The pages fell from the file like leaves caught in a tornado as my sleeping daughter tightened the hold of sheets around her slender body, the results of eight hours of a subconscious struggle with the phantoms of nightmares. Though her vivid nightmares had never replayed in reality, as of yet, I had strong suspicion that they soon would. I encouraged her to keep a journal by my methods, and she begrudgingly did so, while making it clear that she would prefer to leave her haunting dreams in the night rather than allow them the permanence of written word in the day.

 The night that led her to these dreams-last night- she sneaked out with an older man she only acknowledges for his ability to purchase alcohol, and they shared a fifth of vodka and whiskey. The silly girl does not comprehend the depths of my maternal instinct -- or psychic ability, as the case may be. Of course, like all other premonitions, they come conveniently after the fact, and are useful only for the punishment she frequently inflicts upon herself in the process of being young and stupid. She crawled back in through her bedroom window with much dexterity for one who could scarcely walk straight, and closed her hazy eyes with no explanation for the dried blood on her inner thighs or the dreadful chill she had received when she saw the green glow of the digital clock change to 11:22.

Now as she attempted to see the page of her journal clearly through the crystallized magnification of tears, and steady her shaking hand, the haze of alcohol no longer distorted the events of the previous night. Though the correlation between her dream and the comparatively innocent memory of the green digital numbers were still vague, her notions became darker as she shakily transcribed the details of her dream.

The well was dimly lit with the glow of a flickering streetlight. I gazed into the depths of the dark water and noticed that the blackness was tinged with crimson. Suddenly I was flailing around in the cold water. An invisible presence pushed me deeper as my staggered breaths took in more water than air. I slowly floated below the surface and felt a strange sense of peace as I resigned my body to the watery grave. In a state of surrender I gazed below to the bottom of the well to face my fate, but instead saw him, the source of both blood flow and warmth in the frigid waters. There was a gaping wound in his neck. His eyebrow peircing seemed to float away from his head, as though the flesh was deteriorating in the water for weeks. His huge eyes looked up pleadingly, as full of fear and sorrow and innocence as those of a small child attempting to comprehend the impossible reality that his mother was never coming home. He reached up to me in desperation, and I struggled to swim down and grab his hand, pulling him back to life and light and beauty. Yet the force that once held me under now held me back. I reached down as he reached up but neither could move and the centimeters between our fingers were a deep chasm. I woke up struggling for a breath between the clenching hold of sheets, crusted in blood and tears.

She struggled to construct some sense of logic from the shattered pieces of the subconscious and conscious, the memories and the dreams. The thought produced only frustrations until the telephone shook her from the daze.

"Hello?" she asked in shaky tones.

"Hi..." an equal tremor echoed in the familiar tenor voice. "He...he's dead."