Tyler had woken up in fright. He sat up and looked around to see that he was on the floor in a pool of sweat. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen.

“What was that?” He thought to himself. “What was that dream? If that was a dream…”

He was hyperventilating and was sat there in complete confusion trying to figure what was going on. He knew that the dream he had or whatever it was that he saw wasn’t real, that wasn’t what happened when he was seventeen; it was supposed to have been a different outcome of events. Maybe something happened in his mind that caused him to think like that or maybe he was having another mental breakdown? He wasn’t sure as to what was going on.

Kaiya walked out of her room and was stretching, signifying that she had just woken up. Tyler looked around after seeing her realize that he was in her apartment and that was in fact dreaming. That was a relief to him because he felt that nothing had happened and that everything was supposed to be alright.

“Good morning,” Kaiya said happily. “How’d you sleep?”

Tyler finally composed himself and got his thoughts together.

“I didn’t get that much sleep; I had a rough night I guess.” He said.

“Oh, didn’t something happen in your dreams?”

“Yeah, two things happened actually. I think I had an episode of sleep paralysis and then I had this crazy nightmare on top of that. I couldn’t explain it, but it had something to do with Desi, Andrea, and Elise.”

“What do you mean? Did the dream mean anything?”

“Yeah, it skipped ahead to when I was seventeen. And I had the same case of sleep paralysis when I had woken up. I was on the floor again like in the first flashback, but Desi didn’t come into my room and wake me up this time.”

“Oh, how was she? Was she any older?”

“Yeah, she was around eight or nine. And we were at Andrea’s house. But when I got up to check on Desi, she acted very weird and was very hostile towards me. The only thing she said was ‘get away from me’ and then pushed me out of the bathroom and slammed the door. When I went to ask her what was wrong, all she said was get away from me. Even before that altercation, she was in the bathroom doing her hair, and even then, her hair looked very different; like someone had gone and did a really shitty good cutting her hair. And when I called her name, she ignored me. I went to call her name again; she ignored me. That’s when I went up to her and that’s when she exploded. It was really weird.”

Kaiya sat down on the couch. However, she was very confused about the situation at hand.

“What was that dream supposed to signify? Why was that? What caused him to have that dream? Surely, it had to have been from watching the news report about those two children.” She thought.

“So, what do you think that means?” She asked.

“I don’t know actually; I can’t wrap my head around it. I’m just glad that it’s over.” Tyler said.

“You mentioned sleep paralysis, what was that about?”

“That, I don’t know where or why that happened. All I remember was that I opened my eyes and heard a voice, but I couldn’t move my body. Only my eyes, then I looked to the right to see that the only light was the TV, but it was just static. Then the voice came into my vision and there was a body; it looked like Andrea’s body, however, there was no face. Maybe it was hard to see because of the static, but I couldn’t tell. Then it went it black, and I woke up on the floor in Andrea’s house.”

“That sounds like a hyper-realistic dream. I’m surprised that you had those two things back-to-back. Do you think that they’re connected to each other?”

“They can’t be, it just doesn’t make sense as to how they would.”

Tyler got up and sat on the couch next to Kaiya. His face was riddled with confusion, the whole situation was just flat-out confusion.

But there was one thing that wasn’t explained or that made any sense.

“Apparently, in the dream, I had talked to a woman named Natalie Akane. Now that might not mean anything, but I just thought that I’d share that. She probably doesn’t even exist, to be honest. But whatever. Towards the end of the dream, I started to second guess myself and started to have a mental breakdown or an anxiety attack, one of the two. And I started saying that everything that I saw was a lie, that nothing was true, and that Desi wasn’t hurt. Elise didn’t hold the lighter to her face and didn’t say anything to her, Andrea wasn’t after us and trying to hurt us. It was all so weird and didn’t make any sense whatsoever. And also, I thought I saw Desi in the room that I was in, she said that she knew that I couldn’t save her and that she knew she was going to die or something like that. It was hard to believe, but when I looked up to see if she was there, she had disappeared. And that’s when I blacked out and woke up here.”

Why was Tyler hallucinating in a dream? And why did he fall apart before he blacked out? That was one question that didn’t make sense to Kaiya at all. Most of the time, people don’t hallucinate in dreams, they wake up paranoid or thinking that someone is watching them. But in her experience, she hadn’t heard of anyone hallucinating in their dreams. Maybe it was because she didn’t have that much experience in that field, however, she was for certain that she possessed so kind of knowledge about the subject.

“So, do you think that all of what you saw was a lie?” She asked.

She knew that she had to be cautious with her words, she didn’t want Tyler to potentially have a mental breakdown in reality like he did in his dream. But she felt that he wouldn’t do that, however, she did remember reading about him having a mental breakdown at the child protective services building and also overhearing the police officers and social workers saying the same thing. So, at that point, she was very conflicted about what to do.

“Surely, it couldn’t have been. I know what I saw.” He said. “Desi is with Andrea, surely she has to be.”

Tyler started to think about the news report that he saw the day before and was thinking about if that child that was murdered really could have been Desi. But he had to keep reminding himself that that wasn’t the case and that she was perfectly fine, or at least still alive and that Andrea, although an evil person in his eyes, wouldn’t kill her. What reason would Andrea have to kill Desi? There would have been nothing to gain from killing her. It didn’t make sense to Tyler. The other main concern was his mother and her physical well-being. She was still very sick and was being neglected by Andrea because of the appointments that she had to go to, and Andrea also saying that his mother was a grown woman and that she didn’t need to go to those appointments.

“Do you think that Elise was as bad as you thought she was?” Kaiya asked.

“What makes you say that?”

“The only things that she did were allegedly talk to you, and then wrote you a letter about the night before. I mean, maybe I’m just mistaken, but that’s not grounds to accuse someone of being a psychopath.”

“I’m not saying that she’s a psychopath, not really. But what I’m saying is that her behavior was very suspicious to me. Why would she go through all of that trouble to mess with me psychologically? There was no reason for her to do that. If she wasn’t guilty of messing with Desi, then she wouldn’t have done those things to me.”

Kaiya knew that she needed to get further information about that dream that Tyler had, although it may not have meant much. Maybe it could lead to a change in memories.

“Would you like some tea or something?” She said trying to assess the situation.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Tyler said.

She got up and went into the kitchen and put some water in a pot on the stove.

“Surely, something happened in that dream to make him feel that way.” She thought. “Could it have had something to do with the sleep paralysis? Surely not, that would have absolutely ridiculous. But it’s not out of the question.”

After about ten minutes, the tea was ready. She put the water in two cups and put tea bags and sugar into the cups and brought them out for Tyler and herself. She sat back down on the couch next to Tyler and took a sip of her tea.

“So, what about Elise in the dream?” She started. “What was so different about her? We can start with her first.”

Tyler took a sip of his tea and started pondering on what her question was. What her aim was, what she was trying to achieve with finding out about that dream.

“Well, Elise in the dream was pretty much the same person that she was in the first flashback that I told you about. Very shady and suspicious. However, in this flashback or dream, she was very hostile. Just like how Desi was. All I remembered was that I asked Andrea about how my mother was doing and then Elise said that I should have gone to see her prior to coming downstairs. So, I responded by saying that she didn’t need to say that or something along those lines. And then she stood up and slammed her hands on the table and said, ‘who the fuck do you think you are?’ and stormed out of the kitchen.”

Kaiya was not expecting to hear such details about Elise, let alone some much detail about the dream since there were a lot of things that allegedly happened in it.

“So, she just exploded on you because you retaliated to her initial comment?” She asked confused.

“That’s correct, it didn’t make much sense to me either.”

“Did anything else happen with her?”

“Yeah, so after she stormed out the kitchen; I asked Andrea what the hell that was about and she too got upset with me as well for hounding her on why everyone was acting weird. So, I got up and went upstairs to go and talk to my mother and that was when I happened to see Elise just sitting in the corner of her room with her back to the door. Her door was slightly cracked, so I peeked in on what she was doing. I wasn’t planning on standing there to watch her, but she just looked so suspicious. What I saw was that she was just sitting there like I said, however, I could barely make out her muttering to herself things like “they can’t find you” and “they can’t hear you”. Anything else was hard to hear if she even said anything else.”

“Well, that was weird. Did you have any ideas as to why she was acting so weird?”

“Nope, I couldn’t figure it out. All I remembered is that I just happened to get lost in thought and accidentally leaned in on her door and it creaked. And then she snapped around and saw me standing there, and then all I saw was her just sprinting to the door and literally slamming it.”

“She just stood up and ran to the door and slammed it? She didn’t say anything?”

“Nope, she may have said something, but I was too concerned with trying to figure out what had just happened as opposed to what she had said.”

They both sat there in confusion as to what those events were supposed to mean. It just seemed like a random freak accident or a typical reaction, but it was still a dream in Tyler’s eyes. So, it didn’t mean that much to him. But in the back of his mind, he was still superstitious.

“Were you able to talk to your mother or Desi at all in the dream?” Kaiya asked.

“No, I wasn’t. After that event, Andrea came to see what had happened and then asked me what was going on. I told her that Elise had been sitting in the corner and that Andrea should have done something about it.”

“Was she going to?”

“I had no idea. All she did was knock on Elise’s door and asked to speak to her. She unlocked the door and we walked in to find her lying on her bed and just staring up and the ceiling doing nothing. Her TV was off, she wasn’t on her phone, nothing. Just lying there in total silence.”

“Then what happened?”

“Andrea sat on her bed and asked Elise about what she was doing in the corner, to which Elise said that she wasn’t doing anything. That’s when Andrea told her that I had said that she was standing in the corner of the room and that she should’ve done something about it. Then suddenly, screamed that I was lying and then proceeded to attack me. She was screaming that I was lying, and I didn’t understand why she was attacking me. I happened to catch a glimpse of Andrea just standing there not doing anything, I was expecting her to step in and maybe do something about her daughter, but she didn’t.”

“Did you fight back?”

“No, I just tried to restrain her from hitting me. That was when I threw her off of me and then she hit her head on the corner of her dresser and it knocked her unconscious.”

Kaiya was not expecting such a rash confrontation. In her eyes, there was no reason to attack Tyler when he was just looking out for her and was concerned about her well-being.

“Did Andrea say anything about what had happened?” Kaiya asked.

“She did.” He said. “She yelled at me saying what was my problem and why did I do what I did.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told her that her daughter had literally just attacked me and that I had to defend myself from her since she didn’t do anything to stop Elise from attacking me. Then after that, I walked out of her room, and then it went all black and that was all I remembered for that day.”

“That day? What do you mean that day?”

“I had apparently blacked out after that whole encounter and woke up the next day.”

“Oh, was there anything out of the ordinary or something?”

“No, not in that moment. I got up like I normally did and started to walk out of the door, then out of the corner of my eye I saw a note on the floor next to where I had woken up at.”

“Wait, you were on the floor again? How’d you end up there?”

“I had no idea, after I left Elise’s room; it went all black for me.”

Kaiya had a hard time believing that Tyler had just blacked out after dealing with Elise and what she had done. In her mind, something happened to Tyler prior to him blacking out. But that could have just been a stipulation on her part. But it wasn’t a thought that couldn’t have been ignored either.

“Do you think that something happened to cause you blackout for the rest of that day?” She asked curiously.

Tyler took another long sip of his tea and thought about the question and internally asked himself the same thing. Since it was a dream, it was hard to go back and remember what had exactly happened. Because at that point, he would have been making up scenarios and events in his head.

Which sounded like what he had been doing the entire time.

Just a thought.

“I don’t think anything, or anyone could have caused me to blackout that day. It just went blank after that, that’s all I can say on that.”

Kaiya knew that she had to accept that fact and didn’t want to push the issue further.

She took another sip of her tea and started to think of more questions to ask Tyler about the dream. Like what happened next, what about his sister? What about Elise…

Wait, what about that note that he was talking about?

“What about the note?” She said raising her finger as if she just had an idea. “Did it say anything suspicious or anything?”

Tyler looked at Kaiya with a great deal of confusion. He wasn’t really thinking about the note, he had a feeling that he would have been asked about it, but he wasn’t expecting such a big reaction about it either.

“Well, the note was from Elise again and it said that she was just disappointed that I had told her mother about what I saw and that I was a liar and that she wasn’t slitting her wrists or talking to herself. Which made no sense to me because I didn’t mention her slitting her wrists nor talking to herself. But in the last bit of the note, she said that I should go and check on my family for some reason.” Tyler said.

“Did you do that?”

“I did, I put the note down and went to Desi’s room. But when I walked into her room, she wasn’t there. Which was odd, so I checked the bathroom, and she wasn’t there either. I went to check on my mother in the hopes that she was in there with my mother, however, my mother wasn’t in her room either.

That detail scared Kaiya. Tyler had told her that she was very fragile and couldn’t really defend herself, so the fact that she was gone, and Desi wasn’t there either was a very big concern to her.

“Did they leave a note saying that there were going anywhere?” She asked.

“No, they didn’t.”

“What about Andrea and Elise, where were they?”

“Once I saw that my mother and Desi weren’t in their rooms or in the bathrooms; I walked into the upstairs living room to see if anyone was in there. And to my surprise, no one was there. I checked all over the house, and no one was there. It was like they just up and left.”

Kaiya remembered the note and tried to find any hidden messages in the words.

“The note did mention that you should’ve checked on your family, do you think that Andrea and Elise had something to do with that?” She asked.

Tyler at that moment had an inkling suspicion that what Kaiya said made a lot of sense. The note did say that he should’ve gone to check on his family, however, by the time that he had woken up, they were already gone.

So, the question remained; where did they go and what happened to Desi and his mother?