That Girl Possessed;

It is a well known fact that when I was young I was one of the most bizarre children you could ever imagine.
Besides all of the obvious stories that I have shared for the entertainment of everyone around me, I remembered something else. I was trying to fall asleep last night, but I was having a great deal of trouble. I couldn't help but remember my early fears.

When I used to try to fall asleep I would get extremely anxious and think about what everyone else in the world was doing. I was too young to understand what different time zones were, so I feared that I was going to be the only one left awake in the entire world, and for whatever reason this was the scariest thing I could think of. I would toss and turn and cry to myself, and when it got to be too much I would wander down the stairs to where my parents were watching tv. I would go down mainly to make sure they were still sitting comfortably, because if they were getting ready to also go to bed I knew that my greatest fear would become a reality. Unfortunately, I would go down several times, and even if I tried my best to be sneaky, they would always hear me and tell me to go back to bed and fall asleep.
When I could sense their frustration around my fifth or sixth trip down the stairs, I would always resort to the same Master Plan. I would take my security blanket - white and fluffy, with a yellow trim and bears with balloons - and I would throw it over my head. As I walked down the stairs, my heart swelled with confidence and I would moan softly - like a ghost.

I was so sure that my parents would be terrified with the spirit moving down the stairs that they would simply feel relief when they realized it was me, out of bed, again. I did this every time I couldn't sleep, and for me, this was quite often.
It was usually after this brave attempt down the stairs to frighten my parents into feeling sorry for me that my dad would get up and walk with my back up to my room. He would tell me to go and wait in my room as he walked into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. He would come into my room a few seconds later with a spoon and an unmarked bottle, and sit on the bed. Assuring me that this was "nighttime medicine' to help me fall asleep, he would pour it onto the spoon and I would thankfully swallow it, already feeling it working through my system and making my eyelids droop.

This happened at least twice a week for at least two years. Whenever I would travel down the stairs as Cassie the Ghost, my dad would take the bottle out of the medicine cabinet and give me the cure.

It was only quite recently that my dad informed me the 'nighttime medicine' that cured me of my insomnia was nothing more than a cleaned out cough syrup bottle full of water.