As her mother descended the staircase, Dani stood at the edge of her bedroom door, staring into the abyss that was the upstairs hallway.
She never noticed how eerie her house could be until just now. The way that shadows drifted across the white walls suggested ominous mindbending creatures from some scary wibbly wobbly alternate dimension beyond all reason, where as yesterday they were just ordinary shadows.
Were monsters and ghosts and demons and other creepy stuff real now? Shit, was Heaven and Hell and God and Satan actually all for real now too? Dani had grown up being an agnostic, bordering on being an atheist for all of her life, but the existence of magic had shattered that illusion into thousands of tiny pieces, and it had just as quickly put every new age wacky concept back on the table. *Anything* was possible now, and that was very, very scary to Dani.
The pin drop silence didn't help her paranoia either.
She realized that she was starting to drive herself insane.
The young witch took a deep breath, and realized that her heart was racing, her vision blurring, and she was even sweating a little.
"I need to go to bed" Dani muttered to herself, her voice sounding slightly hysterical.
It was a good idea. With her mind and her heart pounding away, she wasn't able to focus on anything else but her own worries. Best to just drift into sleep and forget about everything for now. Dani didn't want to turn into some neurotic basketcase.
Dani took one last sad look at Kat's closed bedroom door, and then locked her own door behind her.
With a thought, Dani's party dress divested itself from her body, traveling in midair towards her closet. The closet door opened by itself, and the dress attached itself to a metal wire hanger. Then the closet door closed by itself. Once again, it was all completely effortless. Natural. Like breathing.
"Insane" Dani muttered, still not used to it, as she kicked off her heeled sandals the old fashioned way.
She collapsed into her bed and fell fast asleep.
The sweet embrace of dream then took hold of her.
**
Dani woke up the next morning feeling groggy.
She had dreamt all sorts of weird dreams.
Some were nightmarish. She had seen a witch coven performing vague, ominous things in the forest near her house, and she was pretty sure that her mom and Kat were among them. She saw flashes of muscular dragonlike demons exhaling putrid smoke from their nostrils. She saw tentacles and chains wrapping around some guys she didn't recognize, binding and torturing them. She saw other people being turned to stone. She saw some of the guests she had seen at the party being lynched from trees. She saw a city being rained down with hellfire, turning it into a barren cinder.
Other visions had been less obviously frightening, but disturbing all the same. She had seen herself with her friends playing video games, and then suddenly she started making out with Randy. Then she saw...oh God, she had dreamt that they were going out. Yuck.
**
Dani's alarm went off.
She opened her eyes and saw that she was floating two feet above her bed.
"Ahh!" she screeched, and crashed softly on top of the mattress.
It took Dani a second to realize why.
She was still wearing her bra and panties, which counted as her belongings, which in this room she had total control of.
Her magic powers must still be active even when she's asleep.