Chapter 48: The Scream
The first time that Emily woke up, she did so only briefly.
She came awake slowly, and it was not a voluntary choice, instead, she was pulled from a very good dream, something with heat and smoke...a bonfire maybe? Or perhaps it was a warm fireplace in the dead of winter. Either way, no matter what her dream had been about, Emily was forcibly dragged from it by a light in her eyes.
At first she tried to avoid the light, but it just would not go away. If anything it got stronger with each passing moment, going from just being a nuisance, to an actual pain when her face started to heat up. Why was there so much light when it was supposed to be dark anyways? Her sleep drunk brain struggled to figure it out and Emily just gave up. She threw a hand over her face, and there was instant darkness...much better. Still stuck in the realm between sleep and waking, it was a simple thing to cross back over into the land of dreams. Sleep welcoming her back eagerly after years of shunning her.
And Emily, like a person starved and thirsty after spending days lost in the desert, lapped it up. She went back to sleep without a care in the world, for once letting the rest of the world worry about itself. Letting herself enjoy the pleasure that came with being able to sleep right through without any interruptions. The sleep was so good that in the brief time that she had been aware, she had not even noticed the arm around her waist. And she had simply dismissed the breaths against the back of her neck, her mind filing them away as just very warm air.
What felt like the blink of an eye, but was actually closer to an hour after she had first woken up, Emily was up again. And this time, she did not wake up because the sun was in her eyes. No, this time what woke Emily up was something that could not be dealt with by simply throwing an arm over her face.
This time what woke her up was her own body, her bladder making its need to be emptied known. Emily hung on for as long as she could, but her bladder was not giving up, and Emily had to make a choice. Either she stayed in bed and let her need to pee chase away all of her sleep, or she could get up, go to the bathroom and hope that by the time she was done and returned to bed, she would still be sleepy enough to pass right out when she came back.
Option two won by a landslide.