Rayna slept fitfully, tossed on violent seas of dreams.  Her hands fluttered, eyes opened, she stared into the darkness, unmoored.  She turned, found Lee, turtled in his fur-lined overcoat, shadowed in the corner easy chair. 

    Hood pulled over his head, she couldn't see his eyes.  She smiled at him anyway, and, reassured, rolled away and closed her eyes.

    And opened them again. 

    Turning to say the sweet and terribly important thing she’d just remembered, but the chair was empty and Lee was gone.  Or had never been there.  And the windows bled the first raw light of another dawn.

Merlin Sulchek is a writer living in California.