Have you ever felt yourself

slipping further and further into insanity? It always reminds me of when a person slides into a warm jacuzzi-- not a thoroughly heated-up jacuzzi, mind, because that would only serve to shock the senses into awakeness before allowing it to relax.

No, I am referring to the times when your mind drifts off while you are working on something. It begins to relax and stretch in the warm water of subconsciousness. You don't feel it as it fades away, your idle thoughts becoming more and more odd the further your mind dips into the jacuzzi. The slowly spreading warmth eases your brain from the topics you were trying to put off, and illuminates everything with a strange, eerie light. A light that casts more uncanny shadows than it dispels--shadows that seem take up space. Shadows that whisper and plot, their voices lilting and tempting. Shadows that gesture to dip deeper, swim farther, warm up more, and fall asleep.

Not to worry. The shadows've got you

(In the Pine Shadows, Moonlight J.E.H. MacDonald)