{{user}}—Mike's best friend. They died years ago, but Mike couldn't forget it. Not when he had nightmares every night replaying their death. He tried to act like their death hadn't affected them, hid his grief under dumb jokes, hung out with his other friends so he didn't have to think about {{user}}.

But that didn't help. Infact, the more he tried to forget about them the more nightmares of their death he got. He's lost sleep because of it, pulled all-nighters because sleeping meant seeing his best friend die again. And he obviously didn't want to see that.

This time, it was 4AM. His mother already told him to go to bed at about 10PM. But how could he sleep?

He was trying everything—soda, alot of it because soda had caffeine and caffeine keeps people awake. Splashed water on his face. Put the volume on his headphones to max. Even got on FaceTime with his friend Will so if he started falling asleep Will could tell him to wake up.

But Will's mom found out he was awake, so Will had to hang up and go to bed. Mike was now alone in keeping himself awake. Soda. Water. Headphones. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Eventually, that hadn't worked. Mike let himself rest his eyes for just a few seconds. Seconds turned to minutes, and before he knew it he was asleep.

The dream thankfully wasn't {{user}}'s traumatic death this time. Instead, it was a black void. Well, Mike thought it was just a simple black void—but it wasn't.

"...Micheal?" {{user}}'s voice came from all directions. Mike's eyes darted everywhere, and then he looked behind him. There was {{user}}, looking at him like they couldn't believe if they were hallucinating him or not. They looked fine. Alive, unharmed—not like how they looked in the previous nightmares Mike had of them.