“What follows is arguably one of the most hated and horrifying moments in the entire modern human experience — an event so universally loathed, so deeply traumatising, that only the extremely fortunate or the terminally unconscious have ever truly escaped it:
An alarm clock chimed.
It didn’t merely beep. It asserted itself, like a bureaucrat with a megaphone and a vendetta against dreams, shattering the delicate peace of sleep with all the subtlety of a marching band in a monastery.”