In the warmth of her blanket and with her head still fuzzy from the previous night out, Rose woke up in the darkness with a hundred thoughts and feelings still flowing through her mind.

Aware that it was still too early to get up yet also too late to stay up, she laid in her bed hugging her spare, often unused third pillow not daring to check what time it was. Her thoughts swirled around and whether they had been influenced from her already-vanished dreams or not, currently revolved only around herself: her own being, and of the people closest to this fragmented conceptual image of herself.

Her father and her sister, standing there next to the bed staring at her in the blacked-out apartment, their faces young and how she remembered them from her childhood. The looks on these faces brought a sense of calm over Rose as her fingers clamped the edges of that third pillow, sending a serene tickle through her palms and an overwhelmingly palpable sense of sadness to her chest as she lay there on her side.

Rose’’s breathing pattern slowed down in speed and increased in intensity, taking in the fresh early morning breeze whistling gently in from the small opened gap of her sliding balcony door of winter-chilled glass. The smell of settled rain entered her nostrils as her attention switched to yet another familiar face from her past; a best friend from high school who had also come for a long-awaited visit.

Mary, whose name nor face had not occupied her consciousness for so many years joined her immediate family, the three of them now suddenly present and watching over her as she lingered in this mock state of sleep. Mary’s long and wavy shiny brown hair dangled neatly down to her shoulders, and it surprised Rose to recall such a vividly beautiful detail which had always somehow failed to grasp her attention as a teenager; only coming to prominence now long into the future.  Rose remembered the conversations they shared and the support they provided for one another, wondering how and why she never kept in touch after she had to leave [TOWN] upon graduating from [INSTITUTION].

Uncomfortable with these guests coming for this uninvited visit at such an unsociable hour, Rose turned her body away from them so that she was now lying on her back, pulling her hair out from underneath her neck in order to feel the coolness of her favourite, main pillow pressed against the bump on the back of her neck. She placed her hands gently on top of her stomach, but not before quickly pinching Theo’s waist gently just to check that he was till there on her right. Sure enough he was, back turned to her and snoring ever so slightly that it would have been hard for anyone else to have noticed, not even Mary, Dad, or her little sister, persisting in their presence within such close proximity.

Shifting herself again so that she was now lying on the opposite side of which she awoke, Rose wrapped her left arm around Theo’s midriff, sliding her right hand up to the back of his neck as if she were holding onto a double bass. She felt like kissing him on the base of his hairline but could not find the energy nor the right angle to do so, imagining that kiss instead and even pouting her lips in the act. Reassured by his presence and feeling safe from her ghosts in his company, she managed to quietly mouth out a small, incorrect whisper, “Evan,” completely unaware that this name stopped Theo’s snoring and coaxed his eyes open as her mental visitors left the room and returned outside through the thin balcony door opening into the darkness of her solemn past.

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