He yawned slightly as his eye lids cracked open. The so-called real world returned to him in all its mundane glory. His ordinary bed room, and aggravatingly accurate alarm clock were all that greeted him. The red digital light on the hated device showed him that it was nearly three in the morning.

Scott continued to lie in his bed for a while, uncertain of whether or not he actually wanted to get up. His need to urinate, however, made him see the light of reason. He'd only been asleep the better part of seven hours, but his body was accustomed to getting up and down at all hours of the night due to its subjugation to his bladder overlord. He rose from the bed and headed to the bathroom.

A loud yawn echoed through the room as he scratched himself with wild abandon as relieved himself with great zeal. He sighed once when it was over, "Well, that was the high-point of my day..."

"On night shift tonight, so that's what... twelve hours till I have to be at work?" he asked himself. He confirmed his schedule then set out for his computer. He needed to kill a few hours while his dream body rested. It seemed a perfect time for scouring the Internet for new information.

"Alright, let's see if anyone found anything useful to relate," said Scott as he logged onto his favorite forum on the subject. Immediately, he noticed several new entries. Out of those new threads, one immediately drew his attention.

"Over a week in the dream world, no-sleep, confirmed effects?" he asked curiously. Hopeful, he clicked on the link and then started to read the opening topic. "Seriously? Someone went that far?"

The topic creator went into detail about what happened to her when she did not sleep for eight days straight in the dream world. Many people called her out on it since that would mean that she would have been asleep in the real world for two solid days.

The creator of the topic told her story. She was part of private group experiment where she and some of her friends going through medical school decided to test certain methods of remaining in the dream world long term. As one of the active experimenters, she was routinely given medication to cause her to remain drowsy. She was outfitted with a catheter and was fed intravenously throughout the project.

A lot of people claimed she was full of shit and refused to believe her information, even with a slightly reasonable explanation. Scott, however, was one of the thread viewers who wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. A coma patient was known to be level two because they could be in the dream full-time. It seemed plausible that people would study the effects of being in the dream long term by doing something like this topic creator.

After reading what she had to say on the matter, Scott nodded. "So, she's claiming that once you go two days without allowing your dream body to sleep you start to lose vigor at a rate of one point per day..."

It made a weird sort of sense, really. Wouldn't someone who never slept become increasingly tired over time? She'd gone on to say that once vigor dropped by two points, all other stats dropped by one point. After eight days her vigor stat was down into the negative number modifiers and her other stats had dropped by three.

"If this is true, these people must have jumped right on this the moment that the first dream happened," said Scott. It had only been half a week since the first dream. There was no way that this was a study conducted properly. She'd claimed that it was her and a few friends that chose to do this, so it was likely that they just had the idea and wanted to see what would happen.

"Might not be trustworthy... but I can see it," he said after a moment. "Have to test it a little next time I have a day off."

The other threads were mostly just people discussing their random adventures. Most seemed a bit exaggerated, but they were interesting to read. He ate a light breakfast while reading, and the hours passed quickly.

Scott made ready to return to the dream world, but just as he was about to down some cough syrup and return to the dream he heard a knock at his front door.

"The hell?" Who would knock on his door at this time of morning?

He threw some clothes on and went to see who he needed to yell at first thing in the morning, but to his surprise there was no one to see. Briefly, he considered that something might have bumped against his door and he looked around for the culprit.

"Hey now, what's this?" he asked after spying something on the ground. It was a plate of chocolate chip cookies wrapped in plastic, with a photo on top.

"In the world..." he said, unable to voice the implied, 'What'. The cookies were odd enough to find, but the photo was of a girl dressed in a skin tight black and white outfit. She had a tail, horns, and an oversized cowbell strung around her neck on a collar that almost seemed to point the way down to her healthy cleavage.

"Wait, that's the girl from the mail earlier..." said Scott after he managed to actually look at her face. There was a lot to look out otherwise, and he'd been quite distracted.

On the back of the photo he found a message. "Want some milk to go with your cookies, bestie? Clang-Clang. Teehee."

"Man, whoever the guy she's actually looking for is, he's really missing out," said Scott in appreciation of the efforts the poor girl had gone to in order to rekindle her relationship with her old best friend.

He looked around to see if he could spot the one leaving this stuff, but they were nowhere in sight. He kept in mind that it could just be someone screwing with him, and not actually a hot girl looking for a bestie. Either way, he saw no one.

No, the most suspicious thing in the area was the fact that his new neighbor's lights were on. There was no one else home on the road, so the possibility that the new arrival might be the cookie culprit came to mind. "Yeah, this sort of stuff didn't start happening till they moved in... Maybe she lives there, or that's where the guy she's looking for lives?"

Eventually, he shrugged and took the plate of cookies inside. He'd stop by there later to see if they could offer him an answer. Until then, he had better things to do.

Before heading back to his bedroom, however, he took a moment to admire the artistic merits of the photo once more. After a while he realized something strange. He did not recognize the girl at all, but there was something vaguely familiar about her eyes.

"Those eyes..." he said slowly, "What do they remind me of?"

Scott looked into those overly friendly orbs for a moment and tried to understand their familiarity. Did he actually know this girl, or did her eyes remind him of someone? It was hard to say. Either way, she was way out of his league.

He offered a tired sigh to the photo. "Wouldn't even matter if you were in my league, huh?"

The sad truth was that there was precious little he could do about it, even if he ever did run across a proper girlfriend. A real relationship with a girl was next to impossible.

He'd tried dating. Hell, he'd even managed to get his v-card punched. Barely. Yet, it always ended horribly and usually right after the depressingly disturbing mess he called sex. Few girls could handle the idea of a man blubbering loudly, and shaking visibly, while he did his best to get a rise out of an ever-failing erection. The few who could, charged extra.

It was a hateful sentiment, but he believed it at this point. The closest thing he would ever have to a girlfriend was his porn collection and his trusty left hand.

Several minutes of tense self-loathing passed before he reigned in those tendencies once more. Without a glance at the plate, he opted to tear off the plastic and devour a cookie. To hell with that lucky bastard. What right did he have to get cookies from a hot girl dressed up like the world's sluttiest cow?

"Fuck you, random best friend guy," muttered Scott.

"You ain't better than me," he continued as he took a bite out of the cookie. His eyes immediately widened when he did. "So, good..."

"You know... I think I will have some milk," said Scott after glancing down at the photo once more. Improperly gifted cookies and milk were always the best way to start the day. Though, sadly, his milk came from the refrigerator.