kept licking with her tongue. Her limp hadn't gone away and I could see a dark blue bruise on her knee. I wondered how hard she hit that table.

"Are you okay?" I asked her. She sniffled and nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine," she replied. She hurriedly left for work.



Jonathan had another night terror that night. And another one the night after that. And another, and another, until it became unbearable. Every night, I would be awakened and every night I would try to ignore him, but I just CAN'T because he's just so fucking LOUD. Every fucking night, he would just scream and scream and scream and I couldn't do a damn thing against it except suck it up even when I'm so tired. I'm so tired. Can't I just get some REST STOP SCREAMING I WANT TO SLEEP.

I woke up to a room covered in shattered glass and toppled furniture. In the corner, a broken mirror lay face down on the ground. To my left, remnants of a bedside lamp that fell over. My knuckles bled, but... why? Then I looked to my right.

And I saw the mangled body of Amy. Her corpse covered in bruises.





Author's Note: I'll admit, I kind of slacked on this story. A fairly new idea I came up with. And by "fairly new," I mean I literally came up with the idea the day before this story had to be released. I'm hoping it's at least remotely unsettling and that I planted enough seeds in the story for you guys to understand what happened. In case it wasn't clear enough, I'll give you a pretty big hint: night terrors are hereditary.

...This story isn't scary at all, is it? Maaaaan. Ah well. In my defense, Junior year of high school.

Also, HIATUS TIME. Gonna be working on my novel for National Novel Writing Month for the remainder of this month, the result of which I'll probably be uploading to this blog when I finish. Then, over Thanksgiving break, I'll be finishing up editing my short film, so I unfortunately will NOT be able to write new blog stories until December 4. But hey, I have something HUGE planned for this blog on January, so look forward to that!