The dream was too long. It splashed into her mind like a salty wave, burning her cuts and scrapes in one screaming blast before lingering like a phantom. Her dream-self gasped into existence in the garage. Always the garage. The radio was on, the static a dissonant screech in her ears. She wanted to turn it off but she couldn’t make herself move in that direction.
Something else was drawing her attention. A noise from the living room. A soft low beat, all bass and reverb. She moved like a cloud, her essence breaking up and reforming and pulling apart before coming back together. The door opened for her, but she could have passed right through.
The living room was darker than usual. Bess could barely see the shapes of her furniture. An overhead light that didn’t exist outside of the dream suddenly clicked on. There was a knocking on the door. This time the knocks didn’t frighten Bess. She eased calmly toward the door and reached for the handle.
“I wouldn’t do that,” a voice from behind her said. Glancing back, she saw Detective Howland. He stood in her kitchen holding a brown paper bag of popcorn. There were greasy splotches soaking through the paper. “They want you to go out.”
“Who is it?” Bess asked.
“It’s a mystery to everyone.” He tossed a piece of popcorn into his mouth and crunched.
Bess peered through the window. There was someone there. She could see a shape, it was just outside her field of vision, but the blurred edges of a person were visible. She pressed herself closer, trying to see, but a sudden flash of lightning made her step back. Thunder rumbled through the house.
“They want in,” Bess said.
“You’re not wrong,” Howland replied, grinning.
The knocks were deliberate and paced.
1 Mississippi… 2 Mississippi…
They started to move down the wall toward the window where Bess stood—just as they had the previous night. Bess stepped up to the glass, trying to get a view of the person. They were shorter than Bess anticipated, the dimensions not quite making sense, until she realized the head was missing. A thin woman’s body, dressed in dirty red tights under an equally dirty black skirt and top. Bess stepped away as the figure approached the window, bleeding knuckles leaving burgundy clots on the glass with each knock.
“Is it Amy?” Bess asked.
“Could be. Could be one of the others.” Howland chomped his popcorn like a horse and Bess turned to look at him again. He was closer now, next to her couch, and Bess went to him. She could feel heat coming off his body from three feet away. There was more thunder before the sky let loose and rain smacked against the roof.
“Why can’t you find the bodies? If Gillis is the killer, where are all the bodies?”
“It’s not important, Bess. These things never are. You’re missing the point.” He gestured toward the window. Lightning illuminated the headless woman, she shimmered in the rain. She used her blood to make squiggles and shapes on the glass. Slowly the crude spiraling coil of a dragon began to form and then bleed away under the torrent.
Detective Howland’s hot breath puffed against her neck as he leaned down to whisper into her ear. “This could get messy.”
Goosebumps raced down her neck and arms. He was so close that when she turned, her cheek brushed the soft worn fabric of his shirt. He laced his arms around her, hands closing at the small of her back, holding her there. Bess didn’t struggle. Their faces were too close together, Bess couldn’t make out his features anymore, only the angled plane of his stubbled cheek, a flash of white from his eyes. She pressed herself full against him, felt the hard lines of his body working into her own, fitting her like a puzzle piece. Her body throbbed with heat, she was dizzy with it.
“Is this what you were looking for?” he asked her, his mouth so close to hers.
“I was looking for Amy,” she whispered, her hands snaking behind him, trying to pull him closer.
“But Amy’s dead.”
Bess was on her feet before she even knew where she was. Something had yanked her from her dreams. Her eyes swept around her bedroom, swiping at her cheeks with both hands, a phantom tingle prickled across her skin. There was a high-pitched ringing in her ears. Then she saw it, a brown spider about the size of a quarter scuttling across her pillow, looking for a dark place to hide.
“Fuck!” she cried and scanned the room for something to crush it with. Grabbing a black pump from beneath her bed she quickly mashed it down, leaving only a dark smear of guts and legs.
“I guess it’s a good day to wash the sheets.” She laughed as if it was funny.
The house was still and quiet as Bess loaded her spider-stained sheets into the washer. It was still early and she was at first grateful to the spider for waking her up so she wouldn’t be late. Then she realized it was Monday. Bess didn’t work on Mondays. She felt a renewed satisfaction that the spider was dead. Her mind swung back to the dream she’d had, but she could only remember fragments. Feelings. A sense that things were not as they should be.
Sunlight shone through the living room window and splashed across her face. Dark smudges across the glass broke apart the light, diffusing it, tinting it. The glass was caked in mud, bits of grass jutted out from the clods.
Without thinking she sprinted out the front door and into her yard, her bare feet squishing into the wet lawn. Enormous hunks of grass had been torn up and were now prominently featured against her siding, front door, and windows.
“Kids, yeah?” Bess’s neighbor, Rebecca, was at her mailbox.
“I don’t… Did they get your house too?” Bess asked, hating how much she needed Rebecca’s house to also be wrecked.
“No, but they sure did a number on you. And in the middle of that storm, too. I’ll never understand teenagers.” Rebecca smiled.
“I didn’t even know it rained,” Bess said, still staring at her house.
“Seriously? Girl, it was like a fucking monsoon or something. It woke me up around three.”
“I slept through it.”
“You must have been exhausted—knocked out. Here, some of your mail was mixed up in mine. Your paper was in my yard too.”
Bess collected the small bundle from Rebecca. The front page of the paper caught her eye. “What the hell?”
“I know, can you believe it? Mayor Butler’s crazy if he thinks he’s going to get reelected after this one.”
“This says it’s Wednesday.” Bess pointed to the date on the front of the paper.
Rebecca looked blankly at Bess. “So what?”
“So, it’s Monday. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“I think it’s odd you think it’s Monday on a Wednesday…”
“Wait, what time is it?”
“Oh gee, I guess it’s about ten? Are you feeling okay? You don’t look so good.”
“What? Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just… I don’t know. I feel like I had a dream about this last night.” She smiled at Rebecca to prove she was fine. “I could have sworn it was Monday.” She glanced back down at the letter in her hand. It had her address penned on the front, but no return address and no stamp or postmark.
“Eh, don’t worry about it. Well, if you’re fine I’ve got to get back inside, there’s a million things to get done.”
“Of course, you go on. Thanks for the mail.”
Bess walked back inside, aware but not concerned about the soggy mud-prints she was leaving on the carpet. The clock in her kitchen said it was 8:24, as did the clock on her nightstand. The only problem being that they’d both said 8:24 before she’d gone outside too. She tapped the screen of her cell phone and was greeted with the harsh reality that it was in fact 10:17 on Wednesday. What had happened to Monday and Tuesday?
Deep enormous fear reached into Bess’s chest and pulled at her insides. Her frantic mind tried to bring reason to the unreasonable. She was confused, she’d forgotten what day it was. It happened to people all the time, like Rebecca said. The days become too routine, they blend together, they lose distinction. Except her days had been anything but routine, and she couldn’t shake the truth: She’d lost a full day.