It happened one night, after I had had an exhausting day at school. By the time I got out of track practise, I felt like all of my energy had been drained from my body by the time I got home. Finishing the day's homework took hours. Between it and dinner, I was left with just enough time to call my best friend, talk about our plans for the coming weekend, and collapse onto my bed.

I soon found myself dreaming. I was being sucked. Down. Down into a whirlpool. Below the surface. I started to drown. I saw the faces of my friends above the water. I tried to call out to them for help. But my screams produced only impotent bubbles in the malevolent water. My stretching hand failed to pierce the surface. I was dragged down.

Then my dream changed. I was no longer drowning. Instead, I was experiencing an alien sensation, a cascade of buzzing energy. It coursed through my veins, filling every part of my body with something akin to an electric shock, down to the extremities. The sensation felt like it was flooding the whole volume of my body. I wouldn't describe the sensation as pain. It was almost the opposite of pain, not ecstasy, but maybe more like the numbness inflicted by prolonged exposure to cold water, only instead of a frozen solidity, my body was vibrating with charge. The charge was the only thing I felt. I had no vision, no hearing. Not just like being in a sensory deprivation chamber, but like all of my eyes and nerves and receptors had been deleted.

Slowly, ever so gradually, I became aware of another sensation. It started at my feet - did I even have feet? Yes, I could feel them. There was a floor, I was standing on something, although I felt buoyed by it rather than rooted to it, almost like gravity had been turned off. The wave of feeling flowed up my body, unsubmergeing me from my feet upwards. Then my legs, then my waist, then my torso.

At last it reached my head. All of a sudden, I had vision. But my eyes were filled with blue and purple. I felt disoriented, and off balance. Falling forward, I caught myself in a crouching position. I realised I wasn't breathing, and reflexively gasped in air to fill my inert lungs. Slowly, the disorientation dissipated. My vision cleared to reveal that I was staring at an off-white carpet.

A bright male voice said, "Hello".

I inclined my head, and this person entered my vision. He looked to be in his late teens, or maybe early twenties. I couldn't discern. The first thing I noticed about him was his mouth, hanging open slightly. Traces of a smile played at the edges of his mouth. He was looking right at me. Me. I was the thing capturing his attention.

I shook my head from side to side, to clear the fog in my mind. I felt something on my back, hair? But I haven't had hair this long in years, I thought. I reached to feel it. It was indeed long hair, tied up at the back of my head by a bow or something. I realised one more thing. I was not wearing the shirt I had fallen asleep in.

"Where am I?" I asked the boy facing me. "What is going on?". Did my voice sound different too? Before I could process whether or not it did, he responded "I don't know either. But I think you've just been, uh, materialised, into the real world."

Okay, now this was starting to get weird, I thought to myself. Wasn't I still dreaming? But this felt so real. So alive. Maybe I'm having a psychotic episode, or something.

"I know you wouldn't recognise me in real life," the boy continued "but you know my name. I'm Gabriel." He said this last word with such conviction, such high expectation, that I couldn't bear to tell him. That I had no idea who he was. I vaguely recalled having a classmate named Gabriel, but he wasn't the same as this person. At least, "Gabriel" was certainly correct that I didn't recognise his face. But all the same, as he pulled me into an embrace, I didn't push him away. I was scared. I didn't understand anything about this. His friendliness was a comfort. Maybe I really did know him. Had I had a pen pal in the past I'd forgotten?

I didn't know what to say, so I took a moment to take in my surroundings. I noticed that I was in a bedroom. The walls were painted light brownish-grey. A dresser was positioned against the wall behind Gabriel. Next to it, a door. I had all kind of questions about what was going on. Finally, I said "Hey, um, Gabriel. Do you have a mirror somewhere? I want to see myself". He let go of of me, and replied "Yes. You can use the bathroom. It's at the end of the hallway to the right."

I stood up and walked forwards towards the door. I stumbled and nearly fell. Something about the way my limbs moved felt unfamiliar. I opened the door, and followed his directions. The hallway had the same colour of carpet and walls as the room I had left. I opened the bathroom door, found the mirror, and turned to face it. It took me only a few moments to realise what I was seeing.

I was Monika. From the video game Doki Doki Literature Club.