• Blood coiled and writhed on the tips of my pale fingers. Where am I? My thoughts became words trailing into the distance, as if they existed here, in this strange land. I felt the blood heavy like led on my fingertips, ready to drench the pavement, the black pavement, cold on my bare feet. Hello? I didn’t move my stinging lips to form the words, but they appeared, bounding off the lampposts, feeding the silence of this chilling night. I collapsed as gravity shoved me forward on to the cement below. I cowered, drawing breaths that froze my bones, left me shaking on the ground. Lifting my trembling fingers, I dragged myself across the pavement, grazing my skin, summoning my own silent screams. “Salut! Saluuuuut!” I lifted my head to the voice, and saw the blurry image of a woman, flickering beneath the lamp light. She kept calling, coming seemingly closer but never actually arriving into existence, beyond the black of the night. “Salut!!” She staggered, listing to the side, appearing and disappearing. Wait. Come back. I reached for her silhouette, hoping to clutch it out of the shadows. Wait. Don’t leave me here. I know what will happen, I will die. The road shuddered beneath me, as if to pity the person dragging themselves along its back. Help. I will die. Die. Die. I will die. “Salut!!! Salut!!!” Two bronze shoes stopped me short; I gazed up to see the woman whose feet they belonged to towering above. She brought the bottle dangling from her yellowed fingers to her lips. “Oh, such a sweet child, such a pained child I see.” Her voice pierced through my ears and rattled my skull. For a moment I almost felt the thick blood ready to ooze from my eardrums and splash on to the pavement, splattering the woman’s bronzed shoes. “Every night, you come. What is it you seek? What is it that you have not yet found?” The woman let a cackle crawl into the veins of her words. What did she mean? I have never seen such a place as this before. The woman laughed, wheezing and choking on her own obvious amusement. “You deny what is undeniable, you seek what is not findable, and you fear the death that so willingly awaits you. You are fighting this war, and this war is not to be won by you.” She sighed and guzzled down the rest of her drink. “Auf Wiedersehen!!” She nodded, a suspicious smile quivering on her lips, and disappeared yet again into the night. Her cackle remained, twisting deeper into the flesh of my ears. Go away! Leave me alone! Let me go! I watched the mysterious street and the shadows sift, churning into one great mess. I watched as the strange land was torn away, as if a blanket that was shrouding the truth, and opened my eyes. Reality seeped in around me, wrapping itself around my body, nestling into my mind, assuring to keep me safe, and as far away from the dream world as possible.