Night Terrors

My family used to camp at the Minnesota State Fair every year. My grandparents would drive out to the fairgrounds in a camper, and meet us there. Half of us would sleep inside on beds, the other half would sleep outside in a tent.

One year -- I don’t remember which, I was settling down to sleep in the tent. I was restless, and despite the long day of walking and stuffing ourselves with greasy food, I had trouble falling asleep. The lights from the campground cast strange shadows on our tent. We heard footsteps crunching along the gravel road: fellow campers walking to the water tower to brush their teeth or shower.

The ground was uncomfortable, but after well over an hour of tossing and turning, I was the last family member to fall asleep.

I awoke in the middle of the night thanks to a tickling sensation on my face. I touched it, and it moved. I became wide awake, and I brushed the thing off of my face. It fell to the side of the tent. I looked over, and saw a dead ant curled into a little ball.

I didn’t panic. It was just an ant, and I knew that Minnesota didn’t have any really dangerous species of ants. Still, I looked all around my pillow and in my sleeping bag, just to be sure there weren’t any more.

Slowly, I fell back asleep.

The next time I woke up, I was sure that I had felt that tickling again. I wiped my head, but it didn’t stop. There were ants on my face, crawling around and in my ears. And they were crawling over my sleeping bag, and crossing my pillow a couple at a time.

If I brushed the ants to the side, they were still next to my pillow, and they just came back.

I felt claustrophobic, and didn’t understand how my father and brother, also in the tent, were able to sleep peacefully. The night seemed to go on forever. I lay back down, but then imagined all of the ants I didn’t clear away. So, I would sit back up, and stare at my pillow. Every blurry spec that moved across my eye could be another ant. I watched for minutes upon minutes. When I cleaned one side, I flipped the pillow over and cleaned the next. Then, since I didn’t want to put the pillow back down, I just clutched it to my chest and tried to breathe.

The night was long, but I eventually fell asleep, and didn’t wake up again until morning. In the light of day, I looked at the floor of the tent, and at the space around my sleeping bag and pillow. But there wasn’t a single ant, alive or dead, to be found.

In the years since then, I’ve had similar terrors, but none nearly as intense. Sometimes I think there’s something on my bed, or someone else in the room. I once pulled the sheets off of an old roommates’ mattress while he was sleeping, because I thought there was something on top of him.

Now, I’m able to recognize these terrors shortly after they happen. In the moment, all I feel is a sense of paranoia and claustrophobia. After the fact, they just make me laugh.