There they were, all in a row, the empty shells of five human bodies, unconscious, unfeeling, unaware.

Their peacefulness was unsettling. Had they no sense of how vulnerable they were? In the dark corner a shadow moved, and I saw the brief glint of a blade.

No. Please, no.

Someone was in the room with the family.

The figure stood, knife raised in the moonlight. One by one he circled the beds, watching each slumbering face. First, the children, two boys and their infant sister, and then the parents. I felt his gaze as it bore into each of them; I was a helpless observer as he brushed the sharpened steel gently across their cheeks. Preparing his strike.

I had been there before! It was happening again!

This same recurring dream, meaning… no… I was dreaming, I had slipped, I was asleep. Wake up! Wake up!

I pulled myself back into awareness for the third or fourth time that night—each awakening was harder than the last. By now my fatigue was a dull pain, that old familiar misery.

But to sleep… is to die.