The room was pitch black, and the only thing Mary could see was a thin line of light under her bedroom door. She was wide awake, curled up on her side and facing the door from under the covers. She stared at the crack of light until it started to blur and become animated within her vision, expanding and contracting in size and shape.

The rest of the house was quiet and the tension of listening and watching the light kept her motionless. The light turned into a star and diamond pattern, like sunlight reflecting off the surface of a lake.

Mary imagined herself floating on water and felt the gentle swells moving her side to side. Her head laid back, her ears partially submerged, caused  sounds to become muffled and distant. The motion of the water relaxed her mind.

She saw herself floating on the surface from above and hundreds of flashing reflections surrounded her body. Her night shirt unbuttoned at the bottom exposed  her mid-section where droplets of water ran across her taught stomach and down her sides into the clear lake.

There was a small wooden dock nearby and the swells breaking on the support piers made a hollow walloping sound which was getting louder and closer. She tried to raise her head to look and when she opened her eyes she was floating right below the dock where a silhouette of a man stared down at her.

She squinted from the bright sunlight behind him and the light turned into a  bare bulb hanging low in the hallway with the mans silhouette framed in  her open bedroom door. He moved quickly into her room closing the door, and plunging the room into blackness.

Mary tried not to breathe and felt a vibration of movement close to her face before feeling a pressure which pulled her covers off, the material slipping through her clenched fists with ease. She jerked her head violently away from the door and her forehead pressed against something cold.

Mary woke from the dream with her head against the train car window. She was disoriented like a small child on the first day of school. Her knuckles white from clutching the shabby blanket she had found in the overhead compartment.

She looked out her window and tried to shake-off the dream, and couldn’t help noticing the stark contrast of her dark dream with the brilliant sunshine and pine forests passing just outside her compartment.