It was around 3 am. Thomas, a 15 year old high schooler, sat in his office chair, legs tucked onto his chest, passively browsing random threads online. The clicks from his mouse were the one sound breaking the night’s silence, and the monitor was his only source of light.

He sat there, a dead look in his eyes, wondering why he couldn’t find anything to do. At this hour, most people would be asleep, especially since there was school tomorrow, but not even that did he have it left in himself to do. It was not as though he wasn’t sleepy; it was just that he felt some kind of indescribable inertia towards doing so.

Fast forward to around 4:30 am. Finally, Thomas rose from his chair. He walked to the kitchen, stumbling on his clothes scattered around the floor, and grabbed himself a cup of milk. Then, he drank it oh-so-slowly while leaning over the countertop, trying not to fall from the immense dizziness that assailed him. Only once he finished doing so did he finally go to bed.

By then, it was around 5 am.

***

Nearly half an hour had passed since the morning class had started, when from the corridor came leisurely steps. Without even knocking at the door, Thomas swerved into the classroom, directly towards one of the seats in the back. Although most tables were shared in pairs, he walked towards the only empty table and sat himself in the dead middle of it.

When this distraction appeared, the maths teacher stopped her explanation, but only for a few seconds; a few seconds in which her expression contorted slightly and her eyes gained a glint of pity. Then, once Thomas sat, that glint gradually faded away, and the class proceeded as normal, as though ignoring this new person.

New person who, having slept very few hours the night before, rapidly started being unable to keep his eyes open, slowly but steadily drifting into dreamland…

***

Thomas woke up from a nightmare. He didn’t scream, which was fortunate since he was in class, but he couldn’t stop trembling from it. As far as he could remember, he was dreaming normally, with no signs of a nightmare, until suddenly, he heard a noise so loud he felt like it could rupture his eardrums, and pain so sharp it was as though his body was being cooked and broken apart at the same time.

Then, he woke up. Since everything around him was normal, he figured that he could only dismiss what he’d felt as a dream, even though he’d heard that you couldn’t actually feel pain in dreams.

But regardless of whether it was real or not, for him, it had felt more than real, and he couldn’t stop trembling. It had only been for a split second, since he’d woken up right away, but he’d felt so much pain he couldn’t even begin to describe it. Much, much worse than anything he had ever experienced - the only reason why he hadn't screamed was because he just hadn’t had time to process it.

Suddenly, from his left, some sort of clamour happened around a classmate. Apparently, a girl was feeling ill. The teacher let her go to the bathroom, and told her that she could call her if she suddenly started getting worse. For some reason, however, the rest of the students started steering the conversation into bringing her to a hospital, but the girl herself dismissed that offer, walking out of the classroom in tears.

Thomas looked at this scene curiously, with sleepy eyes. It couldn’t be a coincidence, he figured, that he’d woken up at the exact same time she had started feeling ill. Maybe she had screamed, or something had happened that had made his brain react in a strange way, he thought. The pain he vividly remembered still felt very strange, regardless of anything that could have happened around him.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

In any case, a few minutes after the clamour passed, Thoma’s sleepiness won him over, and once more, he inevitably drifted into sleep.

***

BOOM.

Once again, Thomas woke up in intense pain. This time, the pain had been even worse than the other; rather than feeling like his whole body was getting obliterated by an intense unbearable heat for a split second, this time he’d felt the same but for much, much longer. His stomach turned at just the thought.

Would that dream happen every time he went to sleep?

The simple thought made Thomas anxious like never before.

With his complexion going pale, he looked around the classroom with blurry eyes. From his left, some kind of commotion had started. “That again?” Thomas thought, in agony. He didn’t know why, but that had proven it: the commotion had something to do with his nightmare.

He slowly got up, intent on leaving the classroom - screw the class if it meant another commotion made him feel that much pain again - until, suddenly, an indescribable feeling of uncanniness washed over him. There were students murmuring all around him, some strongly voicing their opinions - asking the teacher to bring the student who was feeling ill this time to the hospital - until the student in question walked out of the classroom, in tears…

And it was the same student.

He looked at the clock. It had only been a few minutes since he’d arrived.

What? How?

Then, as his brain short-circuited, the teacher, who seemed a little flustered, said.

““Let’s hope that Clara starts feeling better soon and finish the class, shall we?””

Murmured Thomas, at the exact same time, in disbelief. He’d seen this exact same scene just moments prior.

Had he travelled back in time? What in the world…?

Just to make sure, he looked back at the clock. 8:45 - exactly 30 minutes after the class had started.

How was that possible?

At a loss, Thomas rose from his chair, and chased the ill student outside. The teacher nearly screamed at him, asking what he was doing as he ran through the corridor, but he ignored her.

He barged through the women’s bathroom, and looked at the girl, who leaned into a toilet with yellow-coloured water with the eyes of a dead fish.

“What the fuck is happening here” screamed Thomas, subsequently grabbing her collar and pinning her against the wall.

Her next words came slowly and painfully.

“I am… dying over and over… and over again, and then… I go back one hour in time” she whispered.

Thomas stared at her dead eyes, his teeth gritting in a mix of pain and disbelief.

“No you’re fucking not. You’re fucking not. You just aren’t” he spat “You don’t travel back in time. You don’t die and then magically go back to being alive. You don’t feel that much pain and then be all good in the next second. This is all a fucking dream, and I want to wake up from it right now”

Still pinned against the wall, the girl silently stared at him. She stared at the despair he showed on his face, at the tears that ran down his cheeks, at the trembling hand that held her collar, so strongly, yet so weakly, and at his eyes, which almost seemed to be going insane. At first, the girl’s expression was blank, devoid of hope or emotions, but at some point, somehow, the corners of her mouth started ever so slowly tucking upwards, and eventually, in her face was a pained smile.

She looked down and then at the boy again, who couldn’t stop deliriously murmuring to himself, as though trying to escape reality, and thought.

“Ah, so I’m not alone”

And an enormous sense of relief washed over her.