This story is a response to the Muse on Monday prompt of March 23, 2026: Write a story about going to sleep.

The First Night

The lights die with a mechanical clunk and darkness suffocates me like a woolen shroud. I try not to move on my bunk. Every breath seems to make the metal frame creak. The air is hot and close and smells like industrial cleaning supplies mixed with sweat.

The guy above me shifts and the bed frame creaks. I imagine it collapsing, crushing me. He seems okay, but we didn’t talk much before lights out. What if he was waiting for lights out to attack me?

The pillow is too thin and smells musty. I suddenly can’t get the idea of lice out of my mind. My skin starts crawling in response. It’s just my imagination. It has to be. Still, I don’t want to touch anything.

The frame gives a massive groan, and I realize that the guy above is getting up. He climbs laboriously down from top bunk, and I can’t breathe, imagining him leaning over me, then a sharp pain as a shiv is stabbed into my ribs. I feel nothing and after a minute, I can hear him peeing in the steel toilet ten feet away.

Long after he has climbed back into bed and is snoring softly, my mind is still racing with the aftereffects of adrenaline. I doubt I’ll sleep at all tonight.

How am I going to get through ten years of this?