I wake to pain. Thick fog hung over my head like a heavy blanket of ooze, suffocating me, trapping me in my bed, unable to lift even a finger to escape.

I drift in and out of sleep, my mind unable to focus on one thing at a time. I dream of falling and standing up, of running down filthy, dark corridors as voices echo around me.

“We’re coming for you, Daniel,” they whisper to me, but is reaches my ears as a scream.

I run and run, frightened of them because I know that when I wake again, the pain will still be there.

Bzzt, bzzt.

“Please, just let me sleep,” I say to the buzzing alarm. “Just let me sleep.”

I shut my alarm off and that familiar feeling settles in my stomach. I had slept through the first alarm, and the second. I wasn’t going to be late if I skipped breakfast, at least.

“I don’t want to go,” I say again into the empty room. But you have to, I think, this is what life is now, unhappiness and dread and pain every single day.

“I don’t want to go,” I say once more, as though repeating the words will make them come true, but knowing that I have no choice in the matter.