My phone wakes me up right on cue. The woods disappear and when I open my eyes, I’m human, and in my bed. As impossible as that feels.

I set my alarm for 8:30AM despite it being Saturday. This is the first time I’ve had a real chance like this. Today I can go to the exact spot that cat just was. Even though I don’t like how close that spot is, at least I can get answers this time. If I’m quick enough.

Just a quick thing to note, my phone says that sunrise today was at 7:19AM. The sun was just rising in my dream near the end. I lost another hour.

Time is supposed to flow differently in dreams, but I think it’s obvious I’ve been conscious this whole time so… that’s irrelevant.

I lost an hour, and, as usual, I didn’t see where the cougar went.

But that’s okay because I know exactly where it was. Hehehe. The cougar is within city limits now, so nothing can stop me.

Except my mother. But I think I have that handled. Every rule she set I’ve been following to the letter, so she has a false sense of security now. Plus, she worked a night shift and will be in a deep slumber. She shouldn’t be a problem.

Ah-ahhh… nothing. A half-sneeze. A stupid ash tree leaf is tickling my nose. Or was. Now it’s in pieces on my lap. I did say the cold makes me crabby and I still have a chill. Another dream to reality transition that isn’t normal. That innocent leaf is only one of several tangled in my hair, I’d guess.

Ash tree leaves are weird. They have a long, soft, center stem with usually seven leaves sprouting from it, one at the end and three on each side. One leaf is made of multiple leaves. I’d never seen a tree like that before I came here, but these trees are almost all that grow here, so I’ve gotten used to them. Mostly.

But I still don’t like them in my face. Hmph.

Seriously though, after being here a couple years I get genuine shock if I see a tree that isn’t an Ash. It just looks out of place to me now. Like those birch trees along the creek bed before. Sheesh, this town’s weirdness has infected me more than I realized. What’s so strange about birch trees? Nothing. It’s this city that’s weird, not the birches, and certainly not me.

The odd foliage is not the only evidence of my nighttime escapade. I also have a sweater on again, the typical grass stains on my pyjama pants and shirt, and dirt on my hands and feet. None of this was present when I went to sleep. Neither was the nauseating taste of blood in my mouth.

It’s bitter.

I’m kinda pissed that sleepwalking me has been outside in public in her PJ’s. Like, have some dignity at least! Come on! What if I bump into someone I know? God why…

To top it all off, my room is an ice box because my window is open. Again. Sleepwalking me is a fucking idiot. I locked it this time, not that it helped. I went out last night, like all the times before this, and like the previous nights my only memories are my cougar dreams. Wherever my body went is still a mystery.

Side note, I need to stop using the phrase cougar dreams.

My headboard is digging into the centre of my back. I don’t know how long I’ve sat here staring at the signs. My dreams are real. That’s what I’ve decided. There is no other explanation. At least not one I’m willing to accept.

Not only that, but something more is happening to me. While I’m in the animal, my real body is outside, moving on its own. I assume it has something to do with the cat thing, but there’s no way to be sure. The only sure thing is I’m not in my bed, and I’m not with the cat. Even now that the cougar is so close to my own home, I never saw myself in the dream. Which means I’m someplace else entirely.

Where? Where the hell am I going? And why do I keep buying chocolate bars?

Hahh… Speaking of not being in bed…

It always takes a few minutes after these dreams for my muscles to work right. If I move too much right away, I get dizzy. Even once I can move the shakiness lasts for about an hour. Kind of like every fiber of my being is as freaked out by all of this as I am. Each time I get over it more quickly, just like how being in the cat gets easier each time.

Again, that’s probably not a good thing.

Sunday two weeks ago, the first time this happened, I was two hours late for work. Missed most of my shift. My body was frozen with fear and I couldn’t move. Then, even when I wanted to, I couldn’t get up.

This time I’m better already. So up I get. I still have a moment of vertigo, but I shake it off. I need a fucking shower. Gross. I’m so gross. Oh god, is that a smushed bug? Why? And why didn’t I even finish the chocolate bar?

Oh right, I don’t like Skor Bars.

But… I know that, so… WHY THE FUCK DID I BUY IT???

Stop wasting my money, sleeping me!

Argh.

I know I seem fairly calm for someone who is experiencing some supernatural bullshit, but I promise the strangeness of everything is not lost on me. I grew up normal, you know.

Well, sort of normal. Normal enough for this to be weird.

I’ve known for a while that things aren’t right with this city, its people, and now recently, myself. I think I knew the whole time we’ve been here; I just didn’t want to see it at first. It must sound crazy. My mom and my fake friends have all said as much, but it’s true. I live in a city that doesn’t exist, surrounded by people who aren’t real.

I started dreaming the first night we moved here. But now the dreams are done. I’m fully awake now. No more pretending that everything is normal. No more walking on eggshells around my Shifter captors. The time for pretending is over. Now I need a plan.

Well, it’ll have to wait until after work at least.

I finish drying myself off. It took forever this time to get all the leaves and dirt and sap out of my hair. That’s because I have too much hair, though, and it’s too thick. It turns into black straw if I don’t condition it right. I really don’t have time for this. So annoying. Oh well. Not much I can do except chop it all off.

But if I did that mom would have a heart attack. She loves my hair.

Since this will be a good way to break them in, I yank on my new jeans. God, I hate how stiff new clothes are. Then I force on my Stuff-Mart uniform shirt.

It’s a little uncomfortable. Small is kind of tight but the medium ones were way too big. Whatever. I only have a few hours to do this, then I need to be at work. Might as well be ready to go. I throw on the same sweater I was wearing when I woke up. No use getting a clean one dirty, right?

Time to go.

“Okay.” I grab hold of the sink and look at myself in the mirror. Good lord, do I look tired. Not even a shower can fix that. Even my amber eyes look dull today, almost brown. You’ve gotta be pretty damn tired to make amber look dull.

I slide my contacts on before I forget. They don’t hide the orange at all, and I’m still not used to it. From the moment I was allowed to start wearing contacts I wore tinted ones that made my eyes look brown instead.

My family on my mother’s side is struck with a terrible affliction: orange eyes.

Sorry, I mean amber.

They’re awful and get me rude looks sometimes. Like people think I’m trying to cosplay or something, I dunno. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but people are judgey. I got judged. It wasn’t until I came here and met my first real friends that I decided to start using clear ones. They convinced me; I should say.

A sigh escapes me. They really were great friends in so many ways. I know I’ve been ragging on them, but they have been good to me. Even René. Sort of. I guess.

Okay, enough of that. What’s done is done.

My skin looks even paler than usual, so I pinch my cheeks and then jab my finger at the glass, smudges be damned. “You can do this. You’re going to find the doe and prove once and for all that these dreams are happening.”

I know it won’t be enough to convince everyone, that will take more time. But I have to settle my heart. I need to be sure. Afterwards I can figure out what to do from there.

Alright, good pep talk. Let’s get going.

The window sticks halfway but somehow I manage to pull it open enough to peek out.

I’ve never left the house this way. Not consciously. But my window is always open after the dreams, so I know my unconscious self leaves this way. Seeing as I haven’t noticed any injuries yet, other than some bruising, it must work.

The last thing I want to do is wake up Mom. I’m supposed to be grounded. Like, forever-grounded. I’m no stranger to this. Before we moved here, she forever-grounded me every other week. It’ll pass. I was never the perfect daughter, no reason to start now.

My leg is halfway out the window when I hear a familiar mew from behind me.

Oh no, it’s Chonky Kitty-Wittums the Third.

“Shush, Chonks.” I rasp at him. Mom’s a light sleeper, dammit. And you do not have a quiet meow. In response, he mews again. I put my finger to my lips and slip the rest of my leg out.

“Shh, please.” In response he follows me to the window, and I have to quickly close it to keep him from following me out. His Highness is displeased with this.

“Nuh uh. If there’s a cougar out there then you’re grounded too, mister.”

Huh. That wasn’t too hard.

Whoops!

Reflexes I didn’t know I had are all that saves me from falling more than twenty feet. My legs are hanging off the branch and my arms are hugging this old tree’s trunk with all I have.

It seems that morning dew makes stuff slippery, not just pretty.

I’ll have to take note of that for future escape attempts.

Now that I have my feet back where they should be… hmm. This isn’t as simple as I thought. Maybe it’s easier at night because there’d be a layer of frost? No, wouldn’t that be slippery too? Is other-me a fucking acrobat? Have I been making parkour videos? Just how have I been getting out this way every time?

The next nearest branch is two feet down and almost three feet away. Then there’s one directly below me but its about what, four feet? I can’t do the whole parkour thing, I’m not a superhero. Don’t judge. Guess I’ll have to go straight down.

I hug the tree trunk and slide down unsteadily from branch to branch until I’m close to the ground, and out of branches. I have bark all over my sweater but I’m alive. I’m still high up, but there’s no choice now. Just have to jump for it.

Hup!

Oof. My legs burn for a millisecond but it’s good, I’m fine. I should maybe do more squats than I do, but I’m fine. Hahaha. Lord. God. Almighty.

Chonky-Tonks is still meowing, I can hear her from all the way down here.

Jesus, cat. You’re gonna blow this whole operation.

It’s cold. Not as cold as in the dream, but still uncomfortable. I wish I could have gone downstairs and grabbed my coat but the stairs in our house are so squeaky. I couldn’t risk it. What I should have done is grab it last night, but I didn’t remember. Anxiety will do that to a person.

With crossed arms I head towards the creek. It really is father than it looked. It takes a while, but I can finally hear it, a few more minutes and I’m there. Everything is the same. The rushing water, the fresh layer of snow, the rocks and the cliff, the paw prints and the pool of blood…

The moisture from the stream helps the scent of it reach my nose. Thanks, nature.

There’s no doe, but there doesn’t need to be. It left a trail of blood to follow.

So follow it, I do.

For a long time.

It was 9:03 when I left, and now it’s almost ten. I think.

My phone always glitches out when we get near the lake that’s back here. It turns off randomly, the screen will look all pixelated sometimes, the weather is always wrong, the time will stop updating and then go back to the right time all at once... that kind of thing.

And that lake is the direction we’ve been going. My phone’s acting like a faulty light socket. Thankfully its not later than ten. If my little prince didn’t wake her up already then Mom will be up at eleven. Night shifts are fun.

How far from the kill zone do animals usually stash their prey, anyway? I’m almost at the lake. If my phone wasn’t being dumb and wasn’t almost dead, I could google cougar prey behaviours. Guess I forgot to charge it last night. I swear I did though…

Way to be prepared, Kara. Idiot.

The blood trail has thinned out now.

By the time I enter the lake’s clearing it’s not much more than a pink trickle. I’m not concerned though. There’s nowhere further the cougar could have taken it because of the geography here.

The ‘cliff’ the cougar had been on is just a flat part of the mountain we live on. It’s a short plateau that rises with the mountain, and the mountain continues upwards behind it. Eventually the cliff and the mountain converge and become one again.

This occurs at the Star Lake clearing. It’s a tiny lake nestled right against the mountainous cliffside. It didn’t even have an official name before I gave it one. I asked the Rangers. I think things should have names.

At night, this place is the best spot for star gazing. If you hop in and lay on your back and stare at the sky at night, it feels like you’re floating in space.

However, that mushy stuff isn’t important right now. What’s important is the doe. Which by now is probably mushy. I’m glad I didn’t eat before coming out here.

There isn’t anymore blood in the snow, but deer aren’t light animals, so I follow the indent of its body and the random paw prints. This is why watching cop shows is good for you. I feel like a legit detective right now. What’s that female one… Nancy Drew! There we go, that’s me. Heh.

Man, such huge paws though. One swipe from these and you’d be dead.

Wow psyched up to psyched out in two seconds. Good going me. Jesus, loving Martyr, please give me strength.

At the base of an ash tree I find a pile of dead branches and leaves that are out of place. Underneath that, I find what I was looking for. I find my truth. Like any logical person, I quickly take a few pictures with my phone. Not much juice left.

Let me tell you, it’s one thing to see it in a dream, to feel yourself doing it so plainly that in your heart you know it’s real. Not a dream. It’s a completely different thing to see the evidence right in front of you and to know with your mind, without a shadow of a doubt, that what you saw and felt was real.

It was real.

I mind-melded or something with a cougar, and that cougar killed this beautiful creature. I mean, it was beautiful. Now it’s a quarter eaten and stinky and bloody and gross and dead. Definitely dead.

“I’m so sorry.”

I don’t know what good an apology will do, now. But I am sorry, and I feel like it can hear me somehow. Or that it matters for some reason. I don’t know.

For a minute, all I can do is stare at the thing. It’s the same doe. The slashes on its thigh are there, most of its chest is gone but the same chunk from its neck is gone too.

When I think about that I can taste the raw flesh in my mouth again. Somehow, despite all the blood, its tail is still white.

The stench of death reaches my nose at this point. That, combined with the taste of blood in my mouth, is too much for me. Oh my god.

My stomach rises into my throat and I can barely move away from the corpse in time before spilling my guts out onto the snow.

In a bit of a panic I cover my mess with the surrounding snow and rush to the lake and start scooping water into my mouth and spitting it out. Along with any remaining chunks of last night’s meatloaf.

Aw man, and it was such good meatloaf.

Then I sit at the water’s edge. I’m shaky as hell.

“I was right.” I punch my fists into the snow and prop myself up onto unsteady feet. “I was fucking right.”

Everything I felt was legit. This fear has been vindicated. Now that I know with certainty I don’t need to hold back anymore. Not only is this an illegal Unmarked Bubble, but the Shifters here are potentially using Sapiens in illegal supernatural experiments.

Well, it’s a theory anyway. In any case, no matter the truth of the situation, this is so much bigger than me. I need to find a way out of town and to the nearest Sapiens Rescue Centre. They’ll protect me. I think.

“Hahaha…” I don’t really know why I’m laughing, but it’s cathartic. Am I laughing at my mom’s naivete? At the Shifters for failing in their mission to make me believe I’m insane? At the absurdity of all this? Probably all three, to be honest.

Caw! Caw!

But my laughter is short-lived. I assume I will be too, seeing as fifteen years isn’t a very long life.

A raven caw from up in a dead tree causes me to look up and lock eyes with a cougar.

Not just any cougar, it’s the one from my dreams. And it’s right across the lake. Staring at me. The distance doesn’t give me any feeling of relief. Like I said, it’s a small lake. That cougar is fast. I’m fast too, but I am not that fast. I know that more than anyone.

I’m a goner.

Like any logical, modern teenager facing her own mortality I take a quick picture with my phone. Then the reality sinks in. Oh. Shit.

I know it’s the same one because from this angle it looks almost totally black. This is why I thought it was a black panther at first. It’s even more confusing from this distance.

But black panthers don’t live this far north, and black cougars don’t exist. I don’t even know why this one has such a prominent black stripe, because I couldn’t find any other records of that sort of thing.

I may have done a lot of research Friday night, seeing as I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere except the library. It’s good to know your enemy, wouldn’t you agree?

Knowledge won’t save me here, though. Nor will all the plans in the world.

Unfortunately, it was this research that explained just how deadly these cats are. There was even a quote that said something like, ‘if you see a cougar then it’s already decided not to kill you.’ But I don’t think that will happen here. I don’t need to be an expert to know that no predator likes other creatures messing with its prey.

Since it doesn’t speak English and I have no way of knowing if it's aware of me getting trapped inside it the past couple weeks, nor do I even know if it would understand that even if it was aware, I’m guessing that claiming co-ownership of the kill is also not an option. A much more likely scenario is that the cougar decides to add me to its breakfast buffet.

Which means I’m dead.

It’s coming for me now, slowly, but I’m not fooled.

Maybe this was a mistake. Did I just kill myself to make a point?

I know I should be trying to back away, maybe even running away, but I’m suddenly transfixed. A warmth that makes no sense considering the surroundings right now envelops me. It’s like standing in front of a fireplace. It’s like I’m under a spell.

I keep looking into its bright amber eyes, they’re just like mine, and I can’t move.

Why can’t I move?

No, I don’t want to move. It’s warm.

Wait it’s also deadly. Why don’t I want to move? What the hell am I thinking-

“Kara. Rosemary. Lowe.”

The arrival of another danger breaks the spell. This beast is far more dangerous than the previous.

I slowly turn around and find myself face to face with the deadliest creature on the planet.

My mother when she’s angry.