Summers were an endless nightmare I suffered while awake. Nights were filled with broken dreams that woke me, more times than not, to fits of crying. Once, only once, my mother came to me.
“What are you doing up?” She squinted at me through sleep.
“I had a nightmare,” I said. “Your arms were cut off and Dad was trying to take us kids and run from you. You tried to keep up. You fell in the parking lot, but you had no arms to break your fall. There was blood everywhere.”
“Shut up and go to sleep,” she snarled, slapped my light off, and went back to bed.
I sobbed alone in the dark.
I often had nightmares of my mum. I must have seen her killed one hundred times. When I woke, I cried into my pillow. I would sneak into her room while she slept and stand over her where I would cry. She never
