House Rules
You don't sleep. Or rather... you keep falling asleep and then jerking awake, heart hammering, unsure for a moment where you are.
The afternoon replays itself in fragments. Riley's eyes. The wet lap. Alina's smile.
And then Charlotte's eyes. That fraction of a second. The cold, complete assessment of exactly what you were doing.
When you do sleep, you dream. It's always the same dream. Charlotte and the man from the bathroom, but the bathroom keeps expanding, the walls pushing further and further back, the two of them growing larger while you stay the same size... or shrink, you're not sure which. They're shouting at you, both of them, but you can't make out the words over the sound of everything, and you keep getting smaller, and the shouting keeps getting louder, and you wake up sweating with the sheets twisted around your legs.
You check your phone.
4:47am.
You lie back and stare at the ceiling and wait for morning to come.