"Laila," The hand on her shoulder shook her awake as the voice pulled her from her dream, ripping her out of the dark void. "Laila!"

Eyes snapping open, Laila stared up at her older brother, Charlie, who looked down at her with concern filled eyes. His hand was gripping her shoulder in a vice-like grip and his lips were pursed into a grim line.

"It was just a dream, Laila. Don't worry," Charlie whispered, soothing his little sister's hair down while her eyes darted all around her room, trying to get her breathing back to normal.

Laila sat up, placing a hand on her temple, a dizzying spell rushing over her. She felt exhausted like she hadn't slept at all. "It felt so real," Laila whispered, voice hoarse and dry.

"It wasn't," Charlie reassured, gently rubbing Laila's arms in a comforting motion. When she finally seemed to calm down, Charlie pulled on her arm gently, prying her out of bed, "Come on, I made breakfast."

Shakily following her brother out of her bedroom, Laila took her seat at the dinner table, right across from her brother. Her brother placed a pancake on her plate, drizzling it with chocolate syrup, powdered sugar, and syrup.

The raven-haired girl was pushing the remnants of her pancake around her plate when her parents came into the house, both of them looking exhausted.

"How was the meeting?" Charlie asked, picking up his empty plate and taking it to the dishwasher.

Sienna and Steven Davies worked in an office building with a high position, the name unknown to Laila. The two of them tended to attend early morning meets and that morning had been no different. It was only ten in the morning and both of Laila's parents looked ready to pass out.

"It went well," Sienna commented, kissing both Charlie and Laila on the cheek before sitting down in her spot at the table, a sigh leaving her mouth. "Just a few stubborn clients, nothing we can't deal with."

Steven nodded his agreement, stopping at Laila's chair to give her a kiss on the forehead and ruffle her already messy bed-head. He plopped down in his own seat across from his wife, rubbing his hands down his face.

It was quiet for a while between the four of them, the only sound being a lawnmower from the next door neighbor and a yapping dog. Charlie sat back down in his seat and watched as his parents ate slowly, his sisters still playing with her food.

"Laila had another nightmare," Charlie spoke out, yearning a glare from said sister.

Sienna sat down her mug of coffee that was served to her by her eldest child, eyebrows furrowed together. "Are they not going away? I thought Dr. Fletcher said you were making progress, what happened?"

Laila shrugged her shoulders, avoiding eye contact with her parents and brother. "They just started up again last night."

Ever since her sixteenth birthday, Laila was plagued with horrific nightmares, each one a different person killed, always around the town, she lived in. There was never anything to suspect that there was anything wrong with her, as Dr. Fletcher has said. Her therapist, Kyleigh Fletcher was a kind women in her late twenties who had been hired by the Davies' to cure their youngest child's 'problem'. As far as she knew, there was nothing wrong with Laila except that she was having simple nightmares.

"What was it about this time?" Steven inquired, looking at his daughter over the rim of his coffee mug.

"A man in the woods, some invisible force was choking him and when I ran to see if he was okay, a shadowy figure approached me. That's why Charlie woke me up," Laila said, nodding in her brother's direction.

Ever since the nightmares started up, Charlie had been Laila's rock, especially with her parents always working. He often woke Laila up whenever he heard her screaming. When her nightmares had been at their worst, Laila had crawled into her brother's room, where he would offer his bed up to her while he slept on the floor.

The nightmares had stopped nearly four months ago, it had been a miracle in not only Dr. Fletcher's eyes but also Laila's family's. During her nightmare period, they had all treated her like a china doll, fragile and cracked, treading lightly around her so as not to break her into a million little pieces.

"I'm sure we can schedule an appointment with Dr. Fletcher. You have plenty of spare time now that you have graduated," Sienna spoke in a formal tone, picking up her coffee mug once more.

Laila nodded absently, "I guess that could work out."

After breakfast, Sienna and Steven had to return to the office, leaving their children home alone. Laila lay on the couch, covered in a thick blanket as the AC started up full blast. Charlie sat in the recliner chair next to the couch, the bottom pushed out. He was flicking through various TV channels, looking for one he could settle on.

The news channel flicked by, a series of red and blue flashing lights catching the attention of the Davies kids. Turning back to the new channel, Charlie leaned forward in his seat, curious. Laila stayed where she was, caressing the worn pages of the book she held in her hand.

The woman holding the microphone to her lips was gesturing wildly towards the scene, hair flapping in the summer breeze," A hiker by the name of Robert Dunnum said he found the body slumped over at the base of a tree."

Laila's head shot up, her book being left forgotten as it dropped to the floor, bouncing off the couch cushion. Her attention was solely focused on the television. By know a fit look man in his late thirties was on the tv screen, eyes wide.

"I hike through these woods every day, same path every time. I came across the young man and at first, I thought he was sleeping. He looked pale and I went to wake him up but when I touched him, he just toppled over. He looked peaceful, but by now it was clear he was dead."

The woman was back, "Dunnum said he called the cops as soon as he realized the man was dead."

"He had this big, ugly purple mark on his neck," Dunnum said, scratching the back of his head. "It looked like someone had choked him to death."

"When police arrived at the scene of the crime, they were stumped to find only one pair of footprints on the ground, no evidence of who the killer is has been found yet. I'm Kara Silverstone, back to you Craige."

It was silent between the two siblings for a long while, the news continuing on as though the Davies siblings weren't caught in the middle of a crisis. Laila suddenly found it hard to breathe, the air being sucked out of her lungs like a vacuum.

"Oh my god," Laila whispered lowly, choking back tears. "What have I done?"

Charlie seemed to be snapped out of his stupor then, shaking his head. "It wasn't you, Laila. That was all a dream."

"A dream?" Laila asked, incredulously, raising her voice an octave higher. "Dancing in the clouds is a dream, kissing your crush is a dream, but this? What I did was murder!"

"It's just a coincidence that you dreamed of it."

"A coincidence?" Laila threw the blanket away from her body and stood up, heaving in deep breaths. "There is no such thing a coincidence. I killed someone."

"We don't know that it was you."

"It felt so real, Charlie," Laila whimpered.

Charlie got up from his seat and crossed the room in three strides, taking his sister into his arms and crushing her in his tight embrace. He felt her body shaking with silent sobs, wheezing for each breath.

"It's okay to be okay, we'll figure this out," Charlie soothed, stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head. "We'll figure it out." He repeated a few more times, more for his own sake than for his sister's.