There would be so much to do after something like this, Thea thought: the forms and phone calls, appointments and claims. The effort. She didn’t have it in her. She felt so light there was nothing left of her and dealing with all of this needed solidity; it needed heft, a person who felt like they left a footprint when they walked. If someone blew on her she would simply dissipate, like dust on the wind.

Idly, she watched liquid seep from under her car and with the same blankness with which she’d thought of everything else, she wondered if the liquid was flammable, or if it was merely water.

She should have cared, one way or the other.

At that moment her hand buzzed. She blinked. Maybe it was an injury of some kind, she thought slowly. She would probably need to get it checked out, once she got up from this really rather comfortable bit of damp ground. It buzzed again and this time her eyes managed to get the message over to her brain that she was still clutching her phone. Looking down at it, a notification flashed up, some advert from one of her apps, something she’d probably seen a thousand times before. At first, she thought it was the universe’s idea of a cruel joke. But then, as she sat there amongst the twisted metal and shattered glass, she came to think of it more as salvation:

Morpheus. Dream your way to a better you – one sleep at a time.

Chapter 2

Thea stared at the frog.

She had successfully risen from the dead for yet another day.

It was one week after the car crash. Thea had removed all clocks from her bedroom to prevent feeling anxious at night about the hours passing. However, this now meant she spent the time feeling anxious about not knowing how many hours were passing, which she wasn’t sure was an improvement. Last night she had certainly spent many hours in bed, a lot of them with her eyes shut kidding herself she was dozing. The sky had been a watery blue when she finally did drop off.

Waking to the alarm was like dragging herself out of a deep grave.

She did the usual estimation again: an hour or so of sleep, tops. That was pretty much classed as sleep deprivation, wasn’t it? Some dictatorships used that as torture. By rights, after years of sleeping like this, she shouldn’t have been walking, talking, working … driving. She should have been huddled in a corner, hollow-eyed and drooling.

Mornings were finely tuned. As adrenaline kicked at brain cells that only wanted sleep, she had discovered that mornings were not a time for decision-making. She washed, dressed in the clothes laid out ready the night before, grabbed her pre-prepared breakfast and lunch and got out of the door, her head beginning to pound.