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a death-grip of extruded hooks and needles. Shortly after the
creeping lengths of flesh and steel had all but cocooned my
previous sleeping arrangements, the collective apparatus of
varied organics began to pulsate with a kind of sickening
rhythm, composed of an orderly exchange between slurping
and chewing sounds. It took no great amount of thought
for me to deduce the strange technologies were extracting
dreams from the materials of the bed. In fact, anything in
routine contact with dreams was susceptible to the power of
the alien devices.
“As perhaps you are uniquely positioned to understand,
any dream that can survive waking—even in the minutest
amounts—is a quantifiable victory over all of this intractable
waking foolishness. So, these things have smartly devised a
means by which no amount of residual dream is suffered to
waste. Since that night, the things have left me to my own
devices—so long as I dream in the right direction and do not
distract them from their work.
“And with that, I can offer you no further insights. Eyes
are upon me, and I am only tolerated here as long as I remain
a quietly ripening fruit, not a vulgar flower that gathers
stinging pests.”
As a parting gift, the dreamer granted me one last bit of
insight—a secret route allowing me safe passage beneath the
city. I walked through the damp blackness of a long hallway
toward the elevator. The dimmest of lights shone from above
the vintage conveyance, its illumination little more than a
glowing darkness indicating the direction of its travel.
As I boarded the lift, and just before its doors slid
shut, I heard the piercing screams of the man I’d left to
his demanding sleep. Apparently, the Wakeless had made
a calculated decision concerning their pursuit of me, its
execution boding poorly for my insightful friend, waxing
resource or not. I knew there was nothing to be done for
the man, so I hoped the better part of his mind somehow
managed to escape into the weightless and rushing waters of
78 | Mark Anzalone