10 Sandman Fates Worse Than Death
2. “Eternal Waking”
Alex Burgess was the son of Roderick Burgess, the man who captured Dream by mistake in their attempt to capture Death. First portrayed as a child in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman #1, Alex grew up with Morpheus locked in a glass cage in his basement and his father threatening and finally begging the Dream King for immortality and power until his death in 1947. Alex took over his father’s estate and the Order of Ancient Mysteries.
Burgess was afraid to let his father’s prisoner go, lest he exact some kind of vengeance. He tried to use the same bargain of immortality and power for freedom that his father used, but Dream ignored him, as he did his father. Alex grew into an old man, as his father did, wishing for these gifts.
On one last visit, his former lover and caretaker Paul rolled his wheelchair through the protective circle and broke the circle of spells binding Dream there. He escaped to the Dreaming and, after a brief replenishment, returned to punish Alex. He cursed the old man with eternal waking where he would wake from one nightmare into another in his mind, but appear to be forever asleep on the outside. He was finally released by Daniel after the death of Morpheus.