The Mouth inside the Pillow

The mouth jutting out of the pillow had the teeth of a piranha, snapping its jaws, dripping thick, gooey yellow saliva, and making tiny squeaks that echoed like distant screams.

Squatting down in front of him, his father shook his head, the dark bags under his eyes deepening. Stephen had night terrors when he was nine, vivid, thrashing nightmares that lasted far longer than they should have, because his parents coddled him. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake with his son. This was the fourth night in a row that Stephen had come into their room in the middle of the night, shaking them awake, trembling with tales of the same dream.

“It’s just another nightmare, Stephen,” his father said, his voice flat. “You need to get over these. I’ve told you a hundred times, dreams aren’t real, no matter how real they seem.”

“But I could smell its breath!” Stephen insisted, tears catching on his lashes. “The worst smell I’ve ever smelled. You can’t smell someone’s breath in a dream.”

“You can do anything in a dream,” his father snapped, a touch more sharply this time. “That’s how dreams work.”

“It is real!” Stephen shouted, waking his mother.

She stirred with a groan. “What is it now?”

“Go to sleep, Naomi,” his father said. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing!” Stephen cried. “It came back, Mom. The mouth was there again.”

“Yes, another visit from the mouth in the pillow,” his father said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

Naomi sat up, groggy and irritable. She didn’t like being woken up any more than her husband did, but they’d talked that morning about his tough-love approach. Clearly, he wasn’t taking the softer tone they’d agreed on.

She sighed and reached for Stephen. “Honey, I got rid of that old pillow, remember? I bought you a new one. If there was a mouth in the pillow, it’s still in the one upstairs in the attic.”

“It’s in this one too!” Stephen wailed.

“It’s not in any pillow,” his father said, tapping his temple. “It’s inside here. You’ve got to get back to bed.”

“I’m not going back in there!”

“You need to go back to your room. I have work in the morning, and you’ve got school. Now, go!” his father shouted.

Stephen’s face crumpled, and he began to cry.

“Great job, Larry,” Naomi said, her voice dripping with disdain. “Come here, honey.”

Stephen rushed to her side, and she wrapped her arms around him, stroking his hair. “Listen,” she murmured. “What if we traded pillows? I’ll take the one with the mouth, and you can have mine. Just to be extra safe.”

Stephen’s tear-streaked face lifted. “You’d do that?”

“Of course I would.”