I drift into a sleep of caffeine exhaustion in dread anticipation of the hours to follow. I succumb for duty, for habit.

I walk a valley, a basin, surrounded by mountains high enough to obstruct sight and travel, but somehow not a concern to me. I am flanked by walls that I see out of the corners of my eyes, lines of people stretching on to the left and right of me. They are my friends. I look left and right to reassuring faces with plastic smiles. They have blue eyes. Blue eyes are always lying in this place.

They walk faster, the eyes raking holes through me as they pass, critical. The hands that I don't know I am holding to either side are ripped away. The force wraps my arms forward around myself and throws me to my knees, and now I'm wearing a straight jacket. My army marches on, and then they are the mountains, ruling me from afar. I look up to a sky of three stars, then two. I shed a tear for the third. It hits the grass between my knees and thighs with a thunderclap and death consumes the grass around me like fire, etching words in its wake as names on a tombstone, a crystal ball in dust. I squeeze my eyes shut to block them out before I feel it all around me, a quiet little blanket of darkness in the distance, just beyond my saviors in stone, waiting. My eyes snap open as it beats upon the mountains and shakes the ground, throwing acrid ash-etched commands into the air, clouding my vision with a barrier of filth that seeps into my skin, poisoning me with thoughts to which I have neither right nor obligation. I suppress the panic, the acid I taste boiling through me, and feel it replaced by apathy as a chill bursts into my bones. A helpless child, feeling for the mountains crashing down around me, I wait for the end.

Then I remember friendship. I remember love and duty, shackles that I fought so hard to possess. I let out a whimper as I stand up and take control again. I blink and the jacket is gone. A whisper becomes a gale of wind, slashing through kings and prophets and driving the soot backwards. It strikes the mountains, and then they are both gone, and I am alone. The darkness rushes in around me, its only obstruction removed. I raise my hands to stop it, and then I hear the voices, sorrow spoken aloud, and the apathy returns. I look up to the sky to ask forgiveness in the moments I have remaining, but before I can open my mouth, the darkness closes into a dome upon me. I mutter an apology as shadows approach and take form. They have blue eyes and plastic smiles.

And then I wake up. I go get a glass of milk, clean up my room a little, and start my day as usual.