You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning but you’re not fully awake, and something happens, then you fall back asleep. When you wake back up you can’t remember if whatever it was actually happened or it was part of your dream. Or sometimes you’re still asleep, and you dream that your alarm went off, or that someone came into your room to tell you something, and then when you wake up you swear it happened, but it was just a dream.

I hate when that happens, because sometimes I have a really hard time with that, and I truly cannot tell if something is a dream or not because it is so clear, and unlike other dreams everything that is happening is plausible. No third grade teachers building a snow man with you in August, no opening the bathroom door to find the Easter bunny display at the mall, just normal things.

Well, not normal, because I suppose it isn’t normal to walk in on your fiancé having sex with someone else, but I’m sure that happens more in real life than building a snowman in August with your third grade teacher.

I woke up in a sweat. I gasped for air and squeezed my comforter tight in my fists. Vague details slowly started creeping in my heavy eyes fell and I slipped back into the dream.

I am standing in an empty hallway focusing on the chipped paint surrounding the view hole in the door.

“Are you sure?” He asks me as he inserts the key. I’m nodding, and the door swings open, but I shut my eyes. I can’t bring myself to look inside. I hear shouting and the thud of a chair that hit the ground.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” She explaining with a shake in her voice, gripping the white sheet, pulling it closer to her body. She’s stepping backward away from the bed, and stops when she backs into the chair.

I look to my left to see his burning face. My eyes look at nothing but him as he enters the room. He hits the wall he walks past with his left hand as he continues farther into the room.

I cannot breathe.

I lean my right shoulder against the door frame, afraid I might collapse as the image before me sinks in.

There is a single bed in the center of the room. The sheets are torn off, and the comforter lays crumpled up on the floor at the foot of the bed. My eyes move from the comforter on the ground to the chair that had been knocked over seconds before. A pair of jeans once hung over the back of the chair, but now are sprawled out on the floor.

My eyes fall on a pair of red polished toes and partially exposed legs. I follow her legs up to find her standing wrapped in a sheet. She is biting her bottom lip. She starts to cry as we make eye contact.

My heart is pounding loud enough I’m sure she can hear it.

I shut my eyes. My left hand finds its way up to my face and covers my eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whisper.

I look up when I hear him yelling. “Does it fucking look like they’re kidding?”

“I haven’t done anything!” I shout back at him. My voice waivers and I look down feeling all of my self esteem flee.

“I know!” He screams back with anger.

“Why are you screaming at me?” I yell at him. I look up and our eyes meet.

“I’m not fucking yelling at you,” he says much quieter.

I watch him as he turns back to the man who has sat down on the bare bed. He too is wrapped in sheets. I cannot make out what he is saying to him.

I feel dizzy.

I take a step into the room, and quietly shut the door behind me. I lean backwards until my back rests on the door behind me, then slowly my body slides down the door until I am sitting against the door hugging my knees. With my right hand I slip off one of my flip flops. A second later it leaves my hand with great force.

“What the fuck?” The other man shouts after being hit with the flip flop. While he is still looking at me I take off my other shoe and throw it at him. This time with much more force. I watch as this one too hits him.

He’s trying to get up, but he is stopped. He’s being shoved back onto the bed. I silently watch as the man sitting on the bed is thrown onto his back. The man standing is violently shaking him, screaming into his face, then out of nowhere starts punching the man on the bed.

I look to the girl standing behind the knocked over chair. She is screaming as the boys fight, but does not dare move from her spot. She throws the pair of jeans at him, hoping that will stop him.

She is crying.

“Stop it!”

He is not stopping. His eyes are burning with rage.

I can’t take it.

I’m slamming my back against the door every over second, rocking back and forth with my hands covering my ears in a vicious attempt to shut it all out, but I can’t close my eyes. I stare intently on the two boys as blood spills onto the ruffled sheets.

My eyes drift back to the screaming girl. With one hand she holds onto the sheet wrapped around her. With her other she is grasping for anything to throw at the two boys.

I'm looking at her mouth. She is still screaming, but I cannot hear her anymore. My vision blurs as I stop rocking. I feel myself falling sideways. Through the silence I hear a thud.

I am sitting in a room. They are all staring at me. One is crying, one is shaking, one is covered in blood. I am leaning to my right with my shoulder and head resting on the wall beside me.

How did this happen?

The man who is shaking is holding the shirt collar of the one who is covered in blood. He is letting go of the shirt and walking toward me. He wipes the sweat off his forehead with his right forearm. He shakes his left hand before he crouches down to my level.

He is grabbing both of my arms with his hands. He sits me up straight. I look into his eyes. I’m screaming into his face. He's covering my open mouth with his palm. I shut my eyes and stop screaming.

He is pulling me to stand up. I cooperate even though my brain is can not focus on what is happening. I look behind him one last time to see the sobbing girl. She continues yelling in our direction but I can not comprehend what she is saying.

I’m screaming, “You ruined everything.”

His hand is wrapped tight around my wrist. It’s starting to hurt. He grabs the handle of the door with his other hand and swings it in toward us. Seconds later we are running down the hall. His grasp is burning my wrist.

We reach the end of the hall, and he swings open another door. He pulls me through the doorway onto a cool, concrete floor. I feel the temperature of the floor and look down at my feet.

“Where are my shoes?” I ask and he continues to pull me after him. He isn’t responding, and starts running down the stairs almost faster than I can handle.

I cannot breathe.

We have reached the bottom of the stairs. One last door swings open and I am smothered with a dry breeze. I gasp for breath.

He demands that I keep up.

We are standing in a parking lot. He has let go of my wrist and is fumbling with keys. I am staring down at my bare feet and rubbing my wrist. It is starting to tingle with feeling again.

The car door is open and he turns around to grab me again. He grabs both of my arms and pushes me into the front seat. I’m stumbling with my seat belt when he opens up the driver door and sits down.

“I lost my shoes,” I’m babbling. His eyes are squinting at me, his lips are slightly parted, and he’s shaking his head. He turns the car on but we don’t go anywhere.

He starts beating the steering wheel. After a minute he stops.

He’s leaning his head back, looking at the roof of his car, “You seem rather calm.”

I woke up in panic. I could feel my heart crashing again the inside of my chest, pounding its way up to my throat. I could feel it beat in my eyelids and I squeezed them tighter. I desperately gasped for breath, all the while my body was shaking despite my failing attempts to relax.

I had a terrible, heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach, like the one I feel whenever I see an ambulance. It’s knowing that somewhere, something terrible has happened. It’s a feeling of pure terror. After a few minutes I was able to draw in a deep breath, and I hold it in before exhaling, all the while coaxing myself to relax. My grip on the blankets slowly released.

I scanned the room in attempt to find the clock. It was 4 AM.

I guess it took me a good five minutes to figure out where I was. I was lying alone in a bed, and there were posters on the wall. It clearly was not a hotel room.

After my episode I was contemplating falling back asleep, but the headache that was growing convinced me otherwise.

I rubbed my eyes, sat up and noticed I was still wearing my clothes form the day before which made me try to remember what it was that I drank that night, and where I was. It wasn’t until I threw my legs over the side of the bed and kicked the body on the ground that I realized where I was.

Zac was sleeping on the ground, rolled up in a sheet. When I kicked him he rolled onto his back and looked up at me. The moon was shining through the blinds in the room, illuminating small stripes across his face. We stared at each other for a few seconds before either of said anything.

“Are you okay?” he finally asked, rubbing his eyes.

I wasn’t sure enough, or awake enough to explain anything, so I shrugged my shoulders and lied. “I think so.”

Upon hearing my answer Zac reached up and gently squeezed my hand before he rolled back over onto his side and adjusted his pillow. I followed his lead and pulled my legs back onto the bed and laid back down. I rested my head on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. I could hear Zac on the ground changing positions, and I tried shutting my eyes, but it was no use.

After a minute of silence I asked, “Why am I here?”

I’m not sure why I asked. I guess I was hoping for a different reason than what I suspected, but that was just wishful thinking.

“I didn’t think you’d want to sleep in the same room as Lex,” he replied.

His words fell onto my chest and forced all the air out of my lungs. I shut my eyes under the pressure and waited for it to go away, but it didn’t.