text: Greg kept imagining what his mother’s friend Gina had so proudly stated the day before: “I’ve never worked a day in my life.” Gina owned a zoo. Gina loved her zoo. She liked animals more than she did people. Greg didn’t even own his house. Greg worked full time accounting for Cloud Nine Mattresses. Greg worked almost every day of his life, and he still struggled to get by. The monotony of the everyday was adding weight to the air atop Greg’s shoulders. He could hardly imagine what loving your job was like. It got harder and harder every day for Greg to roll out of bed in the morning. It was always the same. Same subway ride in the morning. Same podcast playing in his headphones. Same greeting from the overly-enthusiastic receptionist. His entire year was an assembly line. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* One week there was a fire drill at work. It was the most thrilled Greg had been since college. This excitement kept Greg going for another hour or so, but he sank back into his slump at the sound of a stack of papers falling onto his desk. “These need to be in by tomorrow.” He heard his coworker say without even looking at him. Greg began to write information on the papers. He didn’t bother to note what they were about or what he was writing. Just the same stacks of numbers that filled his every waking hour. Arithmetic was thrown into the Void at a constant rate, but it would never fill. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* Greg had a last-ditch attempt to provide his life with some meaning to fill the Void: sleep. Greg didn’t know how long or hard he slept because he passed out on the couch every day before he even took off his shoes. Dreamland was his brain’s only escape from the ever-growing Void. Although Dreamland pulled Greg out of his misery, the Void still managed to seep in. Every paper he saw in Dreamland was covered in those dreaded stacks of numbers. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* One night Greg got home from another day of dumping digits into the void and fell onto the sofa. He felt the firm, worn cushions on his skin, and he waited for them to become the soft clouds of Dreamland, but they never did. He couldn’t get to Dreamland. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* Greg lay facedown on his sofa. He hated his life and couldn’t sleep through the pain. There was no longer an escape. As Greg had this thought, he heard the sound of running water. He was washed over with relief, for it was over. He walked toward the sound. All the way to his bathtub, which was full, and calling to him. Greg knew what to do, but he felt no fear. Greg climbed into the bathtub and felt the warm water around his body, a cocoon of protection from the monotony of the everyday. He felt his head sink deeper and deeper into the water. “I’m staying in Dreamland.