In Progress

            Not the want but the incessant voice in her head prompted her to move from St. Sebastian and back to her hometown at the end of the summer in the midst of one of the busiest times for Chancellor Falls. After six years away and with not an inkling she held onto a subconscious desire to return home, Marissa McMurray found it curious to be overcome by the longing to return. Curiously as well, she not only learned on the last day of last month that the Executive Assistant would be taking on her duties as Associate Vice-President for the university, but her apartment building was being torn down to make room for a car park.

            Everything that happens, happens for a reason.

            That was the reason she'd listened to the voice instead of accepting the VP's offer of an alternative position and finding other living accommodations.

            She folded the flaps on the last packing box and turned in for the night. Too tired even to say her prayers, she fell into a deep sleep. In the jet-black that was her dream, a hooded figure advanced toward her.

"One more step and I'll scream," she said and looked into the surrounding naked darkness  for someone to help her.

            He laughed. "Go ahead. There's no one to hear you."

            "You don't have to do this," she said, knowing instinctively his intent.

            "Do what?" he asked.

            "Rape me."

            He leaned his head back and guffawed. "If I wanted sex, you would come to me willingly."

            No, she wouldn't. "What do you want then? I have no money." To keep him in view, she turned with him as he walked around her.

            "I don't want anything from you. In fact, I want to give you something."

            "I can't imagine what you have that I'd want."

            He laughed again. "No? We shall see," he said and lowered his face to hers.

She realized then the hooded figure was a skeleton.

            Marissa's screams woke her. She sprang upright and examined her bedroom in dawn's light. Satisfied no one lurked in the darkened recesses of the room, she took a moment to calm herself, then threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She blinked away the fuzziness of sleep and looked at the bedside clock. The red digital numbers said six-eighteen. She wanted to get an early start, not this early, but early.

            Fragments of her dream focused in her memory—darkness as thick and black as tar; silence so loud her ears ached; the skeleton who spoke with an English accent.

Dream experts claim every dream bore a meaning.