Nothing exists; all is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you!

And you are not you—you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream—your dream, creature of your imagination…

But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!

– Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you?

To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a player.

–Julian Gough, Minecraft End Poem Jessica’s first thought is that she’s alone in the bed; her second is that the washing machine is banging against the wall on spin cycle. But that can’t be right. She didn’t put a load of laundry on before bed. So what’s that thudding? She tosses the rumpled sheet aside and props herself up, blinking as the vacancy hits her with double force. Even in sleep she knows Matt is deployed, but where’s Gavin? She’s been letting him sleep in her bed this week because of his nightmares. Did he wake and return to his own?

She gets up, swaying a little on unsteady feet, her skin prickling in the air-conditioned room. Maybe he was cold. But he likes the AC, begs for her to turn it on even when they don’t need it. He’s more likely to just burrow into his threadbare security blanket—the one Matt brought home from his first tour in Afghanistan—than to leave when the room gets too chilly in the night.

The blanket is missing too, suggesting he’s not in the bathroom.

Jessica listens anyway, for a flush or the sound of water running in the pipes. The thudding that woke her has ceased, but she’s sure it was really there, not merely the remnant of a dream following her into the waking world like a mosquito slipping into the house on her carbon trail before she can shut the screen door behind her.

Real, but not the washer. So what was it?

Now she’s awake. And maybe the gooseflesh on her arms isn’t entirely from the temperature of the room.

She opens the bedroom door, letting the cold air out and prompting Cooper, their elderly Corgi, to perk up on his plush bed and utter a half-hearted growl. The dog’s hearing isn’t what it used to be, but the fact that Jessica is suddenly up and wafting stress pheromones is enough to make him take it on faith that something’s wrong. He used to put on more of a show over nocturnal noises when the man of the house was away, but lately he’s been slacking, leading Jessica to wonder if it’s because the dog senses that she’s become the pack leader. Right now, though, with that frost of dread blooming under her skin, she feels like anything but.

The thudding in the wall starts back up and she breaks into a run. Down the hall to Gavin’s room, Cooper barking at her heels.

She finds the bedroom door open, just a crack revealing a wedge of darkness beyond the reach of the hallway nightlight. She almost pauses at the threshold, the notion flitting through her racing mind that she should knock before entering. But he’s only ten—too young for privacy. And then she’s through the door into the darkened room, and what she finds there stops her in her tracks.

Gavin sits on the bed, his back to the wall, the security blanket draped over his head reminding her of a Halloween sheet ghost without the eye holes, his inscrutable face glowing through the finger-worn fabric, lit from below by the tablet resting in his lap. His body jerks with convulsions, the back of his head rapping against the wall, the mattress bouncing on its springs.

Jessica’s breath hitches in her chest. Cooper barks—a sharp sound that snaps her back into action—and then she’s on the bed, tugging the blanket off her son, afraid she’ll find him bleeding from his nostrils or his ears or, God forbid, his eyes, as if the radiation from the device in his lap could fry them in their sockets. An insane notion, but it comes to her readily this deep in the night, so close to her own troubled dreams.

The boy shudders in her arms as she untangles him, his forehead knocking against her temple.

Is he dreaming? Thrashing like the dog running in his sleep?

With arms under his shoulders and knees, she drags him away from the wall, the same way she moves him when he falls asleep in the middle of her bed during story time. Only now it’s not the dead weight of a sleeping boy, but a kicking thing that barely resembles him, fingers hooked into claws and eyes rolled back into his skull. She can see the whites in the murky dark by the faint glow of a streetlamp filtered through the curtains. She should have switched the light on when she entered, but now she’s afraid to let go of him. Something knocks against the floor—the iPad tumbling out of the tangled blanket.

An icy shimmer plays over the ceiling for a second. She catches a glimpse of black feathers tumbling across the glass before the magnetic case slaps shut with the familiar click.

Jessica realizes she’s trying to hug the tremors out of Gavin. A futile effort. She needs to stop and think, get a grip, or she’ll do the wrong thing. So far, all she’s accomplished is to stop him banging his head against the wall. The terror of helplessness, of not knowing what to do next is closing in, making it hard to breathe, and she curses Matt for being half a world away.

She lets go of the thrashing body and turns away from the bed, grazing something with her elbow as she rises and knocking the lamp from Gavin’s nightstand. She paws at the wall. “Shit, shit, shit…” Her fingers catch on the switch and the lamp comes to life on the floor, lighting the room from the wrong angle and splaying the silhouette of a plush penguin across the ceiling, the beak looming above them like the blade of a scythe. Gavin writhes on the bed in his pajama pants, chest bare, lips blue, drool glistening on his chin in the stark light. From his throat, a long, guttural sound escapes: CHORRRONZZZON.

She tilts his head back and probes the airway for an obstruction, flattening his curling tongue. The airway is clear, but she runs her hand over the sheet anyway, feeling for crumbs or clues to anything he might have swallowed. There’s nothing. He doesn’t snack in bed, and the years when he might have swallowed the sort of random toy part the labels are always warning about are far behind them.

Not choking. So, what is this? Something she won’t understand until a coroner finds it? She pushes that bright red possibility back down where it came from. Her fingers, twined in his hair, are tingling now. She realizes she’s not breathing enough either.

“God damn it, Matt.”

Her husband would know how to handle a seizure. Is that what this is? Gavin has never had one before.

She needs to call 911, but she’s afraid of leaving his side to grab her phone from the charging station on her nightstand.

“Breathe,” she tells herself.

Panic will not help him. She listens to that assertive voice—her daytime voice, the voice of her stronger self who knows how to handle a crisis even if she doesn’t know what to do for a seizure.

You need to make a dash for the phone.

She starts to relax her embrace and almost can’t do it; considers carrying him down the hall in her arms, bringing him with her to the phone, but that’s ludicrous. He’s too heavy.

But as she releases him, she realizes the convulsions have ceased. He’s breathing again, blinking, and smacking his lips. She can see his irises as she wipes the sweaty hair from his pale brow and feels the tickle of his eyelashes fluttering against the heel of her hand.

“Baby, are you okay? Are you all right? Say something, Gavin.”

Gavin’s eyes track to the side, following his roving hand over the tangle of bedding. Searching for his security blanket? His probing fingers grow more agitated, and for a moment Jessica is afraid another seizure is coming on. Or that the first one never ended, but just got stuck for a second like a glitchy video. Then she realizes what he’s groping for, and for reasons she doesn’t yet understand, the knowledge chills her.

“Where is it, Mama? Where’s the iPad?”