The knowledge, such as she had undergone in her nightmare, was flushing through her now, in the heatless light of the waking state.

This was how the change always came: a Hand of Death caressing those it had cursed. In Joyce’s case, for reasons she could never ascertain, the change had always staked its claim through slumber. It rode in like a Horseman on a mare, spectral and marauding in its pursuit of her.

Sleep’s reach, Joyce had learned, was vast. Though this was the first time she had ever seen evidence of it pulling birds from the sky and stunning them into an almost unshakable rest, she was not shocked by this development. Her past experiences had left her utterly consumed by the mounting unreality of oneiric shifting. It grew around her like a rising tide, dragging in any sentient creature that happened to be anywhere near Joyce’s prostrate form. Anything lost in this undertow often floundered. If they did survive, they awoke to find themselves inside a wholly different life, a wholly different world.

Joyce hoped, prayed, that these winged creatures were too slight and frail to impact her to any degree.

But she then discovered that the birds were not the only creatures to have been sucked into this dream-mire: a man must have been passing by her yard at some point in the night. Had he been trying to break in, Joyce wondered? No matter, for his punishment was to become a mere pawn in an enterprise that was beyond the ken of anyone.

The man was floating face up in her swimming pool.

All strength drained from Joyce’s legs. She slipped down between the laundry tub and the dryer, which, she noticed, needlessly and inopportunely, had a thin scab of rust at its base. It was not fear that buckled her, but an exhaustion that is specific to this psychological torture. It was happening so soon after last time. Had it ever truly ceased? Even its respites seemed somehow to be punishments.

Pulling herself erect, Joyce childishly hoped that the man on the water had evaporated as dreams are supposed to do in daylight.

He was no longer in the pool. He was now at the window.

His features became distorted as he pressed his face to the pane. His movements left a greasy trail on the glass. Joyce looked at his face and was offended by its slackness, by the way the eyes jittered beneath their drooping lids. Through the glass she could hear the wet flutter of the man’s snore.

“Go away!” she pleaded, her voice waffling unpleasantly between a whisper and a shrill whine. She checked over her shoulder, fearing that Morgan had been woken, that she would see the shape of all that Joyce had struggled to protect her from ever seeing. “Go!” She enforced her plea by waving her hands in a shooing motion.