She felt like she was falling, but instead of air, the softness of the pillow created the friction that surrounded her on her rapid decent. It was also the ground that she finally hit, and it was the thing that obstructed her view as her eyes flew open. She gasped; where was she? She moved her eyes around and noticed familiar things. A desk that should have been cluddered sat with nothing more than dust and a cup of pencils on it. Drawers were also dormant because they hadn't been opened in months, and a framed picture of a golden retriever puppy sat odd and uncontested on the wall directly in front of her.
"Oh," she croaked to herself.
Suddenly the sight became familiar once more. She was in her bedroom in her home which sat at the farthest eastward tip of Massachusetts, at least that's what the ad said when her parents bought the place. So close was the water that the girl moved to the subtle crashing of the waves. When the sea landed on the shore, her foot landed on the floor, then again and again the process repeated itself until the girl managed to reach her room door. Her hand went around the knob, and she twisted it, but it seemed like such a task. Her grip was weak, and she barely had enough strength to turn the knob. When she finally did get it open, the happiness that had surrounded her morning had a massive dent in it. She almost cried, but the thought of tears was just a bit ridiculous, so she held them back and moved on. Her next step would have been to brush her teeth, but she decided against it. Laziness was her super power that morning. Her legs swept across the ground with little impulsion, and she nearly tripped down the stairs. Somehow she had managed to make it all the way down in one piece, and once she was at the bottom of the stairs, she was hit with the unmistakable smell of waffles. She moved with ghastly countenance across rooms in search of the food that she had detected. She didn't pick up her feet; she was still too tired and weak to do so. As she neared the kitchen, it was then that she heard the faint sound of her mother, but the elder lady wasn't making just any sound. She was crying, and this alarmed the girl.
"Mom?" she whispered.
Her movements became faster, but she still couldn't escape the constant slump which characterized her current being. Around the corner and into the kitchen she went. It was there that she saw her mother sitting at the kitchen table with her face buried in her soaked hands. Her hair hung in messy strands and came out of her head in all directions while her clothes appeared to have not been changed in a few days mainly because they hadn't been. Next to her sat a bottle of Hennessy. Into her hands, the woman wailed, and it didn't appear that there would be any end to her tears.
"Mom," the girl whimpered.
She ran by the table where her mother sat, but the woman didn't notice her daughter. The girl leaned down by the table and placed her head and arms on the wooden surface.
"Mom, tell me what's wrong," the girl asked.
The woman, entirely oblivious to her daughter's presence, just continued to cry.
"Mom!" the girl exclaimed.
She tried to place a hand on her bearer's shoulder, but then something happened. Her hand, which had until then appeared a complete extension of a limb, went entirely through her mother. The girl was understandably shocked. She was still for a moment; the disbelief had stunned her into complete stillness.
"Mom," the girl cried.
Her vision blurred as tears started to puddle on her bottom eyelids. That didn't happen, she thought to herself. To her, the permeable hand was some sort of thing that she had imagined while watching her sad mother. For a smart girl, she convinced herself of this in a short time and went ahead for a second round of shoulder touching. Not surprisingly, her hand went through her mother again. Now the tears fell and rapidly did they fall. The girl rose to her full, diminutive height and began to back away from where her mother sat.
