Her

Sound, struggling to escape – body, heavy like a sleepy limb. Awakening was slow and labored, a battle to escape a dream – no, not a dream, a nightmare. The terror was there, the fear so thick you could taste it, but she was not – not really, she was watching the fear, she was watching herself tremble in an effort to escape sleep and breathe.
Bitten by a dog she didn’t see coming, after passing thru a gate she wasn’t supposed to find, a gate not really there for anyone but her – like a sign that reads, “you of all, for no reason at all, are not welcome to cross here”, floating oddly in her way without support.
Then her fevered body, like a strangler’s victim, fighting for breath. The first stir of wakefulness came with a gasp – finally; she had stopped breathing in her sleep again, and now lay naked on the sweat soaked sheets.
“I always like to watch that,” he said, his disembodied voice in her head – in her room – in her dreams. She got up and headed for her shower and her clothes, though there was no escape from the nakedness in either.