Nightmares of a Two-Year Old’s Father

Cries for Help from the Sleep Deprived Recesses Of My Mind

Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash

It Lives

I’m nursing my morning coffee on the couch, when into the room slithers the Very Hungry Caterpillar.

It’s three feet tall. It moves like a big slinky, revealing translucent thin skin in between the rings through which you can faintly discern internal organs. There are intestines filled with poop emojis and a heart covered in glitter.

Its mouth opens wide and closes with a mixture of hunger and irritation, the way I do when I discover a child-flung piece of peanut butter sandwich behind my computer. It has precisely ten sharp teeth, because ten is the biggest best number in existence.

Slowly it intones: “ON MONDAY IT ATE THROUGH ONE APPLE….”

I choke on my coffee.

I have no apples in the house. Only apple sauce.

Frozen-geist

The neighborhood has emptied into the streets in confusion. All our phones appear to have broken at once- they will only display a blank screen and play “Let it Go” over and over. What I wouldn’t give for this damned block of plastic to let me play Candy Crush one more time.

As we beg and plead with our devices, we notice a trembling chill in the air, as…