It had been months since her mother had seen her. Her mother, who said that he never even existed, that he never was.

But her mother had never felt his lips on her small hands, had never talked about alien abductions, had never fallen asleep next to him. She had never known.

Of course, she herself began to question the empty space next to her when she fell into her uneasy slumber. The streetlight's half-glow only revealed so much.

Was she delusional? Illusional? Confusional?

Trying to carry so much weight but her hands only allow for so much.

The last thing she looks at, after the gaping emptiness of her bed, after the half-glow of light, is her hands. Something she had read online about lucid dreams. Studying every single wrinkle of her hands, the curve of every finger, the knuckles, everything. A mental cue. When she sees her hands in a dream, she will know that it is a dream.

And she can control it. All of it.

Control. Something she hadn't known in a long, long time.