My Last Nightmare

I havenโ€™t had a really bad dreamโ€”a real nightmareโ€”since I was seven or eight years old. Before that I had terrible nightmares. Not frequently, but regularly enough that I remembered them. They terrified me; Iโ€™d wake up sweating, shivering, and sometimes crying. These stopped abruptly after I had a dream that started out as a …