Samantha's Dream

You are sitting in your parent's den. It is their old house, the one you grew up in. Mom would hang up your art projects from first grade every year. Even during high school.

You are reading in your dad's chair. There was always something exciting and forbidden about it. You never played with his gun or any of his police equipment, but you treasured that recliner.

There is a noise from outside. A car horn. Sudden, swift honks. Honks seeking attention. You put the book down and look outside. The back porch is replaced with a parking lot - a lone car sits on the cracked asphalt. Though it is not a model you recognize, you know your family is inside. The faces are blurry but you can see the hands pounding on the glass. You can hear the muted screams.

They are surrounded by wolves. Four, maybe five. Those little details always shift when you remember the dream, but the wolves are there in a circle, carefully. You see them lick their lips. One jumps on the hood and howls.

Your hands yank at the patio door - the same door that you ran into on your fifth birthday. But it won't budge. Both hands pull as hard as they can but the door will not open. You start to pound on the glass as hard as you can. Your voice is ragged from yelling for your family. Yelling over the growls, the snarls. Your fists pound and pound and go numb and then hot and then wet.

The glass tumbles down and you are through before the echo of the shatter dies in your ears. The wolves turn to look at you as one. Your hands, broken, with shards stitched in your fingers, stretch out showing you mean no harm. The lead wolf, the alpha, comes down off the hood. The other wolves part as she stalks closer. Her mouth is closed but you see her eyes. So many things have looked into her eyes before dying.

She steps closer, surely within leaping distance of your throat. You glance back at your family's car. The glass is dark, like a limousine. You can;t see them anywhere but before you can move, you feel something strange.

Her tongue is licking your hands. The wolf laps up every drop and you can't move.

You wake up with that feeling on your hands. You know your hands are just sweating, but every night, the feeling is what wakes you up and it just won't go away.

You agreed to take a double at The Beaver Lodge in the hopes that tomorrow night, when you slept, you would be too tired to dream.