within

there was a room, familiar but impossible to place in any specific context. the furniture was familiar also, but there appeared to be something off in the combination of them with this particular room  - like the chairs and the tables and the pale blue curtains hanging in front of the mute window would have been taken from somewhere else and inserted here, in a room that should have held some other kind of furnishing items. J thought she recognised the big table under which she was currently hiding from the home of her childhood friend, but on the other hand, she didn't remember ever actually being under that table, so how could she have known how it looked like from this point of view?

the child was crawling somewhere outside of her field of vision, she heard the ruffle of his clothes. J knew she was supposed to be looking after him, but at the moment the birdcage in front of her was much more important; and the small colourful bird inside it, so small it fit inside her cupped palms, for some reason it was crucial that it would not escape through the holes of the cage. that stupid child had broken the cage and now J was busy trying to cover the holes with her hands, so the bird wouldn't escape - but it did, there it went again, and she had to catch it and put it back inside the cage. the bird objected vigorously, she felt it flapping its small wings against her palms; but she had to put it back, absolutely she did.

it had all started to feel rather bizarre, so she took the cage and left her hiding place under the table. the woman with purple hair, sitting in the corner of the room paid no attention to her, or to the crawling baby in the corner for that matter. J placed the cage in the middle of the room and glanced down to see whether the little bird was still there. she saw that the holes in the cage where much bigger now, but instead of the bird out came some kind of small mammals. they could have been rats but they were not, the were sleek and long, perhaps they were minks? uuf, she thought, i hope they didn't eat the bird. but the bird was still there, so she just started to pull the minks (if they were minks) out from the cage, one by one, their glistening eyes staring at her intently as she did. there were so much of them, too much to be honest - no way they could have all fit in there.

this was getting rather silly. perhaps it was a dream?

J looked up to the purple-haired woman who was now standing in front of her. "can you grow a pair of horns? so that i know if this is a dream?" she asked of her, reasoning with herself that although things did seem rather genuine, if the lady she knew from somewhere would grow horns, surely it would be a dream.

without hesitation she replied, "like this you mean?" and grew a pair of horns.

it was a stunning realisation - being in a dream - and J sprung on her feet. "marvellous!" she shrieked. "it's a dream, we can go and fly!" and barged out of the room.

.

waking up felt as if falling through something; and the feeling of regret of not being allowed to stay in the dream was tangible and heavy, heavier than her consciousness falling through the non-existent matter. grey things around her everywhere, as if scattered clouds, and she sank through it like a stone cast in water - the experience was fast, but enough for the feeling to register.

and then darkness, and the awareness of being in a bed. not in the one she went to sleep in, but somewhere else, somewhere unrecognisable; and next to the bed, in the black space around the bed, an outline of a person. sitting there, as if part of the darkness; like the dark would have materialised. still, unmovable figure, a mere silhouette of a being but yet bearing such presence; all the night horrors of her childhood condensed into one. 

watching her in her sleep; controlling her dreams. hovering.

and then she fell again, and this time the darkness was real, and the bed was her own. the racing of her heart and the fast pace of her breath, the grip of horror around her chest - they dissolved as her consciousness cleared from the dream, blended into the darkness around her so that when she was finally fully awake they were only a faint memory of something that once happened. 

and there was no one sitting next to her that she could see.