(Art by Dr Abbey, text by Nimue)

When you wake up, your aunty is all around you. When you went to sleep you thought that you had only one aunty, but now there seem to be a lot of her.

You may be feverish. You feel very cold – but it is normal to feel cold so this clarifies nothing.

You’ve heard that there are tiny magical creatures who some people call aunties. You do not think your aunty is a small magical creature but also you have no idea what would happen if an aunty gets inside an aunty.

“This is all perfectly normal” she tells you, and all of her mouths move at slightly different times.

This makes you wonder how many heads you have, and how many mouths, and whether you have woken up with the same number of eyes you had when going to sleep.

“It’s just a nightmare,” one of her mouths says.

You have the feeling she is lying to you.

“When you wake up it will all have been a dream.”

You do not want to go back to sleep, because you have no idea what will have been a dream. This vision? Your life? Everything you have known? If you go to sleep you might wake up into something even worse than this.

“You are just a bone remembering when you had flesh,” she says. “Go back to sleep.”

If this is the only life left to you then you do not want to give it up.

“You are just driftwood and dry seaweed imagining that you are a person, and having a nightmare,” she says, oh so sweetly.

You are drifting now, sliding gently towards oblivion with no confidence that there is anything in you capable of ever waking up again.