At least what she saw was intimately familiar, shrouded by darkness though it was. There was the TV in the corner with a cheap plastic, tabletop Christmas tree sitting on top of it. The second hand papa-san chair was sitting catty-cornered from her-a basket of wrinkled, to-be-folded-someday clothing occupying it as usual. Everything looked just like it normally did whenever she was sprawled out on her couch in sofa-spud mode.

And to her relief, there was still nothing there that shouldn’t be.

This was definitely her apartment, and she found that comforting. However, something still wasn’t right about it all, and although it was continuing to dull, she just couldn’t fully shake the feeling of terror deep down in the pit of her stomach.

Giving in to a sudden attack of bravery, she moved to sit up, and pain lanced through the center of her head from back to front. She eased herself back down and lay perfectly still, not wanting to further aggravate the troll with the jackhammer that was apparently excavating inside her brain.

This was not good at all. It was unnerving. Along with the pain, there was an increasingly desperate feeling of disorientation, as if the fog of sleep had given way only to be replaced by another obscuring mist in wakefulness.

Between staccato bursts of agony, Heather took mental inventory, searching to put her finger on a reason for the headache. It felt a little like a hangover, but not exactly, and she didn’t remember doing any drinking last night. In fact, she didn’t remember much of anything at all from last night. She remembered leaving work, driving home, and then…

Then what?

She didn’t know. She concentrated for a minute but gave up almost immediately when she realized that it only served to make the pain worse.

Her tongue felt thick. She swallowed hard, and the dryness in her throat formed a lump that hesitated for a moment before painfully making its way downward.