In The Dark Of The Night

The story from Shem's perspective. (As narrated by his wife):

I was asleep. Dead asleep. I don't play around with sleep. In fact, I've been known to sleep whilst doing things that normal people only do when they're awake. (Walk, talk, feed babies, fight bad guys, etc.) That's how seriously I take this sleeping thing. I was dreaming peacefully when suddenly, and from out of nowhere I was rudely awakened by my wife who was apparently having a nightmare and/or a severe seizure in the middle of our bed. Arms flailing at terrifying speed, and with zero accuracy, she was frantically swatting every inch of bed (and me) that she could reach. I quickly assessed the situation and came to the sleepy conclusion that she was having a nightmare and it was spilling over into reality, causing her to try and kill me. I grabbed her arms and said (in what I hoped was a reassuring voice, but probably sounded more like a sleepy mumble), "Babe. Hey. Babe. It's okay. You're dreaming." She stopped flailing and continued to paw through the sheets like she was looking for something.

"No, babe. There is a bug."

"There's no bug," (I was quickly becoming more awake and slightly amused by the situation. A sleepy grin spread across my face.) "You're having a nightmare,"

"No, babe. There is a bug."

Yeah. She was dreaming. I stared at her. She continued, "I swear I'm not sleeping. A huge bug just crawled across my arm. We have to find it. It was enormous."

She sounded awake. I peered, bleary eyed, through the very bug-free sheets. After our thorough investigation revealed no lurking crawler, I reached my conclusion: She had dreamed it. I looked up at her.

She gave a sleepy half-laugh, "There is no way I dreamed that." Pause. "Did I dream that?" Pause, "I think I dreamed that,"

We laughed for a few good minutes about her insanity and then drifted off to sleep.

THE NEXT MORNING:

I had to pee.

I went to pee.

I found a dead water bug in my underpants.

Never again will I doubt my wife's sanity.