Yesterday's Gone: Season One

 
    Paola tiptoed toward her father’s voice, past her mom and Desmond, past John, his face still pasted to the bar, then past Jimmy and into the dining room.  
    Paola loved the hide-n-seek dreams. She looked forward to them, even tried to make herself have them sometimes as she lay in bed counting down to the possibility, starting from 100.  
    She always played this in her dreams with Daddy, just the two of them. And in the dreams, she always felt a few years younger, before she began to feel too old to call her parents mommy and daddy. Before good feelings were replaced with the realization that her parents weren’t the perfect people she used to idolize.
    He’d usually call for her while she did her best to stay hidden. The longer she was gone, the more desperate he’d get to find her. He would call and call and chase her through the house, looking through windows and opening doors. “I love you, Paola. Please let me find you so we can be together. Don’t make me wait any longer. As soon as I find you, we can go and find Mommy together!”
    And they always did. He would find her first; under the bed, in the closet, behind the oak tree outside, behind the hot water heater in the basement, or in the pantry. Once he sniffed her out, he would open her hiding place door with a playful loud roar, then they would spend a few minutes laughing before holding hands and adventuring off together on a quest for Mommy.  
    He never took more than a few minutes to find her, and no matter how different the hide-n-seek dreams were, they always had the same sort of ending: the three of them eating ice cream, watching a movie, or doing any one of the million-and-one things Paola had gone from doing to missing each day in the real world.
    Something was different about this dream, though.
    The hide-n-seek dreams always started good and kept getting better. This one had just started and was already turning into a creeping kind of terrible. The shadow of something ugly twisted the familiarity of the usual dream, souring her warm nostalgia into something wretched.
    Paola could’ve sworn she was in the kitchen, but was confused by the long hallway now in front of her. That made what was happening feel like even more like a dream. She was always retracing her steps in her sleep.  
    I was in the lobby, then I walked through the restaurant and into the kitchen. But now I’m in a long hallway. And it looks like it goes for miles, like the hotel in Vegas where we stayed when we were still a family.  
    Paola spun around. The endless hallway was mirrored on both sides, with 100 identical doors crowding each direction.
    No, this was not the hide-n-seek dream. This was one of the other repeating dreams, where her daddy wanted to show her something, but never got around to it. In these dreams, she always felt lost and alone as she tried to keep up with him, following him for what felt like forever, through twisting halls and endless, winding stairwells. The buildings were always weird and never stayed the same shape for long.
    This felt mostly like that, but this world wasn’t soft like her dreams.
    That’s how she usually knew she was dreaming. Whenever she wondered whether or not she were dreaming, she could push hard on a wall, tree, or other inanimate objects to know for sure. If the object gave under pressure, she was dreaming.
    The world she was walking through now was not soft, though. Despite the changing, impossible architecture, nothing budged under her touch.
    “You’re doing great, Shortcake. Almost there. Just a few more steps.”
    The hallway disappeared and the doors went with it. Paola blinked and was back in the kitchen, standing in front of a long, steel table, a lot longer than it should have been. On top of the counter, directly in front of Paola, lay a large butcher knife, almost cartoonish in size.
    Paola picked up the blade, its metal handle cold to the touch, and rotated it in her hand, staring at her warped reflection and wondering why she looked so real if this were only a dream. She looked at herself in dream mirrors all the time, but never had her reflection seemed so real.
    She set the butcher knife back on the counter, then walked the half mile or so through the kitchen and into the milky clouds of fog which covered the world.
    She walked for more than a mile, except now the distance had turned real. Not like the fake miles inside the hotel that acted like forever but were only a feeling.  
    Rocks,