The alarm didn't ring this time – the scream did.
Marcus jolted upright in his single bed, sweat slicking the thin cotton of his shirt to his back. At twenty-six, he'd thought he'd outgrown nightmares, but his hands still shook as he reached for the glass of water on his nightstand, knocking it over onto the floorboards. The splash echoed in the quiet of his small apartment, but it couldn't drown out the sound still ringing in his ears: "Marcus… look out!"
It was the same as every other night. The rain lashing against a windscreen he couldn't see through. His mother's voice, sharp with panic. The sickening crunch of metal he'd only ever heard in his dreams, though he'd lived through the real thing fifteen years ago. She'd pushed him out of the path of a speeding truck on a wet downtown street; he'd walked away with scrapes, she'd never stood again.
Now, three months running, she came to him in sleep – always at this exact moment, always reaching for him, always vanishing into the crash before he could touch her hand. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, pressing his palms to his eyes until spots danced behind them. The clock on the wall glowed green: 3:17 AM. The same time the nightmare always ended.
The floor was cold beneath his bare feet as he stepped over the puddle. Through the window, the city's night sky was dark and still – no rain in sight. But he could still feel the phantom chill of it on his skin, still smell the damp asphalt and burning rubber that haunted his dreams.
Marcus dragged a hand through his dark hair, breathing slowly to steady his pulse. He'd tried everything to make the dreams stop – herbal teas that were recommended to him online, white noise machines, even talking to a counselor twice before he'd given up when she'd asked about things he couldn't bring himself to say.
He padded to the kitchen, flipping on the fluorescent light that hummed overhead. The small space was neat but sparse – a few mismatched dishes in the drainer, a stack of unpaid bills on the counter, his work badge for the logistics firm clipped to a magnet on the fridge. At the office, they barely noticed him; just another guy pushing papers and updating spreadsheets, easy to overlook when promotions came up.
As he ran water into a new glass, his reflection caught in the window – tired eyes, shoulders hunched like he was carrying something heavy. He'd been that way since the accident at work last month too, when a pallet had slipped from the loading dock and nearly crushed him. No one knew he'd ducked into a storage closet to avoid it, hiding until the commotion died down. They'd just assumed he'd been lucky to be elsewhere.
The glass slipped from his fingers, shattering on the linoleum.
"I got lost in thought," he said to himself, his voice barely a whisper in the quiet kitchen as he knelt to gather the broken glass with his bare hands. He should have grabbed a broom and dustpan first – he knew better – but his mind was still foggy from the nightmare, slow to catch up with what his hands were doing. A sharp shard sliced clean across his palm, and he flinched as a thin line of bright red blood welled up and began to trickle down his wrist.
He pushed himself to his feet and pulled the well-worn first aid kit from its spot under the sink, its plastic case scuffed and stained from years of use. As he ran cool water over the cut to wash away the blood and tiny glass fragments, then reached for antiseptic and a roll of gauze, his focus remained miles away. His fingers moved automatically through the motions he'd practiced before – cleaning, drying, wrapping – while his mind drifted back through time and across the worries that weighed on him daily.
He thought of his mother, and the memories hit him with a force that made his chest tighten. He could see her so clearly: standing on the downtown sidewalk fifteen years ago, rain starting to dot the pavement, her face breaking into that warm, easy smile she saved just for him. He remembered how her laugh had carried over the sound of distant traffic, how she'd reached for his hand to pull him closer to the curb – and then how her grip had shifted, how her body had moved with a speed and strength he'd never known she possessed, shoving him out of the path of the speeding truck that had come barreling around the corner through the slick streets. He'd walked away with little more than scrapes and bruises, but she'd never stood again, never smiled quite the same way after that day.
Then his thoughts shifted to the walls of his office, to the gray cubicle he'd occupied for three years now. Just last week, his supervisor had called him into the small glass-walled office and leaned back in his chair, a serious but encouraging look on his face. "Marcus," he'd said, tapping a finger on a folder on his desk, "we've been keeping an eye on you. The regional manager position is opening up next month, and you're at the top of our list." The words had felt like sunlight breaking through clouds – a chance to finally move forward, to build a life his mother would be proud of. But then came the accident at the loading dock, when a pallet stacked high with crates had slipped its bindings and come crashing down toward him. Instead of standing his ground, instead of helping to secure the area like he'd been trained to do, he'd frozen for a split second before turning and ducking into the nearest storage closet, hiding in the dark until he was sure the noise had stopped. No one knew what he'd done – they'd all assumed he'd been in the break room, lucky to be out of harm's way. But the guilt had settled deep in his chest, and every time he saw his supervisor's eyes on him now, he wondered if the man could somehow tell what he'd really done when push came to shove.
By the time he'd finished wrapping his hand, the gauze was slightly crooked, and he'd pressed the bandage so tight that his fingertips were starting to tingle. He didn't bother adjusting it – he barely even noticed.
Looking up at the kitchen clock, he was surprised to see it was already 5:30 AM. The red digital numbers burned into his tired eyes, a stark reminder that dawn was only minutes away – and that in less than two hours, he'd have to drag himself to work, put on a blank face, and pretend he hadn't spent another night fighting ghosts in his sleep.
"I don't feel like I've slept at all yet," he muttered, pressing his uninjured hand to his forehead. The cool touch of his skin did little to calm the throbbing behind his temples. "I think... can you even sleep for just 30 minutes? That counts as sleep, right?" he said to himself, dragging his feet as he walked back toward his bedroom. Each step felt heavier than the last, as if the floor was pulling him down into the worn wood grain. He passed the puddle from his overturned glass earlier, now dark and sticky where it had seeped into the gaps between boards – another small mess he didn't have the energy to clean up.
The floorboards creaked under his weight, and the cold from the linoleum still lingered on his skin, a phantom chill that mixed with the sweat drying on his back. His bed looked inviting from across the room – the rumpled sheets still holding the faint warmth from where he'd been lying earlier, his pillow indented exactly where his head had rested. But even as he pulled back the covers and slipped between them, the familiar scent of his detergent and the musty smell of old apartment walls couldn't quiet the storm in his head. He could feel his mind racing, the images from his nightmare and the weight of his worries keeping him from truly settling down.
The crash from his dream played on repeat behind his closed eyelids – metal grinding against metal, tires screeching on wet asphalt, his mother's voice cutting through it all. He saw her face again, twisted with panic and love in that split second before impact, and his chest tightened so much he had to force himself to breathe. Then his thoughts jumped to work: the stack of invoices he'd left half-finished on his desk, the way his supervisor had looked at him in the break room yesterday – was that disappointment in his eyes? Or was Marcus just imagining things, letting his guilt paint shadows where there were none?
He fumbled with his phone on the nightstand, setting an alarm for 6:00 AM – thirty minutes exactly. It was a risk; he'd have less time to shower and get ready, but the thought of just a little more rest pulled at him like a tide. The screen's blue light burned through his eyelids when he closed them again, so he tucked the device face down under his pillow, where its faint vibrations would still wake him but wouldn't sear into his brain. He pulled the thin blanket up to his chin, curling into a ball despite the growing warmth in the room. His bandaged hand throbbed in time with his heartbeat, a steady reminder of how easily things could fall apart – how one moment of carelessness, one second of being lost in thought, could leave you bleeding on the floor.
For a few minutes, he lay perfectly still, counting his breaths in an attempt to quiet his mind. One breath in, two beats hold, three breaths out – the counselor had taught him that trick before he'd stopped going. But every time he tried to focus on the rhythm, his thoughts drifted again: to the promotion he might lose if he showed up late one more time, to the last time he'd visited his mother in the care home, to the way she'd reached for his hand with her own gnarled fingers and whispered that she was proud of him. He'd lied and told her everything was fine, that work was going well, that he was taking care of himself.
Slowly, almost against his will, his eyelids grew heavy. The edges of his thoughts blurred, and the tension in his shoulders began to ease. He didn't fall into deep sleep – there was no chance of that now – but he slipped into a hazy middle ground, where dreams and wakefulness blended together. In that space between, he could almost feel his mother's hand on his head, could almost smell the lavender she used to wear in her hair. The alarm would ring soon, and reality would come crashing back in, but for now – just for these few precious minutes – the world felt quiet enough to bear.A ray of sunshine pierced through the thin cotton curtains, cutting across the dim room and falling warm on his face – the kind of gentle morning light he'd almost forgotten existed, having spent so many dawns staring at glowing clocks and fighting off exhaustion. It pulled him slowly from his rest, and when he finally blinked his eyes open, the world felt sharper, clearer than it had in months. He sat up, stretching his arms above his head, and felt the tension that had been knotted in his shoulders for weeks unravel with a satisfying ache. For just a moment, as he breathed in the clean, bright air drifting through his window, he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this good. His mind was quiet – no echoes of screeching tires or crashing metal – and a strange, light feeling settled in his chest, like maybe, just maybe, his life could be brand new.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his bare feet finding the floorboards cool but not cold, and ran a hand through his hair. The bandage on his palm was loose but intact, and the throbbing had faded to a dull memory. He could hear birds singing outside – had they always been there, or had he just never been awake enough to notice? He made his way to the window, pulling back the curtains to let in more light, and watched as the sun painted the city rooftops gold and amber. A few cars passed by on the street below, people heading to work, coffee cups in their hands, faces turned toward the day ahead. For the first time in years, Marcus felt like he could be one of them – someone with a future to look forward to, not just a past to run from.
But then his eyes drifted to the kitchen clock, and the peaceful moment shattered like glass on linoleum. The red digital numbers burned into his vision: 8:45 AM.
Work started at 9:00 AM sharp – a rule his supervisor had drilled into every member of their team, especially those being considered for promotion. By car, the drive usually took thirty minutes on a good day; with morning traffic picking up, it would take at least forty-five. There was no way he'd make it on time. No way he'd walk into that office at anything less than five minutes early, as he'd promised himself he would for today's meeting.
His heart slammed against his ribs, the light feeling vanishing as quickly as it had come, replaced by a cold knot of panic that coiled in his stomach. He'd set his alarm for 6:00 AM – he was sure of it. Had he slept through it? Had the phone died? He rushed to his nightstand and grabbed the device, shaking it as if that would bring the screen to life. It blinked on immediately, the battery icon showing a full charge – and there, in his own handwritten note below the alarm settings, was the time he'd set: 6:00 AM. But the alarm hadn't gone off. Instead, a small notification glowed at the top of the screen: Do Not Disturb was active until 8:30 AM.
He must have turned it on without thinking, in that hazy space between sleep and wakefulness, desperate for just a little more peace. Now that peace had cost him everything he'd been working toward. The promotion his mother would have been so proud of – the chance to finally move out of this small apartment, to pay off his bills, to build a life worth living – it all felt like it was slipping through his fingers faster than the water from that overturned glass.
His hands started to shake as he stumbled back to his bedroom, yanking open his closet door and grabbing the first clean shirt and pair of slacks he could find. He pulled them on in a blur, not even noticing when he snagged the sleeve on his bandage and pulled it loose. His dress shoes were under the bed, scuffed and dusty – he'd meant to polish them last night, but the nightmare had left him too drained to do anything but stare at the wall. He laced them up so fast one of the strings snapped, and he just kicked off the shoe, grabbed his sneakers from the mat by the door instead.
As he grabbed his work badge and keys from the kitchen counter, his eyes fell on the stack of unpaid bills. They seemed to mock him now – proof that this was more than just a missed meeting. This was his life, always teetering on the edge of disaster, always one small mistake away from falling apart completely. He could call in sick, make up some excuse about a flat tire or a family emergency. But he'd never been good at lying, and the thought of looking his supervisor in the eye and pretending made his throat tighten.
He flew out the door, slamming it behind him and racing down the stairs to the parking lot. The morning air hit him cold in the face, and he fumbled with his car keys, dropping them twice before he could get the door unlocked. As he pulled out of his spot and merged onto the main road, traffic was already backed up, red taillights stretching ahead like a river of warning signs. His phone buzzed in his pocket – a text message from his supervisor: "Waiting for you in my office, Marcus. We need to talk."