I slowly lay back on my bed, the mattress springs creaking with discontent. My head rests on the cold hard pillow, thin icy fingers seeping through my skull and tightening their grip on my mind.

Through foggy eyes, past drooping lids, I see the face of a clock staring back at me.

The clock says it is 6:45; fifteen minutes to seven.
But that is just a phrase; there is no time here.

The blood-red second hand tries in vain to fulfill its duty, desperately twitching up and down at number 9. It ticks at a dying pace, time slowing down to a crawl.

My heart slows its beat, the blood in my veins running cold. Nerves snap one at a time, like the strands of a stretched rope. Muscle dissolves to fat and decays, fur shrivels and falls away, my skin slowly sliding off bone.
The air in my lungs turns stale, my throat too dry and cracked to gasp.

As the final darkness takes me, the last thing I see is the blood-red second hand finally resting on the number 9, stopping my heart.

There is no time here.