I used to dream about my parents a lot. Not really dreaming at all for weeks, thanks to those wonderful sedatives, made me think about how long it’s been since I dreamt about Them or anything related to Nebraska and my life there at all. It feels so goddamned far away, like another life. So does LA, but that I do still dream about. Ever since they stopped giving me the feel-good pills, I’ve been dreaming constantly throughout the night, frantically and almost painfully, and so often about that former life and the friends I had in it.

Last night I dreamt about you. Which isn’t new About running to find you, here, just down the hall from where I am now. You were in pain, screaming in pain, and I couldn’t run to you fast enough. I couldn’t save you. A nightmare based on something that never happened. Because I did save you. I did.

I need you to save me now, Mark. Could you do that? Could you save me?

It’s cold and I am asleep. I’ve been asleep for so long.

A bright burst of electricity.

Stone walls, icy and dripping, like a long-forgotten city. I walk closer to the walls, press my hand to their face, feeling the cool moisture transfer to my hand.

When I pull my arm back, my hand is covered in blood. I’m screaming—or no, someone else is screaming. They’re screaming for me, and now I am screaming, not knowing where they are, not knowing who else might be looking for them.

I run.

JANUARY 12TH, 2017

Again. Again and again, I’ve been having these weird, scattered, staticky dreams, impressions of dreams, memories, something, nothing at all, bright and burning and then dissolved from my hands before I can feel their shape.

I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, turning over bleary-eyed and still half asleep to write these barely remembered sensations. Then I fall back asleep, usually having more dreams, walking normally throughout the dreamworld, traveling to minds far and wide, familiar and unfamiliar. But nothing else is quite as interesting, as attention-grabbing as those initial dreams, the ones that happen right after I drop off, when I’m in my most vulnerable state. They’re frightening, unsettling, but also … exciting. Untethered. Raw. But no matter what I do, I can’t get back there. I’ve tried finding the seams, felt along every edge of my void for something familiar and unnamable but … nothing.