The woman’s nightmares would not end. As soon as she fell asleep, she’d dream once again about her own murder, whether it came from her grown children, or ex-husband, or boyfriend, or even the rotting corpse of her long dead mother. She had been jumped by masked men hiding in her closet and ferocious giant insects and hungry extraterrestrials.

She’d wake up screaming every time, and try and walk off the nightmare before falling asleep again. But the nightmare was never over, it just rolled into the next murder and when she screamed and woke herself up again, she swore she was no longer sleeping; everything seemed so real.

After her last nightmare, she woke up screaming in a cold sweat, angry at the world. She pinched herself to make sure she was awake, and visited the bathroom. As soon as she turned on the bathroom light, three huddling German soldiers from World War II sniping at targets on the street below were suddenly alerted to her presence and they turned her rifles onto her. She woke up screaming, and this time decided not to go into the bathroom, but instead visit the kitchen for some milk. When she opened the refrigerator, water poured out transforming her apartment into a raging river filled with thousands of piranhas viciously devouring her bite by tiny bite.

She woke up screaming and found that she fell asleep on the breakfast bar. She knew she was awake this time because could feel the patterns tile and grout on the side of her face as she lifted her head off the counter. She laughed, drank some milk without incident, looked at the time, and figured she’d get a little bit more sleep before having to wake up and go to that horrible office job and sit in a cube all day listening to phone meetings.

Once the woman opened the door to her bedroom, she found herself inside a train tunnel, her foot stuck between two tracks. The dull pain of the dense steel tracks on each side of her ankle was excruciating. When the harsh bright light of the train came closer and closer, and the rumble of the massive train vibrated the tracks around her ankle making it feel like it was sawing her foot off, she screamed and screamed and screamed but she couldn’t wake up.

The engineer blared the horn and just before the train plowed through her, she could see the engineer was screaming, too.