What to do in those few hours before waking. What to fill the half sleeping mind with. In those brief moments where the last fingers of sleep clutch the brain, the waking mind can control the fantasy of that ether world. That world where our fancy runs free and our heart makes wishes.

Brian Matthews had been wondering that for the better part of ten years now. He suffered from a delayed insomnia. Every night at ten or so he would drift peacefully to sleep, only to be awakened again after four hours to a mangled mess of waking dreams and half-conscious memories. Though the condition was now ruinous to his sleep every night, it had started out rather slowly. Only once or twice a month would he toss and turn in the hours before dawn, wrestling with sleep and wakefulness. Nothing worth note. When it started happening on a bi-weekly basis he took more serious concern. Doctor after doctor were puzzled. Psychiatrists and physicians gave him ineffectual pills while psychologists tried to emancipate hidden traumas that didn't exist. After a year of what he was beginning to think of as quack cures, Brian resigned himself to his predicament. Though he knew he had less energy than when he slept well, he was now used to it. And the semi-wakefulness gave him a chance for quite lucid dreaming and illuminated thought. He settled into his new routine remarkably well and without incident. The normal aspect of his life were unaffected. His job at a publishing company was unperturbed, he had the energy to play with his young daughter, and his wife (a heavy sleeper) stayed by his side in every sense of the word through his nights of peaceful frustration.
That was, however, until the early morning hours of August the Twenty-fourth. It was on that morning that Brian first heard the voice. It was small, but it was pleading. Just outside his ability to make out it out it lingered. He was just about to slip bake to sleep when it eased its way into his mind. His settling thoughts were jerked to attention as he fought to drown out the ring of silence to hear the voice again.