But I weigh six hundred kilos, I can’t fly, and the Creeper’s face is beginning to resolve. It’s mask-like, white, but no longer covered with chemical symbols. No, it has eyes and mouth that twist and stretch just like that painting and the derivative horror movie it spawned. The Creeper has a long, fat tongue like a frog or Jabba the Hutt, and as this comes licking out towards me, moving the air above my bed, I pick up a vivid smell of sulphur.

So I can’t move. Maybe I can change something else.

Turn on the lights.

Nothing.

Make it smell like roses.

Nothing. Wait—

Again the tongue comes out, but now rose petals fall from it. Aha! I can affect this dream. There’s no more sulphur smell now, just roses. I try again.

Show me where you live. Show me who you are. You can’t hide from me.

I can’t breathe. I want to wake up. I want to wake up.

Show me where you live.

With all my will, I manage to move my hands, then my arms. I reach up, through the Creeper’s body. Though it’s still very heavy, somehow it isn’t solid and my hands go right through. I can move now. I struggle up to sitting, shoving off the duvet, and the Creeper falls away from me, curling into a dark ball like a tumbleweed. It bounces around my room. I’m winning. I’m winning.

I’ve got my legs over the edge of the bed. I’m up. I’m staggering across the carpet. I’m at the door. I open the door. I know this is a dream because the sitting room is dark and there’s a night light on just outside the bathroom. A sliver of orange street light comes around the edges of the curtains.

This is where I live. Show me where you live.

I feel the presence behind me. Looming over me. A coldness, a solid shadow curling around me like a CGI cloak. A feeling of weight. Darkness in my peripheral vision. I’m going to be swallowed. I stumble forwards again, I make it to the French doors and shrug aside the curtain, I unlock and open the doors and step out onto the roof, which is made of glass. The Dream City uncoils below me, and across the roof I can see the doorway to the Sideways Building. The tulip concierge grows out of the glass, right about where O’s pigeon cages would be if this were the real roof.

Thinking about the real roof makes me notice how cold it is out here, how loud with wind. Rain is falling and the drops should wake me up but they don’t.

You can’t just walk in, says the tulip. If you want to get up there, you’ll have to fly. Like a bird.