She’d spent many a night frozen with fear in her bed, mouth open wide but no sound coming out, praying to God that her mother and father would somehow sense her distress and come to her rescue. The mere thought of walking down the hall to their bedroom in the dead of night gripped her with incalculable fear.

She wasn’t afraid now.

The irony was not lost on her that the dead of night had become her ‘me time’.

Now the dark was about candy and old movies.

And sometimes bad feels and shadows.

With the onslaught of the microwave feels she was getting up here, she almost missed the familiar bad feels.

Almost.

She checked her tablet, saw it was time for a pain pill. Swallowing it down, she nestled her feet under a snoozing Buttons so he could warm them up.

A gusting wind was kicking up small waves breaking on the shore. The crickets, perhaps agitated by the wind, were chirping louder than a Metallica concert. Kate was tempted to turn the TV up and drown it all out, but she didn’t want to wake Andrew.

Better close the windows, she thought.

Leaving the comfort of the bed (not that she was ever truly comfortable), she slipped on some socks and padded in the dark to the kitchen. Buttons woke up and joined her. She gave him a doggie treat, thanking him for the company.

Still thinking about her old night terrors, perhaps because she’d had quite a few reminiscent episodes as of late, she cringed remembering how some of the kids used to call her Katie the Coon. She was the only kid in third grade with dark circles under her eyes.

Kate often wondered if those years spent walking around in a fog – two crucial, formative years at that – had permanently altered her body chemistry. The nightmares ate away at her psyche and health, and when they left, her body needed something to replace them. So, rather than wait for her to become exposed to a strange disease (and who knew how long that could take), it decided to rebel against itself.

Her mother thought her ‘little theory’ was ridiculous, but her father, well, it gave him pause.

“It could be all those night terrors were the broken cells growing in your body,” he’d said to her one night over pumpkin pie and coffee. Her mother had been in the kitchen, cleaning up. Dad hadn’t looked so good himself. He’d been talking of early retirement a lot, though Mom pooh-poohed it, telling him he still had a lot of earning to do if they were going to have golden years, not bronze years.