Dreaming.

I stood at a sink I hadn’t seen in years, looking down as I dried the slippery plate that I held between the old dishrag I clutched in my wet hands. Bracelets that lined my wrists were soapy and wet. Setting the plate on the old, used counter, I peered down at the floor. Yellow hexagons patterned the linoleum, the sheet of it smooth under my feet. I had never seen the plates before, plain white circles of porcelain.
My grandmother appeared from somewhere toward the back of the house, younger, smaller, but her eyes wild as they searched the room for something. Serena came in through the door, her eyes frantic and worried as they too searched. She screamed my name, making me drop the plate to the vinyl flooring, shattering it. “Run!” she was yelling at me, though I couldn’t figure out why. Pointing, she made me understand. I finally realized that my grandmother was brandishing a large knife, and she was coming for us.
Racing out the door we ran for the car, flinging open the doors and throwing ourselves inside. Grandma was standing at the top of the stairs to the open screen door. “Lock your door!” I was screaming again and again as I locked my own and Serena started the car.
Suddenly, Grandma was at the driver’s side door, opening it. “I thought I told you to lock your door!” I screamed and she pulled the door shut quickly and threw the car into reverse. We sped out of the driveway and down the road. Using the rag I still held in my shaking hands, I wiped the fogging windshield periodically until we came to a neighborhood I had never seen before. Cars and trucks lined the streets and clustered in yards as though the whole place was throwing a party. Finally, we came to a street that seemed less crowded and down it we turned. The last house on the right was void of and lights or people, though cars and trucks were parked haphazardly everywhere. Finding a decent place to park, we jumped out.
“It’s abandoned,” Serena said. “I just have to find a way to get in.”
As it turned out, we didn’t need to figure it out, the French doors in the back were open, and there was a light on in the kitchen. Only in a dream would a person not find that strange. Serena entered, telling me to wait for her approval before she left. After a few minutes, she didn’t call for me, and the butterflies in my stomach beat their little wings faster. Edging around the stucco on the bottom of the house, I crept toward the glass doors, through which I could see the kitchen, part of the living room and stairs, and the front door. People stood in the entryway, but I couldn’t find Serena, and leapt back in fear of being caught poking around in an abandoned home.
There were noises behind me, scaring me into doing something rash. I ran across the back of the house, to the far side, praying the people inside would be too busy to notice me. Stopping at the edge, I panted in low breaths. In the dark of the night, I couldn’t see anything but the patch of light spread across the lawn and the shadows of the group inside. Turning to run around the corner, something touched me, or rather I ran into it.
“Tibby!” a child yelled.
Confusion didn’t hit. My dream self must have known the child’s voice, and as I woke up, I did know it, but I couldn’t put a name to it.
“Is that what you’ve taken to calling me now?” I asked, smiling, though my heart was still racing.
The child led me back to the doors in the dark, never letting me see them. They led me in, and in a panic I lost my trust in the child. The group turned to look at me, but didn’t say anything. I spotted Serena among them and walked in that direction. The white tile of the kitchen turned to cream carpet that sank beneath my feet. Thoughts that it was probably once a beautiful house passed through my mind as I took in all the furniture left by the previous residents. Pine, mostly. Lightly colored wooden bookshelves and tables, pushed against the walls.
Where the group stood, on a lifted platform of floor, the carpet turned to Kelly green, and the carpeting continued into the room on the other side and up the stairs. Looking up the stairs, I stared into the face of someone I hadn’t wanted to see.
Then I woke up to a clock that shone 8:23.