The sunshine beat down excruciatingly on her bare neck as she walked across the field. It was late summer and the grass was dry and brown under her bare feet. With every step she took, the heat intensified. She walked beneath a magnifying glass; every step bringing her closer to the pin point of concentrated heat at the center of the field. But she walked on.
     In the center, she cried out in pain. The heat was too much.
     Just as she felt faint and her eyes waned, the field dissolved away before her eyes and she was surrounded by dust. Dust. Red. Hot. Dry. It swirled around her and choked her lungs. She choked and struggled to keep her eyes open.
     While she sought refuge, a city of dust grew before her eyes. She quickly ran to the nearest hut. The sand no longer blew into her eyes, but hung there, suspended in air and time. In the center of the room was a grey, old man with his backed toward her. Entranced, she circumvented the hut seeking the old man’s face.
     Upon reaching the other side of the room, she closed her eyes in disgust. Nauseous, she tried to choke down her disgust. She drew her hands to her eyes before opening, as if to check that they were still there. When she opened her eyes, she stared into blood-blacked empty eye sockets. They were filling with sand.
     When she could draw her eyes from the sight, she noticed a bowl in his lap. With closer inspection, she realized that the bowl contained two white orbs floating in a crawling mass of maggots.
~
     She put every effort into opening her eyes. She saw only blackness. She drew her hands to her face in panic. The right one was ensnared in blankets, but the left freely felt her face. Her eyes were still there. She practiced opening and closing here eyes again and again, trying to rid herself of the terrible feeling.
     She looked at the clock.
     3:08.
     Three more hours.
     She tried to close her eyes; to lose herself in blackness; but she could not.
     She would not sleep tonight.