I lay on the cold metal floor of the train and closed my eyes, hoping to get some restorative sleep. However, torrents of nightmares came instead.

I slept for less than two hours yet had at least three nightmares that I could remember:

In one, I was drinking from a bottle similar to the one I found in the crate, but it had white milk instead of water. I was parched and swallowed greedily, but suddenly started coughing as I felt something crawling down my throat. I looked inside the bottle and saw millions of different species of miniature spiders swimming around the milk.

As I woke up, I felt the spiders still in my throat, but I had no water to wash out the feeling, no one to console me. I fell asleep again and dreamed I was in a collapsing building that kept changing shapes. A pigman with no eyelids nor lips chased me around with chainsaws for hands and caught up to me, cutting my body into pieces while I was still conscious.

I woke up again, feeling sore in every limb. Curiously, I didn't feel much pain when the chainsaw cut through my skull and into my brain; it was more like pressure. I tried to fall asleep for the third time, calming my tumultuous head with the rocking motion of the train's wagon. I moved to a corner, wishing I had a blanket to protect me from the blowing wind.

Then, I had the worst nightmare: I dreamt I woke up and was home again with my parents. I even heard them snoring in the other room.

But when I tried to move to tell them all the hell I'd been through, and how much I was sorry, and how much I loved them, I realized I was paralyzed.

A shadow appeared next to the door, tall and spindly. I couldn't see it because I couldn't move my head, just my eyes. I saw it moving at the edge of my vision, creeping in closely, lurking, and mockingly smiling at my inability to move.

I made my best effort and thrashed around the bed like a rabid dog and finally awoke in the train, on the very edge of the wagon, about to fall outside. The sight of the gritty, barren dirt moving at high speeds welcomed me back to vigil, and I decided I wouldn't be able to sleep for the time being.

I was tired, angry, and then numbed and sad. I remembered reading in Philosophy class that Descartes speculated about a butterfly that dreamed itself king, and a king who closed his eyes to become a butterfly. But in this land of nightmares, when I closed my eyes, only more nightmares came.

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I stared out the wagon through the big opening and saw a plain that stretched all the way to where the eye could see. I imagined myself wandering there for months, finally succumbing to starvation.

I returned to my corner and grabbed my head. I smacked myself, feeling responsible for being lost in this place. Didn't I say that there wasn't adventure without getting lost? Well, here I was!

I wondered if I was a hypocrite for thinking I cared more about my parents than I did about myself. I thought that if maybe, just maybe, I could trade my life imprisoned here with a demon for having my parents forget my existence and live in peace, I'd do it.

A thought intruded my mind: what if my parents weren't alone back there? My literature teacher said that Dante had his worst enemies feature in his Inferno as tormented souls whose bodies had been possessed by demons that now walked the earth freely.

What if there was a me, that wasn't me, out there with them? Would I even have a home to return to if I took too long to get out of here?

My thoughts were interrupted as I felt something was terribly wrong with the train. I felt like it had accelerated too fast right after a sudden jerking motion.

I got up, and gravity threw me all the way to the other side of the wagon. I saw and felt that I was falling along with the derailed train. I panicked like I was on the worst rollercoaster suddenly plummeting onto the ground.

Had the train driven off a cliff and jumped into the ocean? Was that even possible? The wagons were locked, and I couldn't move – I was pinned to the rugged metal wall, forced to embrace whatever fate had prepared for me.

The train crashed against something, and the last thing I heard was metal bending and screeching as the high-speed collision made me hit my head against the floor, making me pass out...

I had nightmares again, but it was worse because I couldn't wake up; they were much more intense. Have you ever wondered why, at the moment of climax in your nightmares, you simply wake up? That's your brain protecting you; now I know that.

Imagine lands of eternal fire, where buildings rise on top of islands of mangled corpses. Imagine swimming in a sea of rotten blood that coagulates and drags you down like putrid tar. The sky is black and void, yet it feels like a million eyes piercing your soul.

Imagine breaking down and crying, and it doesn't matter how many times you look at your palms or thrash around, or focus on moving your fingertips – you won't wake up until they allow you. That's not even half of what I went through.

I thanked God, or rather the human psyche, for blocking most of those memories that would have left me catatonic otherwise