Gemotions

The first sign was the dreams. Nightmares, really. Sarah kept seeing a man, a shadow, and her own house – but it didn't look like her house. It was darker, colder. She would wake up gasping for air, heart pounding. The coroner’s report, which mentioned a brutal beating, kept resurfacing in her memory.

She stopped going into the attic, which she had been planning to convert into a home office. She would stand at the base of the stairs, peering into the gloom, and then quickly retreat.

One evening, she caught her reflection in a window and hardly recognized herself. The joy had vanished from her face, replaced with a constant, vague anxiety.