I wake up to the smell of sweat and ammonia. My nightmares failed to materialise; in them, at least I was in hell.

The hallway stretches before me, with nothing but sparse lights casting yellow patches on the carpeted ground. My feet make contact as I stand. It’s sticky.

The doors on either side remain firmly locked. No amount of shoving or kicking could make them give way. It was much easier on my sanity to convince myself that they were part of the wallpaper, rather than an entrance or exit out.

I screamed for help, just to test if my voice was still working. The carpet absorbs the echoes, and my voice is lost in the weaving. It was always the same way; I hadn’t heard a single sound apart from my voice since I woke up here.

Sighing, I etched the eighteenth notch in my forearm with a broken fingernail, and began to walk.

As always, the exit sign on the far end of the hallways seemed tantalisingly close, but it was never quite near enough to reach. I sprinted, praying that I would finally dehydrate if I perspired enough, yet – was I closing the distance?

I poured in more speed, and the exit finally stopped retreating. Two hundred steps. One hundred. Fifty.

And then I grabbed hold of the handle.

The door gave way, and the accumulted fatigue of the past eighteen days finally set into my body. I had made it. I was out.

Then I looked up and saw myself in yet another completely identical corridor, with sweat-soaked carpets and locked doors. The exit – the real exit, I was sure, was visible in the distance. With renewed vigour, I shook off the exhaustion and hunger, and began to sprint, crying and lauging, digging my heels into the carpet as the exit disappeared into the gloom. My footsteps echoed loudly behind me as I ran.