Gabriella wanted to scream, to panic, and claw her way through her flesh. No sounds escaped. Something felt very wrong like waking up in unfamiliar place surrounded by familiar things. She wanted to wake up. This is the part of the dream where you would spring awake in cold sweats and a drumming chest thank full that it was only a dream. Instead she was stuck with the jerking feeling, the clamminess, and the absolute terror of being stuck in your own body. She could not move. She could not scream. She could not see, total darkness looking back at her. Sometimes she would feel things. Things like static, or something, someone poking at her skin, what felt like needles, and sometimes it felt like those needles were a million little needle legs that could bite, multiply and crawl.

She would give up on screaming or speaking, maybe she move or just wake herself. How does one move with deliberation? She thought. You think about walking or how to walk you just do. Baby steps like sitting up or crawling. She would have to do it step-by-step. She visualized her leg; long, slender, without hair and defined, without blemish like the rest of her body. No matter how much she thought the physical form never manifested. She only strained her mind. Maybe something smaller: a foot or a toe. She visualized a long foot. She shaped starting with an oval, elongating it with a slight curve on the inner left side the she attached five smaller similar figures on the ends, first two around the same height and the next three slowly sloping in height. When she satisfied that, yes, this is a foot. She tried lifting it. Nothing. She tried again. Nothing. It was as if it was absolutely weightless and without form yet very dense matter she could never hope to lift.

Gabriella wanted to give up. But she never gives up. She is the most relentless in the family and probably the wisest. She needed to think. If this was a dream; being aware, finding something off, should have been enough. What did she find? That she can’t move. She is basically paralyzed from head to toe. Is that right? Can she feel? No. Smell? No. hear. No. Is she in a comma? Did she get hurt? Somehow she’s knows without a doubt that those are false; she is perfectly fine. Maybe it’s not her dream and there is no control for to have. She refuse to believe that. Even if she was someone else creation she would be her own being, her own creation and therefor her own power. Maybe she just needed to believe that hard enough.

She just needed to be calm and aware. She is home. She is not alone. She is awake. She is awake? With this she is able to open her eyes, not open her eyes but see. She is able to see. There is other people around her; some she recognizes, many she doesn’t. All still and lifeless like dolls, but she is aware they are like her. Unaware that they are trapped inside their own shells. Everyone’s dressed extravagantly, don head to toe in lace, ribbons, buttons with an eerie amount of dust like forgotten statues forever stuck in a moment. Coming from behind a large man was two young men. If she could hear she would have noticed them sooner. One was taller, sharper features, short dense coils, thin, but muscular with loose clothing, familiar like reference you can’t place. The slightly shorter one was…Alex!? Her brother? They were holding hands somewhere between lovers and parental. The tall one was nearly leaning against Alex, so many emotions flickering through his features. Paying attention to the deep caramel of the tall one’s skin, similar to her fathers she realized the two entities were talking and they were getting closer to her.

Her heart began to race. What if they were the ones that did this? What if they realized that she wasn’t like the rest of them? What would she do? She cannot run. The tall one was three steps away and loomed over her, he reached his hand out to touch her taking another step. What can she do? Could he see her chest? Was her chest moving? He began to cry. Even with his angler features he looked like a child playing dress up. She knew he didn’t want to her, but he had the power to. His hands was about to touch her head. She mentally held her breath.

“I love you.” She heard Alex say to the boy as he stopped him.

“Gabby, hey Gabby wake up.” Gabriel was shaking her. She could feel her body and the thick layer of sweat that blanket her body and she could open her eyes. She cried in relief. “It’s just a dream.” He picked her up and carried her into the bath still in her night gown.

But it wasn’t. It was a memory.