It always starts the same way – a crack opens in my bedroom wall, and for some reason I climb through the crack and find myself in the bowels of a machine. Steam scorches my face and huge oil-slick cogs grind around me like slavering jaws, dripping their saliva on my head and back as I crawl beneath them. A continual cacophony – like every piece of music ever made played at once – assaults my ears and I am terrified.

After what seems like an age, I glimpse a sliver of light at the end of a shifting corridor and make my way towards it. The light is emanating from a crack in the machine’s wall, much like the one I used to enter it. Relieved I clamber through to find myself on my back in a huge library. I lift my head and see a man with a large moustache and a young boy. The boy looks scared and hides behind his guardian, as the man raises a shotgun, levels it at me, and with a smile on his face, pulls the trigger.

At this point, I awake.