Clara died a horrible death, slipping and sliding in her own blood while she tried to stop an elderly neighbor from being robbed. She passed, but she didn't go anywhere. Life as a ghost isn't too bad, though. She has her neighbor, Agnes, and together they learn how to dream-share so that Clara can have some company, but then Agnes dies and the cottage sits empty for years.
It's a lonely, lonely existence, but a safe one.
When Patrick buys the cottage and moves in with big plans to renovate it, Clara's isolation is broken, but so also is her little bubble of security.
Patrick draws her. He's handsome, intense, and full of life. He's everything Clara has been starved of. She dream-shares with him, even knowing he doesn't understand that she's real. In those dreams, Patrick takes her to places she never imagined she'd want to go, down the seductive rabbit hole of BDSM. Clara is enraptured, but now that she's had a taste, she wants more. She wants Patrick to know that she's real, that he's doing all these things with her...not with a figment of his imagination.
