"I am so thirsty. When am I going to find water?" wonders Michael, crawling alone over the sand of a desert. His knee trails can be seen for miles behind him. The weight of the sun makes it impossible to keep his eyes open.

A seagull lands on his leg. He realizes he’s been drifting in the ocean for hours. The sun has been beaming down on his now bright red body.

“Musta passed out while floating on this donut at the beach. Need to cut back on that drinking,” he says, squinting in search of land. He slaps the salt water, frustrated that no one saw him disappear into the horizon. Now, surrounded by Earth’s deepest ocean, he hasn’t had a drink of water in possibly days. Michael feels a wet tickle on his foot.

"Ahhhhh!" he yells. "A shark!"

Michael is actually sleeping comfortably in his bed. His dog, Shark, is trying to wake him up. Michael’s been sweating all night, and Shark is enjoying a few salty licks while he can. The AC shut down in the middle of the night—on one of the hottest days of the year. His bedsheets are drenched in sweat.

“Shark, get me some water. I’m dying here. My knees hurt for some reason—I can't get it myself,” he says, peeling himself off the bed to sit up.

Shark turns around, walks to the fridge, pulls the rope on the handle, and spots an almost frozen plastic water bottle. He sits right in front of Michael, groans, then looks over sheepishly at his shark-decaled bowl, which is dry.

“Fine,” says Michael, who opens the water bottle and pours half of it into Shark’s bowl.

He takes the remaining half, brings it to his lips, and drinks.

"Ahhhhh..." He palms his head and looks at Shark, who looks up at him, concerned.

“Just brain freeze, buddy! That’s way colder than I expected.”

But why are my fingertips and feet freezing too? he wonders.

“Gosh damn—ahhhh!!”

Suddenly, Michael wakes up. His donut is now surrounded by box jellyfish, their tentacles wrapped around his hands and feet, venom flowing into his body. Numbness and coldness contrast what his brain is expecting from the sun blazing right above him.

His knees are raw. His forearms too.

“If I've been lying on my back all this time, why do they hurt so bad? What the hell happened?” he wonders.

Must be sunburns. Maybe I crashed into coral and can’t remember. He scratches his head.

The hiss of a rattlesnake wakes him again.

What’s that? he wonders, lifting his body from the hot sand. His knees and forearms are bloody.

It slithers away.

How polite. I’ll get back to sleep now.

The temperature must be going down, because I’m starting to feel cold, he says, even as the skin on his back sizzles from the heat.

“I’ll keep crawling later—to wherever the hell I was headed. It’ll come back to me. Let me take a nap now,” he thinks, as he enters—and quickly exits—reality for the last time.