I just had the most terrifying dream.

Not because it had ghosts or it was set in a haunted house, none of the cheap tricks your mind can recreate from the horror films you watch.

It was because I could not tell the difference between dreams and reality.

I fell asleep on the bed at 10.15am, hoping to get some last snatches of sleep before I went back into the tricolour prison that awaited me. After what seemed like so little time I woke up to find that three hours had passed. I began to panic because my mother's shift ended at 12.30pm and she would already have been home by now. I was certain I was going to get a scolding. But when I went out she was dressed in her usual butterfly robes, watching TV and going about as if nothing was wrong.

Then I woke up to find that only 15 minutes had actually passed since I fell asleep. When I went back to sleep again the dream advanced me several hours ahead in time. I woke up and suddenly the idea of inception hit me. What was only a few minutes in real life would be hours in the second level. I rushed to find my sisters and tell them about the time dilation I felt in my dreams.

As I excitedly tried to explain my discovery to them, it occurred to me that my sisters should have all been at work by now. I remembered it being mentioned that time is never constant in dreams, so I looked at the nearest clock and was shocked to see the second hand move counterclockwise. I thought I had woken up into reality; I was wrong.

It felt exceptionally surreal to have to wake up from the first dream level because it was so much like reality. The time difference between the two was practically negligible, and the sunlight streamed in just right, I was still in my school uniform and in the same position I had fallen asleep in. I had little else way of knowing if I was dreaming or not.

When I finally did wake up, properly this time, only 45 minutes had passed since I fell asleep, but in my dreams it had felt like hours. And I woke up with a very real fear that if I fell asleep again, right there and then, I would be trapped in there forever.