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himself across the face , but it was all in vain. Every time he tried he would never feel any physical contact whatsoever and the hand would simply pass through his skin. He became steadily mor e agitated as his actions grew urgent and reckles s, until his hand began to pass right through his arm and came out the other side looking no different.
    Finally he s topped and close d his eyes, hoping that when he opened them again he would have ‘woken up’. I t didn’t work . He tried again and again, but seven tries later and nothing had changed. His head felt like it would burst. A surge of fear was clawing at his insides like a caged animal , threatening to rupture his chest. He wanted to cry and scream at the same time . Most of all, he wanted to wake up. Except now he was starting to lose faith that he ever would. A part of him – the logical part – had an inkling that this might actually be real , but he couldn’t believe that.
    “Why isn’t it working?” he cried out desperately. “What’s going on? And…and who are you?”
    Finally the amused grin dimmed . “This is my body now,” it said simply . “I expelled y ou from it. Now I control it , and you’re just an I mprint . That’s all you need to know.”
    Sean looked to the side, to see the heart monitor beeping. He looked to the bedside table, to see ‘get well soon’ cards in intricate detail and a pretty vase of daffodils. How could this be a nightmare? When you’re dreaming you’re not supposed to be consciously aware o f it, he told himself. Everything shouldn’t be in so much detail, everything shouldn’t seem so realistic.
    He looked back into the eyes that weren’t his own, searching for something. Whatever it was he did not find it. Those eyes were deep and guarded, wearied yet still alight with a curiosity that he couldn’t pinpoint. They were too real to be a dream. All of it was.
    And with that realisation, he welcomed the darkness back again for the second time.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 4: C ’ est la vie.
     
    Dark figures haunted his dreams after that, dreams in which he was running blindly into miles of endless darkness while the shadows with their piercing burgundy eyes followed silently. It was worse than the previous dreams about the door. By the time he was consciously aware again, he could feel pure, untainted fear and adrenaline rushing through him and numbing his senses. A lthough now that he thought about it , his senses hadn’t been working much lately anyway.
     
    He waited for a long while, eyes closed just because he was scared of what he might find if he opened them. Everything that he could remember last seemed like a dream; just a continuation of this endless nightmare that had been going on for far too long. But maybe if he just opened his eyes now…maybe it would be over. With this dashing hope, he gathered the last of his frayed nerves and cracked his eyelids apart.
    The first thing he saw was grey; b lank, stubborn grey that glared back at him looking posit ively ordinary. And then he noticed s omething small and barely noticeable that marred the blank grey. It was a piece of mould, in the shape of a musical note, in the corner of what he realised now was a ceiling. Wait – his ceiling. Immediately he felt a wave of relief rush through him and sighed. Everything would be okay. He was awake now and back at home. Any minute his alarm would go off and he would hit the snooze button and slee p for another ten minutes to make sure he was late for school.
    I t never did.
    When he realised this, some of the previous anxiety and doubt returned . Strangely enough he still didn’t feel any pain – or anything, for that matter. Shrugging this thought away he pushed him self into a sitting position. He could see his whole room from his position on the floor (the floor? Why wasn’t he on a bed?) . With a grimace he noticed someone had obviously attempted to tidy it and hadn’t