The one about the screaming

I am not a person prone to emotional outbursts but sometimes I scream out in my sleep.

It begins in my sleep, at any rate, and continues on for a time after I’ve been awakened by the screaming. By my own screaming, that is.

People run in to see what is the matter. My sister. When I was younger, my parents. People run in and they usually say the same thing. They say, “Nasreen, what is it that’s scared you?”

My father or a visiting relative or that woman they took me to talk to about it: “What are you afraid of? What’s making you scream?”

I never remember but what if I did and what if it was something really to be scared of? Have they even considered this?

What if I told them of the thing that makes me scream in my sleep and then they were scared, too? What if, upon learning of it, they woke in the night screaming, too?

You know, like it’s some kind of fear virus.

What would have been accomplished in that case, really?

That in itself, that’s something to be scared of. I’m scared of that: Making the world a more fearful place. Making the world a place where more people wake up screaming in the night.

What an awful idea. A fear virus. I would not want to be responsible for perpetuating such a thing and that is why I would never, ever share what-

Oh. Wait.  

Forget I said anything, maybe?