Howard awoke to see Anita standing over him with a concerned expression on her face. Howard was in bed instead of being on the floor. Anita put her hand on top of his head affectionately and said, “What’s wrong, Sweetheart? You must have being having a bad dream. We could hear you screaming all the way out in the kitchen. It sounded like there was a crying baby in here!”
The bedclothes felt clammy as if he had had an accident in the bed. His face took on a pained, mortified look as he apologized in a small voice, “I’m sorry! I couldn’t stop myself from peeing! I didn’t mean to poop in my pants!”
Anita’s eyebrows raised questioningly, then she put her hand underneath the comforter to check the bedclothes. After feeling the sheet around Howard with her fingers and palm, she ordered, “Roll over on your tummy!”
Howard complied willingly in acute embarrassment as she felt his bottom for evidence of his alleged defecation. The thin cotton briefs were stretched tight over his behind without any lumps that would have lent credence to Howard’s claim. There was nothing in Howard’s underwear but Howard. She patted him smartly on the rump and threw the clothes back to reveal the damp sheet he had been laying on. A dark stain of sweat reached from his head to his toes. She chuckled and said, “It doesn’t look like you wet the bed! You’re covered in sweat. That must have been some dream! What did you think had happened to you?”
Howard put his hands down to feel his soggy underwear and realized it had all been a dream. The wetness he felt surrounding him was only his sweat. The emotional effects of dream still hadn’t subsided. He could still feel the invisible presence of the amused power that had haunted the final part of his dream. He shivered and wondered if it was the cold sweat on his body that chilled him or whether it was the feeling of being observed by the ghostly presence of a diabolical being that had made him tremble. He didn’t want to tell Anita about the infantile dream he had; besides being embarrassing, his dream had been too distressing to want to relive by relating it to her. He turned his eyes away from her and said while staring down at the floor, “I don’t want to talk about it.”