Disclaimer: Much as I would adore to be able to call them mine, they're not. They have just popped over from Douglas' etherial place to swap stories, have a bit of tea, maybe a cake or that bit of betelgeusian somethingorother I've had lurking at the back of the kitchen cupboard for years (I'm not sure about the sell-by date – the mice have been at that corner). I'll let them go when we've finished, honest.
Chapter 1 – Inclusive of that unpleasant cold and vacuous feeling you get when you have to get up at some unearthly hour of the morning to catch a train.
Arthur Dent sat up at high speed, bashed his head on something he had a vague feeling shouldn't be there, fell back to the pillow, thought: 'I'll be late for work again', tried sitting up again, succeeded, swung his feet out of bed, and staggered towards the bathroom rubbing his eyes with his wrist. A dull 'thunk' and a very restrained and throaty 'ow' would have signified to any casual bystander that the bathroom door was not where he had expected it to be. To Arthur, it signified the beginning of a day-long headache, and the need for a reappraisal of his situation. In the darkness, he lost his balance and sat down on a floor that was not quite as warm and carpety and rather a lot more cold and metallic than he thought it should be.
Sitting on the floor with an increasingly chilly bottom and a lump on his forehead, Arthur thought. It had been his alarm that had gone off, hadn't it? He wasn't so sure any more. 'Wait, Arthur', he thought, 'it'll all come back to you'. The unpleasant realisation soon came that no, it had not been his alarm, just a dream. That was all. A dream about being late for work, an alarm ringing and still being late. The sort of dream that can propel you to the bathroom at three a.m. and get you down the stairs and pouring the milk on your cornflakes before you realise you've been duped again.
Arthur sighed. Alright, what time was it? How long did he have before the alarm really went off? Would it be possible to go back and have a decent night's sleep, or was it, irritatingly, about five-thirty and not worth the effort? He looked around for the glow of digital numbers and they failed to show themselves. He had obviously walked in the wrong direction, and was now out of sight of the numbers and had no idea in which direction the bed might lie. He sighed again.
There was a sound like the grumpy harrumph of somebody who has heard a man get out of bed at three in the morning, crash into the wall, sit down hard, sigh, and then, just to make sure everyone really was awake, sigh again. Arthur froze. That sound should not be in his bedroom. Even in his seriously befuddled state he could remember that much.
He thought again. What did one do if one heard that noise in one's bedroom? The best answer was probably 'switch on the light', but since Arthur didn't have a clue where the light switch might be lurking, he was going to have to think of something else. The next answer, in the clear light of day, would obviously be 'ask who's there'. However, in the darkness of a room that was already behaving oddly, somehow that didn't seem like a very prudent course of action. That was, in fact, the action most likely to cause swarms of terrifying monsters to come out from their hiding place under the bed, glow nastily, grab Arthur's ankles and...well, he didn't want to think about 'and'.
If Arthur had learnt one thing from his time as a small boy, it was that the only safe place in a haunted or otherwise monster-infested room was the bed. You get in, you pull the covers right over your head, you check for air holes round the side and block them, and you wait. Eventually, when everything has quietened down and the monsters have failed to spot you through your high-tog duvet, you stick your head out, place it on the cold pillow and go swiftly back to sleep in the certain knowledge that this time you outwitted them.
He stuck out his hand and waved it in front of him cautiously. After a few blind passes, his fingers touched the wall; it felt...unfamiliar. Nevertheless, logically, the wall must have been directly perpendicular to his line of travel, so if he walked straight away from it, he must, sooner or later, hit the bed. He got up, flattened his back against the wall, and shuffled forwards, his hands washing around at knee height. After a while, he began to feel that he must have walked right past the bed and must now be heading for the wall. Well, when he hit it he would just have to turn round and try again. He raised his hands to feel for the wall and instantly screamed in pain as his shins connected hard with the sharp metal edge of the bed-frame.
The light snapped on and Arthur's unfocused and light-shocked eyes tried hard to stop squinting and focus on the figure that had just sat up in his bed.
A/N: I haven't a clue where this is going, it seems to be leaking out of my head without informing my brain. Another chapter is already trying to get out, but after that, who knows... Please review and I'll see if I can't pin it down somehow – I only had the title, I've had that for months, very pleased with it, but no story to go with it, so I'm not going to stop it now it's decided to come out!