Wakeless

**Wakeless**

The first time it happened, her mother didn't turn around.

Lyla was seven, standing in a hallway that looked like hers but wasn't, in a house that smelled wrong, watching her parents ignore her like she wasn't even in the room. She told herself it was a nightmare. She went back to bed. She thought that was the end of it.

It wasn't.

Nine years later, the dreams haven't stopped, they've gotten worse. Every night she wakes up a little further from home, in a family that's almost hers, almost her mother, almost her sister's room. Except her sister's room isn't there anymore. In its place is a brother named Andrew, one nobody in her real life has ever mentioned, except when she's asleep, and everyone acts like he's always existed.

The dreams are bad enough. What's worse is that Lyla can't always tell when she's left one.

She's starting to notice things she was never supposed to notice: the way her mother goes quiet at questions she shouldn't be afraid of, a record that doesn't match the story she's always been told, a headache that shows up right before the worst nights. Something happened to her once, something her family has spent nine years refusing to say out loud, and it's the reason she can't stop walking further from home every time she closes her eyes.

She doesn't know how many nights she has left before she reaches a version of her life where she was never in it at all.

She's starting to think that's exactly where this is taking her.

*A psychological horror about the family you wake up to, the one you don't, and how far you'd go to find out which one is real.*