How hard was it to sleep? Whenever the sun went down and the lights came on, the city buzzed with its most well-known feature: nightlife. When you were tucked securely in the folds of cotton and silk-lines, with the winter chill threatening to bite if you left this place, how hard was it to succumb?

Water drops, footsteps, shock-beaten locomotives... all the noise seemed to trap the girl in a bubble. Needles went pin-pricking into her mind if she tried too hard to fade from the world. The world didn't want her to fade. She didn't want it either.

How many weeks of sleepless nights can the body endure before it retaliates? Something in her mind didn't want to know. So, it made her tired, instead. Eyelids were washed free of their charcoal lining and gawdy garments unpealed for more comfortable replacements.

Shadows crept with each passing object. There were many things to fly by the window that night. Each one appeared to have jagged fangs and twisted talons. All figments, surely. Glamoured depths of untapped cerulean suddenly shrouded in single thin sheet of cracked skin. Wisps of delicate black intertwined.

How hard was it to sleep?

Very.

There had been a day in the past, wholly unspectacular, when she had played outside with her cousin Aimee on the swings. Lost in the realm of make believe with no knowledge of other realms, they were pretending-- crossing a bubbling river of lava with snapping teeth of killer hounds on their heels. Neither of the girls could have been more than eight or nine years of age.

As their mind's eye pushed them close to the river banks Sami had jabbed the tip of her wizard's staff into the rocky slope to anchor herself. A look of concern shot to Aimee and then she sprang with all her might into the vacant air of sweltering heat that ran along the infernal river.

In the waking world a skinny frame of awkward blossoming was stretching out from the rusty metal swing-set in Aimee's backyard. The worn rubber seat popped up whenever she moved and managed to wrap around her dirty sneakers. Both girls realized too late that one of them would not be making it back to the realm of Green and Plenty after their visit to the evil Rothien's castle.

As the wizardess slipped into a fiery grave, her real counterpart felt a deafening crack and the wind was pulled from her lungs. On the ground Sami writhed in complete agony, unable to pull a breath in from her lips, choking and sputtering in panic.

Tears were edging around cerulean eyes whenever Aimee screamed and ran inside to fetch her mother. The pain of a broken rib was nothing in comparison to having lost the ability to breathe. Sami had never felt that sensation before.

So now, standing in the crooked doorway, it was a familiar feeling as the door closed against her chest and body was wedged sideways between the frame and the pealing teal edge of worn wood. Splinters were already making their way into her skin, dipping through cracks of iridescent flesh.

Glamoured eyes widened in surprise and chest attempted to heave in hopes of pulling in a lung full of air. It was then that the door shattered and its fragments burrowed into her skin. The veiled, colorless faces in the dark room drew near and their clammy hands groped for her arms.

Suddenly... she knew them. All of them. The lives and souls she had stolen in hunger. They were the prisoners and she was the door that kept them from the light outside. Fingers clawed at her even as they grimaced with the burning touch her skin delivered to their flesh.

Screaming in horror, shaking with guilt, Sami awoke in her bed.

Truly, there was no rest for the wicked.