The house is completely dark.

Actually kind of unnaturally dark?

...Huh. 

She makes her way inside, groping for the stairs.

There's light, but it's like every window is the end of a long dark tunnel. Walls and furniture are reduced to vague shapes.

And there's... too many... stairs?

They're supposed to go up and turn and then go up again and then you're done. Instead, at that point, there turn out to be more stairs.

...What???

She chalks it up to her exhaustion and keeps climbing.

Another turn.

And another.

And another.

...

Maybe this is a dream. 

She stops climbing and sits down.

For a minute nothing interesting happens, and then she floats into the air and rises up through the center of the endless stairwell. The light gets brighter and the stairs get weirder as she ascends. Neat right-angle turns give way to a smooth spiral, without landings, twirling upward into the distance.

There's a man standing at the top, leaning over the railing. It's bright enough up here that she can see his smile, although only barely. It is not a very reassuring smile.

She drifts to a halt, her face now level with his.

"What a weird dream."

"Sorry, guess again," he says. "I usually try to introduce the whole magic thing a little slower, but you took a while getting home and I got bored and messed up your stairs."

"That seems unlikely. 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,'" she quotes.

He shrugs. "I mean, you can think you're dreaming if you want, I can't stop you. You'll figure it out eventually. Or just go through the rest of your life thinking this weekend was a bad dream, I guess."

...She snorts. "This isn't what my bad dreams look like."

"Give it time. Or are you one of those people with really unimaginative dreams?"

"My bad dreams don't have to be imaginative."

"Well then I guess this isn't one. Or you're branching out."

"If this isn't a dream, what is it?"

"A home invasion?"

"Why?"

"... Do you really not have a guess?"

"...Why me?"

Shrug. "Why not? You're who happened to catch my eye, that's all."

"Fine."

"Gotta say, that's not the usual reaction, even before I start setting people on fire."

"If you can do this," she waves at the stairs, "then I can hardly stop you. So let's get it over with."

He shrugs. "Eh, fair enough," he says, and she floats toward him as he reaches for her, his fingernails lengthening into razor-sharp claws with which he proceeds to start tearing her clothes off. He isn't particularly careful about how much damage he does to her skin in the process.