I entered the dream as I entered the building: through a heavy door at the end of a long, dark corridor. I slammed it behind me as an unknown friend and I ran desperately away from our imaginations. We had scared ourselves with the idea of creatures coming after us and now could not escape the possibility. We continued to run down the corridor, past rows of locked doors to strangers' apartments and then darted inside the last flat and hid with the couple who lived there. They kept us in the dark to avoid waking their sleeping child with the bright lights.

The woman I had been running with left the flat to try and find water but did not return. After a long time a phone rang and the husband answered it. While he listened to the voice at the other end of the line I turned a tap under the windowsill and spluttered as water sprayed out into my face. I quickly turned it off as he put down the phone and approached me. The caller had simply warned that I would be next and hung up. That was all we knew.

Rather than risk the corridor again we decided that it would be best for me to leave through the window and climb the fire escape onto the roof. It was an old, brick building and from the top I could see very few ways to escape. A man dressed all in black motioned for me to join him on the platform of a scissor lift to help me off the building. Though his appearance scared me I followed him and we made a steady descent. He made no move to harm me but once we had reached the ground he insisted that I was a newt and I became confused and afraid. He said that I was needed to save someone's left eye but he said nothing about how or whom. In terror I ran away from him but I had only fallen deeper into his trap; he had been herding me towards the shadows. A giant of a man appeared and to my horror he began dragging me down a slope into a vast cave.

The cave was lined with paintings and masks; brightly coloured monstrosities. Photos of children with tears streaming down their cheeks, their wet, pink mouths open and screaming in agony, lined the first wall. Their tiny hands held up masks with bright, red, smiling lips and they tried to hide their anguish behind them. There were paintings of people, all children, done in haphazard fashion with lurid colours immortalising their tortured, distorted features. Most of them had been cut up and rearranged into grotesque, new forms while others had been painted in pieces and the deformed results had been constructed afterwards. Papier-mâché masks with twisted expressions littered the ground and hung high on the walls. It was clear that they had been modelled on real, human faces but there were no holes for the eyes, nose and mouth.

The huge man smiled as he told me that I would be killed in the morning as a sacrifice to save his eye and I began to cry. I begged him to forfeit the eye and let me live. His laughter echoed throughout the cave and he started setting up a blank canvas and laying out paints, ignoring my desperate pleas. In fear and anger I snatched up a papier-mâché mask lying on the ground and began to tear it into pieces but he only laughed more. He looked forward to doing the same thing to me; watching my face twist as he broke me apart.

I began to panic more than ever and as he turned his back to gather up more paints I threw the pieces of the mask behind me and started running from the cave. I knew he'd be much faster than me but I only had to survive until the morning because I'd be no use to him once he'd lost the eye. I imagine he'd have killed me anyway to get his sick gratification but at least there was hope.

As he stormed out of the cave I heard him collide with the man from the roof and it was several seconds before he was back on his feet. Nevertheless, I had gained very little ground and had no idea where to go to. I suddenly remembered the man in black telling me I was a newt so I decided to find a pond and hide in the water, by the bank.

I rounded a corner, running as fast as I could, but I heard him behind me and knew I'd never be fast enough to outrun him. I dived down the steep bank to my left, hoping to hide in the ditch so that he would pass by but he had already seen me over the top of a bush. He crawled head-first down the bank and tried to pick me up and pull me out of the ditch by grabbing my wrists. In desperation I started to wriggle through the barbed wire fence on the other side, not caring about pain, just needing to get away. I was begging, just repeating "Please!" over and over again. He smiled more.

The paintings of the children were fresh in my mind and I knew he would cut me up slowly as a punishment for running away. I'd probably still be alive as he started painting the anguish etched across my face. He crawled down on top of me, trying to subdue me in order to get me back to the cave and I grew even more desperate. I jammed my hands deep into his eye-sockets, grabbed both eyes and pulled. His reaction showed no pain, only surprise, and he warned me in a low, terrifying whisper, "You'd better not lose those!" I ignored the warning and pulled out both of his eyes, breaking the sinewy muscles that kept them dangling from his skull and dropped them onto the dewy grass behind my head. I panted fearfully; terrified beyond words. It was an effort to just maintain consciousness. I tried to crawl out from underneath his body but he was too heavy and lay on top of me, still smiling. Blood dripped slowly onto my chest and neck as I stared into those black sockets. He was about to kill me.

I hate sleeping.