Now he’s having nightmares. The boy who once couldn’t dream is now suddenly having nightmares. Every night, and repeatedly every night. And they’re affecting the rest of the world.

He dreams of long, shadowy creatures with razor-sharp claws and pointy teeth. They effervesce from his mind and bleed into reality until they are free to roam. And sometimes they just appear in the locations he dreams about. They seek out others and invade their dreams, bringing the nightmares home to others. They attack the minds of other sleepers, and those sleepers, some of them don’t ever wake back up. They just stay asleep, tossing and turning with nightmares that won’t end. And the ones that do wake up report that their nightmares are some of the worst they’ve ever experienced.

His nightmarish monstrosities have been found all over the world, but so far no one has ascertained that they have all come from one little boy’s imagination. Only we know, and we’re not telling anyone. Can you imagine what the world would do to him if they found out he was the cause of all this chaos? Best case scenario, he would be studied by the scientific community to both determine how he causes his nightmares to multiply and to determine how best to stop them. Worst case scenario? Someone might try to kill him to get the nightmares to end.

For now, we keep the secret. We protect one little boy and damn everyone else to horrific nightmares. We don’t know what else to do. We won’t forfeit his life, not even to save others from the fear of nighttime. He’s an innocent in all this. He doesn’t do it deliberately. In fact, he’s as much as victim as everyone else because he has to experience the nightmares first.

We can only hope that eventually he’ll go back to not dreaming, that the nightmares will no longer walk out of his subconscious and into the world. That’s our best and last hope.