Peri

Chapter 1: A Perfectly Normal, Early-Morning Stroll

I was freezing, my limbs were heavy, and I could barely see in front of me thanks to the glare of the rising sun. Eyes locked straight ahead, I tried as best as I could to ignore how painful the slow crawl through the neighborhood was. The road seemed to stretch endlessly before me. Even though I knew my house was getting closer, it felt like I was walking on a treadmill, due in no small part to the fact that every house I passed was the exact same design copied and pasted over and over with only the slightest of variations. Every now and then, a skeletal, unlit reindeer or a half-deflated Santa Claus would remind me I was making progress, but not even the post-Christmas dregs of our street's holiday cheer could distract me from just how run down I was. On loop, I reminded myself that I had to keep pushing forward, that I was so close, so agonizingly close. The only option was to cross the finish line.

Unfortunately, I had been running on fumes for far too long, and being as physically and emotionally exhausted as I was had severely handicapped my self-control. With the last traces of my willpower evaporating steadily in the early-morning light, I started thinking that maybe I didn't have to make it back home to lie down. After all, it wasn't as if I would get in trouble if I took a quick nap in the bushes and then finished the rest of my journey. In my delirious state, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea. So, I veered off of the sidewalk and gave my body over to gravity right in some random neighbor's yard. I ended up missing the bushes by a wide margin, but perhaps it was for the best since a bed of mulch would've made for a rough landing.

Peri turned around when she heard the crunch of dead, frost-covered grass flattening beneath my weight.

"Come on, Morgan, get up. We're almost back."

"Gimme a minute," I mumbled to her shoes.

"No, come on. I want as few people seeing us as possible. Get up."

I groaned and rolled onto my back. She grabbed my wrist and tried, unsuccessfully, to hoist me up. It wasn't so much that I resisted; I simply let my body become as limp and heavy as it felt, which ended up being enough to prevent her from getting me to my feet.

"Get up!"

I closed my eyes. I could hear her pacing, trying to figure out what to do with me.

After a couple seconds, she stopped and said, "You told me earlier you have to finish the dream, right? Well, I know how it ends."

Interest piqued, I craned my neck a little to look up at her.

"It ends at home, in your bed, so you gotta get up off of this poor stranger's yard and come with me."

"Why can't I just sleep a little here and then finish the dream later?"

"Because you're already asleep! You can't fall asleep while you're sleeping; that wouldn't make any sense. You have to wake up first, okay?"

I gave her long, sleepy blink in response.

"Look, I'm not trying to be mean or anything; I'm just going off what you said earlier. Besides, aren't you ready to wake up from the nightmare that was last night? The sooner you get up, the sooner it all becomes nothing more than just another bad dream."

Convinced, I sluggishly pulled myself into a sitting position with a grunt and extended my arms up toward her. "Uppies."

"What?"

"Uppies," I insisted sleepily.

"Jesus, Morgan, you're too old for this!"

"Uppies!"

"God fucking dammit," she muttered under her breath. "Fine."

She scooped me up off the ground, one arm under my knees and the other supporting my back. I wrapped my arms around her neck, whispering "Thank you," into her collarbone.

"You're such a child."

She was making a show of being grouchy about our current arrangement, but I could hear the smile in her voice.

Now that I was being carried, the trip wasn't so bad. I pressed my face against her chest and let the rhythm of her stride lull me into a shallow sleep.

Once we got to the house, she ran into a little bit of trouble opening the front door. Though I roused just enough to watch the whole ordeal, I was still too far gone to consider actually helping. We did eventually get inside, and I conked out the moment she laid me down in my bed, not bothering to get under the covers or even take off my shoes.