33/

Edith wakes up from a nightmare. The apartment is quiet and dark, and for some time she lies still and plays the dream over. It’s always the same one. In it, she’s young: seven, she thinks, maybe eight. She’s always dressed the same, in the same yellow dress with the white floral pattern. There are two men there, and she’s holding one of their hands, and even though she always wakes up before anything happens she knows what is about to happen is the life-defining kind of bad.

Edith grasps over the side of her bed for the water bottle she keeps on the floor. Her mouth is dry, and she drinks until it’s empty and she begins to feel her heartbeat slow. Through the open window she can hear someone rummaging in the trash below, probably looking for cans, and she stares at the ceiling and listens to whoever it is murmur words she can’t make out.

When the initial shock of fear has started to wear off and the knot in her stomach stops clenching quite so hard, she thinks about the dream. She’s not quite sure when it started — she thinks she had it in high school, but it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between her brain sending a signal of familiarity and reality.

After an hour she gets up and turns a light on in the living room, debating if it’s early enough that she can smoke some weed to lure sleep back and still be sober for work. Deciding against it, she ends up sitting on the ground with her knees up. Hugging them, in the silence and secret of the night, she thinks of what she knows but can’t admit.