“NO, no, no! Don’t take away my iPhone!” shouted the teenage boy in his sleep.

Hearing his voice, his mum rushed to him.

“Tim, wake up! You must be having a nightmare,” said his mum. He told her that he was indeed having a nightmare that a robbery was taking place in their house and that the robbers took away even his iPhone. He swiftly looked for his iPhone and found it on the table near his bed.

“Relax, honey!” said his mum. “That was just a bad dream! Everything is fine . . . except the exhaust fan of our kitchen. But that’s okay.”

During breakfast, his siblings laughed at him for being scared by a dream. His dad said that he must have been reading many detective novels.

“That is why you had the nightmare,” said dad. “Start reading some of Mark Twain’s novels. You may enjoy them and perhaps get rid of such nightmares.”

“Dad, I am not reading any kind of novels. Not even detective ones,” replied Tim.

After the breakfast, Tim went to his school. He could not find his best friend, Nick, anywhere and came to know that he was absent that day. He tried to call him but found his phone to be switched off. He thought, “Maybe, he’s just having a day off to relax and play Zoo Tycoon.”

As Nick remained absent even for the next three days, Tim became worried and visited his house, only to find that robbers had struck their house four days ago. “The evil robbers came in through one of the open windows,” explained Nick. “They robbed us of our cash, jewellery, laptops and even our cellphones.”

“You’ll be all right, Nick,” said Tim.

Tim was shocked and later described the serious incident to his family.

“This can also happen to us, dad,” he said.

“Come on, we’re living in the safest housing society,” said his dad. “No robber can dare break in!”

For the next two weeks, everything remained normal and Tim did not experience any nightmares.

But one night at about 01:30am, Tim was disturbed by some loud noise coming from their storeroom upstairs.

There was no light. “Oh, load shedding!” exclaimed Tim, as he turned on the torch in his iPhone. “But thank you, Steve Jobs, for making such a multitasking device!”

Though he was quite scared, he ran upstairs. Finally, he reached the storeroom and started looking around to find out what was wrong. He searched every nook and corner but found nothing.

Frustrated and annoyed, he walked out of the room and descended the stairs. He found his mum and dad standing there.

“What are you doing here?” said Tim.

“We heard some noise coming from upstairs,” said his mum.

Tim explained that he had heard some noise too, and had searched the storeroom thoroughly but found nothing wrong.

“Something must be wrong!” his dad laughed. “Like you, your mum was so scared. Son, it is our turn to search for the source of the noise.”

The two went upstairs. Then he heard a scary scream.

He ran upstairs in a shocked state, thinking that there must be some robber holding his parents at gunpoint. Tim saw the terrified face of his mum. “Wh-what happened, mum?” asked Tim.

“Relax, Timmy!” said his dad. “There was a cat here which ran out of the room after your mum scared it with the flash light.” His dad added that the cat must have come in through the window which was a little open and had no insect screen on the outside.

Heaving a sigh of relief, they all came downstairs to look for the naughty cat. They entered granny’s room. And the cat was right on the table near granny’s bed! He was about to hurl one of his slippers at the cat when his dad stopped him by whispering, “Grandma will be awakened by the noise.”

All of a sudden, the cat jumped down from the table and ran out of the room.

Tim’s siblings were up too. They all chased the cat until it reached the kitchen. Now Tim was again scare the cat, but just then it jumped up on the top of one of the cupboards and jumped out through the hole that the missing exhaust fan had left.

“The lazy electrician,” said his mum, “has not returned our exhaust fan even after three days.”

“But the robber has left,” said Tim, laughing, “without robbing us of anything! We can be happy!”

The rest of the family also enjoyed a good laugh.