Rena

Despite the drooping of her eyes and fatigue tugging at her limbs, Rena Carrington resisted the siren lure of sleep. She blinked and stood before directing her legs onto a carpeted area large enough to do star-jumps.

“One. Two. Three.” Rena counted them off, legs pumping, arms flapping, and brown curls bouncing. The late-night television movie played in the background.

She would not sleep.

She. Would. Not.

The horror movie continued, the strident music warning the viewer the heroine was doing something stupid. Again.

“Don’t do it!” Rena shouted at the red-haired woman, hoping verbal interaction might warn the heroine away from the creepy cornfield. The heroine ignored her and crept forward to commit further acts of stupidity.

Rena’s jaw opened in a full and inelegant yawn. Thankfully, no one sat in her tiny flat to view her tonsils.

“I refuse to go to sleep!” Rena shouted. A shudder worked down her spine, and she yawned again. Popsicles, she was so tired. Exhausted, actually, and she admitted it wouldn’t be long before her body revolted.

She’d drop off to sleep from sheer necessity, and the black-haired, brown-eyed hunk with the weird blue tattoos would saunter into her dreams. Again.

Rena strode through her compact open-plan lounge to her galley kitchen. She checked the water level in her kettle and pushed the power button. A cup of strong coffee should do the trick.

Her hand trembled as she sloshed the boiling water into a cup. Instead of adding milk as was her standard practice, Rena forced herself to take the caffeine straight and unadulterated.

“Ugh! That’s disgusting.” She surrendered and added a dash of milk.

She sat at her minuscule breakfast bar and stared into space, sipping the hot beverage. A scream rippled from the TV, and Rena jumped. Coffee splattered over her fake marble countertop, and a pithy curse escaped.

It wasn’t fair.

She hadn’t asked for this burden.

She yawned again, her eyes heavy and uncomfortable. Without volition, she bowed her head. Her eyes fluttered closed. She jerked herself awake, and a hearty sigh of disgust escaped.

If she didn’t sleep, she’d never get through the coming day. Her father had asked her to check in at his office and collect his mail plus she had errands. Calls to return. Busy. Busy.

While sleep might be a necessity, she could do it without dreaming.

She would do it without entering the dreamworld that shook her to the core. She swallowed hard and forced herself to her feet. Like a zombie, she shuffled from her kitchen, down the passage to the sole bedroom. She adored this flat, housed in an old converted Georgian mansion. She’d fallen in love with the space—one of six flats for sale—the moment the real estate agent had opened the elegant door and ushered her inside. It had always been her haven, but right now, her home smothered her like a prison.
She flicked on the light, illuminating her ultra-feminine bedroom with cream-and-lavender sheers at the windows—a side she hid from the outside world of her casual job with her father and her university studies.

Rena pushed her legs to function, directing them toward her double bed covered with a blueberry-and-silver duvet. Sluggish with fatigue, she toed off her leather slip-on shoes and socks and left them where they fell on her thick slate-gray rug. She tugged off her jeans and shirt and crawled onto the bed in a tank top and panties. In deference to a fall in the temperature, she fought her way under the covers to the violet sheets. Before she even turned off the light, her eyes slid shut.

I will not dream.

I. Will. Not.

She repeated the mantra in her mind. Once. Twice. Three times, before she sank deep into sleep and nothing else registered.