-21-

"Synchronicity"

Mervyn Pumpkinhead got up from his chair. "That was a nice story, toots. Now what's for dinner, eh? I'm starvin'."

My mother Rose frowned at him. "I wasn't finished."

"Ya weren't?"

"No, I wasn't. Did any of that feel resolved to you? The Corinthian was still at large, and Dream had none of his tools back-"

"Not to muh-mention there's also n-no ha-happy ah endings y-yet," the stuttering Abel interjected.

Cain hit him over the head with his fist. "You ninny-headed, pea-brained dolt! Stories don't always have happy endings, especially the ones that aren't fairy stories for little children - even YOU know that!"

"Fairy stories aren't always nice," observed Nuala the fairy, sadly.

Rose went on. "And speaking of happy endings, Daniel wasn't even conceived yet-"

"'Kay, Okay! Keep yer britches on," Mervyn implored, making a pushing down gesture with his stick-like hands.

"If she had, we never would've had our little Danny-Boy at all, now would we?" purred my sister-brother Desire.

"Shut up," said Rose. "I'm the only one allowed to make jokes like that. From you it's just… weird."

"Oh? Is that so? I'd say it makes you just a chip off the old block." Desire let out a stream of cigarette smoke. "Except, what am I saying? I'll never be old, and neither will you. So I'm sure you and I will have plenty of scandalous escapades to make light of together, in the eternity to come."

"What a thing to look forward to," grumbled Mervyn.

Rose turned on him. "And you, Mervyn, need to sit back down and listen."

"Just let me stretch my armature a little, will ya? Sheesh. Pushy women, I tell ya… can't live with 'em, can't..." Mervyn stopped, thinking and scratching his pumpkinhead. "Actually no, that's it. Can't live with 'em."

"Maybe we wouldn't have to be so pushy, if you men would just straighten up and do what's right," said Nuala. She looked toward my mother with sympathy. "I'm sorry that you had to go through all of that. Though I must point out, the Dream Lord really was only doing what he thought was right for everyone."

"I know," said Rose. "It's the only reason I forgave him."

"That was indeed a very harrowing venture into the Dreamworld, Miss Walker," said Lucien the Librarian. "Perhaps something of a brief intermission is in order, if it would not be too disagreeable an imposition?"

Rose sighed. "Yeah, I guess. But only because you said it so nicely." She glanced my way. "And oh god, it looks like Daniel-"

"MuSt bE thE cLoOudS iN mY eYeS…" sang my sister Delirium, sitting cross-legged on the floor and putting on a pair of spectacles of her own creation, with rainbow-colored clouds in place of lenses.

"...is turning to stone over there with mortification," finished Rose. "Maybe I do need to let him up for air, before he passes out."

"You worry needlessly, Mother," I assured her. "I am fine. As you have said, we have not yet begun to hear of the most uncomfortable of the circumstances that occurred… nor the most regrettable."

"Regrettable? What do you mean? What is it you think I should regret?"

I considered her response, with no small amount of surprise. "You do not? Regret?"

"No. Not a damn thing. Why should I?"

Matthew the Raven nodded his dark beak. "Uh-huh, that's what I always say. That's a good attitude, Rose - I mean, life's too short for regrets, right?"

"For some of us," I corrected the raven. "Not all."

"Yeah… I guess that's true, Boss-Junior."

"Careful you do not tell the story to its ultimate conclusion," warned my sister Despair in her forlorn voice. "Or you shall regret it…"

"Why's that?

Despair sighed most deeply, as if she were letting go of something that was once dear to her. "Because every story ends in death," she whispered, in a voice raw with pain.

There was a sound, like the beating of mighty wings.

"Did somebody call my name?" said my sister Death, who of a sudden was standing in the midst of the ruined castle, hands hooked casually through the belt-loops of her pants. "Hi. Sorry to just drop in like this, but my ears were burning - so I figured I'd come in and see what's up."

"Hello Death," Rose said. She stood and looked a bit sheepish. "I was telling them about how I first met you. And… how I called you a bitch. I'm really sorry about that, by the way."

Death smiled good-naturedly. "Aw, it's okay Rose!" she said, giving her a quick hug. "I've heard worse, believe me."

"But you're such a nice person," said Rose. "It isn't fair."

Death shrugged. "Yeah, well, comes with the job and the territory. I get it - for some folks death is a release, and for others it's an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them - even as we're talking, I'm there for the young and the old, the innocent and the guilty, those who die together and those who die alone.

And it's not because I'm nice, or merciful - I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it." After saying all of that in a more serious tone, Death perked up again. "So. How've you been?"

"I'm okay," my mother said, with a noncommittal shrug. "You?"

"Just finished up a big job," she answered. "There were a lot of them, and they all wanted to be together on the same ride. So it took some sorting out. But we got through it. Everybody's dropped off where they needed to go, safe and sound. Here, catch!" This she said to Mervyn, as she threw vehicular keys at him. He caught it handily. "Thanks for letting me borrow the bus, Merv."

"No problem missy," said Mervyn Pumpkin.

Death sat down upon the marble bench, near to me. I was feeding Goldie some pieces of bread, as he sat in my lap.

"Feels familiar, doesn't it sister?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "Familiar… and yet not." She smiled at Goldie. "May I?"

"Of course." I picked up Goldie, and placed him in her grasp. She pet his head gently with her finger, and could not resist but to tickle the bulbous toes of his proportionally rather large feet. Goldie squeaked a complaint, but it was a playful one - he grabbed hold of her fingers and gummed at them with his toothless beak.

She laughed. "Ah, I wish the previous 'you' had a pet like him - it would have cheered him up. Maybe he wouldn't have always been so glum."

"If it's any consolation, I am, essentially, him."

"No, you're not. But thanks anyway. You're a really sweet kid, you know that?" There was an interlude of silence. "How are you holding up?"

"As well as could be expected, I think. I know this must seem strange to you; for, as you say, I am not entirely the Dream that you remember. But it is all I've ever truly known - and I've known everything there ever was to know - ever since the moment that you said goodbye to the me that was."

"I think I know what you mean," said Rose to Death, looking somber. "About the big job."

"Hey, we don't!" squawked Matthew the Raven, ruffling his feathers with agitation. "Why don't you clue us in?"

"I dunno, is everybody done with their snacks and potty breaks?" asked my mother Rose, not quite as derisively as you might suppose.

"Yeah, go ahead," said Mervyn, with one final stretch of his wooden limbs, as if to make the point that this was indeed the reason he had called for a break. He sat back down in his chair, making himself comfortable. "Let's have it with the rest of your girly nonsense and get it out of the way, so we can get back to the cool stuff."

Desire grinned like a crescent moon. "Yes… girlish nonsense of a most delectable sort... like Johnny Constantine."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, nevermind me… just continue right along with your story, dear heart."

My mother Rose frowned with skepticism, as she took back her chosen seat among the rocks.

Thus resituated, she resumed her tale:

"Waking up was only the beginning," she began. "The walls between Reality and The Dreaming were thinner than ever, and full of holes the size of snowploughs - anybody who wanted to leave The Dreaming could, without much trouble.

The Dreamworld was hemorrhaging Nightmares - and now I knew that the Nightmares were real."

-Rose Walker's Tale-

"Rosie? ROSIE? Honey, are you all right? It's ME!" cried Wanda, over the wind.

Wind? Yes, wind. Dry, hot wind. The winds of the Vortex.

In my grogginess, I wasn't sure whether I was actually awake or not. Was I still dreaming of the Vortex? I must have been, I thought, because the Vortex is gone.

I couldn't move. I just groaned.

"C'mon, Sleeping Beauty. Up you come…"

I wasn't Sleeping Beauty. She was Sleeping Beauty. But wait, maybe that wasn't true anymore...

The wind and dust and bits of random debris was making me squint, but I felt Wanda lift me up in her arms.

I'm not light. Her natural upper body-strength was really coming in handy at the moment - bordering on a superpower.

I could see the occult red symbols on the floor. The dead lamb sacrifice was covered in glass and bits of drywall.

"...Where's Thessaly?" I asked.

"What? Don't worry about her, she'll get out on her own!"

Yeah, I thought… probably riding her bicycle, or a broomstick, outside in this sepia-toned twister...

I looked out the window of Wanda's flat, and saw that the glass-less window-panes were violently slamming against each other and the frame that held them. I could hear the curtains flapping and ripping. No Thessaly flying around, though.

Wanda opened the door, and it swung instantly out of her hands and into the wall with a loud thud. She leaned forward and pushed through the gale-force winds.

The stairs turned out to be tricky to navigate - she couldn't see either, nearly missing a step, and could have gone sliding all the way down with me in her arms. The walls and ceiling were collapsing around and on top of us. Wanda couldn't afford to be too slow and careful, or we'd get crushed.

Finally we got outside. Paul, Zelda, Chantal, and yes, Thessaly, were outside already, in their pajamas, watching the twister tear apart our housing complex - or, I should say, that Paul was listening to the building being destroyed, because he was sitting there despondently, with a makeshift bandage covering his empty eyes.

There were a couple other people standing around who had been living in the neighboring flats, like an old guy named George who always gave us - but particularly Wanda and the spider-women - dirty looks in the hallway (he'd occasionally give me an appreciative glance, but always bitched about how much prettier I'd be with 'normal hair').

No Gilbert, of course - he was too busy being a place. I wondered how I was going to explain his disappearance, but then I decided that I shouldn't bother - none of them knew Gilbert like I did, so they probably wouldn't even think to ask (not even Thessaly, who knew the truth about him); and if they did, they would probably just assume he died in the twister.

The early morning light was not too bright - it was a grey foggy sky above us, threatening drizzle. But somehow the dreary, mundane realism was a comforting sight - it meant we were back in the real world.

Whatever that meant.

Because if my dream was 'real'... then… then nothing made any sense.

If my dream was true, then everything we know, everything we think we know, is a lie.

It meant the world's about as solid and as reliable as a layer of scum on the top of a well of black water which goes down forever, and there are things in the depths that I don't even want to think about.

It meant more than that.

It meant we're just dolls - that we don't have a clue what's really going down. We just kid ourselves that we're in control of our lives, while a paper's thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they're tired, or bored.

In my dream, I could have destroyed everybody in the world.

In my dream, Gilbert wasn't even a person; he was a place.

In my dream, my mother threatened the implacable god-like King of Dreams, risking her life to save mine.

Dreams were weird and stupid and they scared me.

As Wanda set me down on the pavement, I made a decision: it was just a dream.

Yes, I knew that wasn't true - Paul's lack of eyes and the one-building twister was testament to that - but it was the only way I could think of to reconcile my fucked-up sense of Reality. I would MAKE myself believe it.

'It was all just a dream.' You know, I've always hated stories that ended like that. I always felt cheated.

But you can't feel cheated and sorry for yourself forever.

'...and then she woke up.'

I suppose there are worse endings.

The twister died away, like it had never been there. Now there was just a hole where our building once stood, sandwiched between buildings that were untouched. It looked strangely controlled, purposeful - like a targeted bombing, or a demolition. I wondered which story the nightly news was going to go with.

But then Wanda and the spider-women saw something that made them stiffen with fear (Thessaly saw it too, but her reaction was to look away sharpy with a 'Tch!' sound of annoyance).

There was this voice then, that spoke with a careless, waggish Liverpool 'Scousers drawl. "I come teh find you, an' yer in th'center a'yer own twister. Why 'm I not surprised?"

I looked up and saw John Constantine, with his tan coat, his shirt and tie, his cigarette adding smoke to the already dirty air drifting away from the building.

But it wasn't him they were afraid of.

He had a shadow.

Morpheus.

Shit.

"John?" I asked, "What happened to Brute and Glob? Did you kill them?"

"Naw, just sent 'em packing," he answered. "Those sorts don't kill easy. 'Ey," Constantine said to Morpheus behind him, "I hope you don't expect me ta go on public transport with you dressed like that. Be dead embarrassing."

Suddenly, between my eye blinks, Morpheus' look changed - he was no longer wearing his vampiric cloak of darkness. He was wearing a Constantine copycat ensemble: trenchcoat, only black instead of tan, and tightly cinched instead of flapping casually open the way John liked it; regular pants and pointy-toed black dress shoes instead of the brown oxfords worn by John. He had his arms crossed.

"Is this better?"

"...Auhh," said John, at a loss. "I ought to introduce you to the big green bloke. You'd like him. He hasn't got a sense of humor either." Constantine turned to me. "Yeh hurt, luv? Can yeh walk?" He bent down and offered his hand.

I stared at his hand in shock. Until my eyes filled up with tears.

I wept, bitterly. It wasn't over. None of it was.

Constantine looked confused and hurt. "Bugger me, wot's wrong now? Wot's got yeh upset? Was it soh'in I did, soh'in I said...?"

"Just leave her alone," said Wanda. "Both of you. She's had a long, rough night. More than you'd ever believe, John."

"Ah. Is that right?" Then Constantine looked at me with an unbearable amount of concern in his bluish-grey eyes. I wished he would stop.

Sirens blared in the distance. Apparently we were going to get company real soon, in the form of firetrucks and ambulances.

"She is right, John Constantine. We should be going."

Constantine reluctantly started getting up.

But my anger was back.

I grabbed his hand, and pulled myself up. "Don't even think about it!" I blurted out, angrily wiping away the tears. "Don't you even think about leaving me behind. I'm the fucking Vortex. You need me."

"All right, yeh sure. " Then John frowned, puzzled. "Wot's the Vortex, luv? I mean I know wot 'a' vortex is, a'course - but I don't know wot you'd be referrin' to 'bout 'THE' Vortex."

"I'll explain later. Let's just go, before the cops and everybody else shows up, asking questions I really can't answer right now.."

Paul turned his bandaged head. "Rose? Is that you?"

Thessaly, near him, looked between me and him, considering. Then she sighed, and nodded - she was going to take care of him, despite the fact that he was a man.

I wasn't too comfortable with the idea, but at least he would be looked after while I was gone.

Wanda was giving me a message of extreme concern with her face. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"No," I said, turning away. "Let's go," I said to John, quietly.

We walked down the sidewalk. Morpheus held a steady pace behind us, our ever-present shadow. John was in the lead - he had long, quick strides, and I had trouble keeping up with him.

My toes hit something, and I stumbled.

An uneven crack in the sidewalk pavement. My slippered foot must have caught it just right, for it to trip me up like that.

It certainly hadn't affected John. He was zipping right along. Maybe he was more used to these streets than I was.

A father and young daughter exited a shop, and the door slammed right in my face.

The little girl had a chocolate-covered ice cream on a stick, which here they called choc-ice - the sound of me hitting the door startled her, and the choc-ice crushed messily against her blouse. She started to cry. The father said something to me, like 'watch where you're going!' but ruder. I got around them, pretending not to notice they were talking about me.

A briefcase-carrying guy in a suit, checking his watch and looking very stressed, hurried past John. White liquid suddenly appeared on the man's shoulder, and he stopped, cursing Britishly ('bloody hell' was, I think, the words used). He looked up - there wasn't a pigeon in the sky that either of us could see that would have crapped on him. A random, unlucky hit-and-fly-off. I kept going, but I watched over my shoulder to see what he would do next: he set his briefcase down to deal with it, and the damn thing popped open, spilling all his papers out into a puddle. He cursed even more Britishly (this time with 'bollocks' included).

Huh. Now this was getting odd.

I turned around, and a cyclist on a bike sped out from an alley, nearly colliding with me.

I didn't get hit, but the cyclist did - by an oncoming car. That car swerved and clipped another one. There was honking.

I ran to catch up to John, who was blithely unaware of what had just happened.

"Hey, John?" I said.

"Yeh?"

"Does something about today seem… off to you?"

He looked at me, shrugged. "Not really, no. Why?"

"It just seems like a bad day. That's all."

"It's London, sweetheart. It's always like that." He put a hand to his ear. "Listen: you can 'ear it talking, if you pay attention hard enough. 'Hullo, London.' 'Hullo, John Constantine'. 'How are you then, London?' 'All right. Full of people. Rainin' shortly, most like. You?' 'Aah, not bad. Gonna take a taxi, soon as I can.' 'Good idea, John.' 'Thank you, London. My name's John Constantine, and here I stay: haunted by London. And London, haunted by me."

"Do you and London always have these conversations?"

"Not always. An' they're always silent when I'm by meself."

"That's good."

"Yeh. Wouldn't want everyone ta know I'm a nutter."

"You're not crazy, John. I'm the one walking down the street in my PJs."

"I've got some assessments from the loony bin headshrinkers that beg ta differ. They didn't want ta let me out, yeh know." A kid passed by, in a school uniform jacket - he bumped into John, said 'sorry', and John called him an idiot.

"Hey, give the kid a break," I said.

He turned to me and smiled, and I saw that he had money in his hands, which he was counting. "I did - an' a lucky break it was to 'ave off, too. This is exactly how much I'll need ta cover me taxi fare. Not such a bad day now, ennit?"

"John. Did you just steal from that kid?"

"Wot, you thought I pulled 'Johnny Con-Job' out of me arse for a stage-name? I've been called that since I was a little bugger like him. Ordinary people, they operate within a certain set of parameters, right? Rules. Limits. Then there's blokes like me, yeh? We cheat."

I slapped him across the arm. "You sticky-fingered thief! And after you made such a big deal about me and Rachel taking stuff that didn't belong to us! At least we didn't steal from a KID!"

"Wot difference does it make who I knock off, eh? Who's to say that stealing from a kid is worse than, I don't know, from a single mum tryin' to make ends meet?"

"Maybe he's the kid of a single mother," I suggested, for the sake of argument, "and she gave him just enough for lunch money. And now he's going to go hungry - and maybe get in a ton of trouble for losing the money she gave him when he gets home."

"He might. But I most definitely 'ave travel expenses ta think of, an' no way ta pay fer it neither. This may come as a shock t'yeh, but there aren't actually a 'ole lot of warlock-for-hire jobs about."

"Then how do you live in London? Where do you get the money to pay for your flat?"

"I gamble, mostly."

"You cheat people, you mean."

"Not always," he said, a little defensive. "I'm actually proper good at it, I'll 'ave you know."

"What do you play? Cards?"

"Yes. That. An' all the rest. No matter wot game I'm playin' at, I've always got a sense of the right moves ta make. An' then I make 'em, simple as that. Like breezin' along down a highway - long as yeh keep with the flow of traffic, yer all good." John threw away the last little nub of his cigarette and got out a new one. "Besides, 'e ran into me. Wot did he expect would happen?"

"That he could get to where he's going, without being pickpocketed."

He tried to talk while lighting the cigarette balanced between his lips - it made him sound a bit funny and muffled: "Eh, whatever... I bloody hate kids."

"Why? You were a kid once too."

"I was also a sperm once - but you don't see me cuddlin' up to a fuckin' wank-stain, now do yeh?"

"I'm guessing you weren't a happy child."

With the lighter back in his pocket, he took the cigarette out in a cloud of smoke, and turned to me with his eyes bright. It looked like I had turned him on to a subject he was passionate about. "Honestly, who is? 'appy Families. Wot's that all about, eh? A bloody busted flush is what it is. You surround yehself with other people, so the night doesn't seem quite so dark. Shout down the wind with arguments 'bout whose turn it is ta wash the dishes. Best not to kid yerself. Best not to give any hostages to fortune. Yer on your own in the end. Always." There was a brief pause. "I did try, once. Stayed in a caravan of hippie nomads fer a time. But eventually I couldn't take it anymore, yeh know? The great bollocks LIE of it all. We are NOT children of celestial fuckin' light, walkin' arm-in-arm into the Age of Aquarius. We are WANKERS, who wreck th'planet an' piss on each other, 'til half the world's starvin', an' the other half's busy findin' new ways to keep from noticin' it. That's the fuckin' limit've our potential, believe me."

I shook my head and sighed. He was in full-on ranting mode, and it was time I brought it back to the issue at hand. "Morpheus probably could've created money for you, you know. If he wanted to."

John made a face. "I'd rather not be in anyone's debt. Blokes like that don't give not'in away for free. An' as far as conjurin' up cash out've thin air goes, that's bad business."

"Worse than stealing from children?"

"Oh yeh, lots worse. Could wreck th'whole bloody economy. There's already been enough phony money and esoteric calculations an' magical thinking goin' 'round in that circle fer years as it is - enough to make an archmage blush. Any more tamperin' comin' from an outsider like me, an' the 'ole thing might just collapse - an' believe me it'll be comin' down around OUR ears, not th'pricks who set it up and screwed 'round withit in th'first place."

I stubbed my toe again, reminding me that there was something strange going on. It was like I was cursed, or jinxed, and everybody else was, too.

Except John.

John was speeding on ahead again, until he stopped to enter a phone booth. As he did, someone carrying a small glass aquarium dropped it on the pavement - the glass shattered, and the fish flopped around on the pavement. I had this terrible feeling that this was somehow all connected to John…

"Do not tell him."

I startled. I'd forgotten Dream was there. His footsteps were silent. "Hey, stay out of my head," I told him. But then, curiosity got the best of me. "Why?"

"The knowledge would not help him. John Constantine believes he is both a manipulator and a victim of fate. He is neither. He is the Laughing Magician. It is his purpose… the blessing and the curse of his lineage."

"But he doesn't know about that?"

"No. He does not."

"Doesn't that mean I should tell him?"

"If you want to destroy him, then yes."

"How would that destroy him?"

"The one thing preserving his fragile grip on sanity is the thought that what happens to those around him is not his fault."

"But… it's not."

"He would not see it that way. John Constantine lives under the delusion that his cleverness is what shields him... and believes that it is only 'bad luck' that things do not turn out well for others. This is not so: whenever he enhances his own luck, he is stealing the luck of others."

"Then he needs to stop. Enhancing his luck, I mean."

"He must be able to deceive and rebuke the gods, without suffering the life-ending repercussions of their wrath. For this, he must take the luck of others to bolster his own."

"But stealing people's luck… isn't that kind of… wrong?

"Is it wrong of you to harvest living things, so that you may eat?"

"That's not fair."

"It is the way of things. Other things must suffer harm and die, so that you may live and prosper."

I thought for a little bit, ruminating. This conversation was majorly bumming me out.

"Do you have to do this a lot?

"Do what?"

"Know things. Know the truth about people… and then keep it to yourself."

"Yes. There is nothing more dangerous than the truth." Then he turned to me, with a darkly amused smirk. "You will learn. Especially now that you are in training."

"Training? For what?"

"To become an Endless."

"What? Who's training me? You?"

"Yes."

"But… don't you still want me dead?"

"I will make no further attempts on your life, Rose. You may rest assured of that."

"How can I 'rest assured'? You're constantly changing your mind about me, for reasons I can't even begin to understand: one minute I'm useful, the next minute I'm something to be destroyed. Now I'm like, what, your student or something?" No answer. He didn't even budge. Or look my way. Just stood there with his arms crossed, watching John in the phonebooth. "What if I don't want any of this 'training'? What if I don't want to be an Endless?"

"It is not up to you whether you are an Endless or not; it is what you are. Just as he is the Laughing Magician."

John stepped out of the phone booth, smiling. "Got a minicab on th'way 'ere. Should be pickin' us up in a minute or two."

Thunder rolled. The sky was getting dark. "That's good, John," I said. "At least we know it won't rain on you."

When the cab came, Dream opened the door and gracefully folded his tall frame into the backseat, kind of silently melting into the shadows.

I was suddenly a bit nervous about where Constantine was going to sit - I figured that I shouldn't be right next to him.

So I climbed into the backseat, assuming that Constantine would take the front passenger seat.

He didn't. He followed me, throwing himself roughly onto the seat, which meant I was squeezed into the center. Sandwiched between him and Dream. It was a good thing that Dream was rake-thin, and folded in on himself with crossed arms and legs - otherwise the three of us would never have fit on that small back seat.

Suddenly I wondered if my initial plan might have been worse: if he sat in the front, we'd probably be rear-ended - critically injuring or killing me, and letting him walk away unscathed. Much better to be closer to him, in this case.

"Well ain't this nice and cozy," remarked John. He rested his hand on my upper thigh.

"Remove your hand, please."

"Where d'you want it to be goin', then?"

"I dunno. Anywhere that isn't touching me."

"Fine, fine, hands to meself. I get th'picture." He stuck his arm behind my back, dangling his hand over my shoulder. "This better?"

I exhaled, tired. "No, not really. But it's fine."

I only belatedly realized that nothing supernatural occurred when we made contact, like what happened with the police officer a few hours earlier (god, had it only been a few hours? It felt like days). Maybe he had a special protection spell, that made him immune to my dream-powers?

Either that, or my power level was changing - maybe I was running out of it, or maybe I was getting more skilled at controlling it.

We took off down the motorway. The rain started to pour. I listened to the hypnotic sloosh, sloosh of the windshield wipers. "Where are we going?"

"Out there," said John, gesturing vaguely. "Somewhere, in that general direction."

"And uh… why are we going there?"

"'Cos that's where the Pouch is. I've got a knack for these things. Trust me."

Oh, I trusted his instincts alright - I was just worried that I was going to pay the price for them.

I watched as John, with his opposite hand, managed to get his Silk Cuts out of his trenchcoat pocket, a cigarette, and the lighter to light the damn thing up.

The smoke drifted and curled up in front of my face. I coughed. "Do you have to be doing that right now?"

"Yeh. I'm about 90% nicotine these days, luv."

"Would it kill you to breathe fresh air once in a while?"

"It might. Me lungs wouldn't know what to do with it all."

"Have you ever had a girlfriend walk out on you because of it?"

"Girlfriends. Th'odd boyfriend." At that, I saw the cabbie glance at us in the rearview mirror, unkindly. John saw it too, but chose to ignore it. "They all 'ave a nasty habit of walkin' out on me. I doubt it's the bifters that does it, though - a couple weeks, an' they've 'ad enough. The mystique gets shabby, yeh lovable man of mystery turns into the bloke next door. Th'jokes turn into digs then, the sex goes stale-"

"Don't you be tryin' any funny business back there in me car now, nancyboy," warned the cabbie.

"Aw sod off an' drive, will yeh?" barked John. He continued talking to me, but quieter. "I'm 'opeless when it comes to finishin' relationships. Always 'ave been. They usually end in a showdown, or a bedroom scene, or an argument in th'back of a taxi like this one. An' they throw up their arms, or give me the V, an' bugger off without so much as a by-your-leave." John stared out the window at the rain, forlornly. "That's th'trouble with people these days… no commitment."

"And no morals, neither," griped the cabbie. "Here's yer stop. Now pay up and get out."

John glowered, and shoved the cash he stole from the boy forward at the cabbie.

The cabbie counted the money. "Don't I get a tip?" he asked.

"Sure, it's this: get a new mind," growled Constantine. "The one yeh've got is narrow an' full a'crap." With that, John angrily threw open the car door and got out.

And it stopped raining.

I schooched out, looking awkward as could be.

Dream slid out of the shadows on the other side of the car, as gracefully as he had gotten in.

John slammed the car door.

The car just idled there. There was tension in the air - the cabbie looked like he was considering getting out and starting a fistfight with John.

I walked over to the driver's side window, bent down and rapped on the glass. He rolled it down.

"What's it yer wanting now, sweetheart?" asked the cabbie.

"This anger you're feeling toward my friend," I began, "I think maybe you should sleep on it'. I reached out and pressed a finger against his forehead. The first sounds of an indignant protest left his mouth, but then, when I removed my finger, his head hit the steering wheel, and the car horn blared.

I unlocked the door and pulled him out. I made a gesture indicating the driver's seat to John. "You're the only one who knows where to go," I said. "So I guess you're the one who should drive."

"Rose," he said, looking incredulous. "First th'petty thieving, now jacking a bloke's taxi car? You're movin' up in the world, luv - I'm beginnin' to think I don't know you anymore."

"You never did," I said, gathering up dreamsand filtering out from the sleeping cabbie and stuffing it in my sleep robe pockets. I felt like it was prudent to collect it whenever I got the chance. "Now shut up and drive."

He regarded the driver's seat. "I'm not in th'habit of drivin', luv."

"But you know how?"

"...I'm sure I could figure it out - seen a lot've worse idiots than me behind the wheel before."

I looked at Morpheus, uncertain. He nodded, reassuringly.

We turned down a random street, into a residential neighborhood. Constantine slowed down to a crawl.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Close," said Dream.

"I know why we came in this direction," said John.

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeh," said John, "Rachel mentioned wantin' to move to these parts."

"But you don't know which of the houses are hers," I said.

"I can make a guess," he said. And then he stopped, snapped his fingers and pointed at a driveway. "There. Yeh see? That's her bloody car, that is."

He pulled in behind it, and we got out.

It was a regular suburban house, but I was having eerie flashbacks to The Cuckoo's house, in my - Wanda's, 'our'? - dream. I shivered, as much from the recollection as from the cold wind blowing through the porous fluff of my sleep-robe.

John rang the doorbell, and rapped on the door. He listened against the doorpane. "Well, there's no answer. An' it's locked, bolted, an' alarmed. Let's go 'round the back - we can smash a window, get in that way-"

"No." Dream passed his hand across the door, and it fell ajar with an ominous creaking sound. "We go in by the FRONT door."

"You are one smooth criminal, mate," said Constantine, shaking his head. "You an' Rose here make quite the pair. OW!" he exclaimed, as I hit him in the arm again. "Sorry. That was my sort of... it was a joke, Rose."

"That's right, John," I said, with an exhale of exasperation, "it differs from the usual kind of joke, only in the vast gulf between it and any kind of a sense of humor." I tried to go in, but Dream put a hand on my shoulder.

"Rose… this place is not safe for you, or Constantine for that matter," he cautioned. "Things are free in this house that should not be loose upon the earth."

I shrugged off his hand. "Why doesn't that surprise me?" I went in.

I heard Dream try his luck with John: "You must go, John Constantine. You must not stay here."

"Naw, I'm intrigued. 'Sides, me girl's in there."

I was surprised that he still considered Rachel 'his girl'.

Envelopes and newspapers crinkled underneath my feet. They were in a haphazard pile on the floor - the mailman had been putting them through the slot for some time, and nobody had bothered to pick them up.

I groped around the walls for a light-switch, and found one - flicking it didn't do anything. The electricity had been shut off.

"Watch out for the human."

"What do you mean, watch out for the AAH-!" And I tripped on it. The body. I went sprawling.

I turned around, as John Constantine opened his lighter - in the glow, I could see him crouched down over the guy.

The guy's eyes were wide - a frozen mask of terror.

"Is he…?" I asked.

"He is alive. After a fashion. He's being eaten by dreams."

Constantine spotted a jimmied-open window nearby, the curtains just faintly billowing with the breeze. "Burglar, looks like."

"With a car in the driveway? That was pretty bold."

"Unless he was stalking her, an' knew she lived alone. That, or he's one of them creepers - the blighters treat it like a sport, breakin' into people's houses while they're still at home."

"That IS creepy. I'm glad the dreams started eating him before he was able to find Rachel."

"I've been out of me depth before," said Constantine, "But somethin' tells me there are sharks in these depths." He looked at Dream. "We'll uh… we'll stick together, won't we?"

"Of course."

"Are you really that scared, John?" I asked, in a slightly mocking way. I mean, here was the 'I-fight-demons-for-breakfast' hellblazing warlock John Constantine, acting like he wanted someone to hold his hand for comfort.

He frowned at me, bristling. "Movies. Ol' dark house. 'Orrible menace on th'loose. 'Let's split up'. Muffled screams in th'darkness…"

"Yeah, okay, we get it John."

I was near the bottom of the stairs to the second story. I grabbed the banister to pull myself up, but there was something unexpectedly wet and slimy on it. I yanked my hand away. "Yechh…" I said.

"Christ," Constantine swore, "There's soh'in all over th'stairs."

"Yeah, it's wet. And-"

And.

And I can see the clouds. They look kind of solid. And the ground below them. That looks REALLY solid. A city of a hundred twinkling lights. I'm falling fast through the clouds, headed straight for the city.

How did I get here?

Memory fills in: the plane on fire; I jumped…? I was… the pilot? No. A passenger, maybe?

I don't want to die. I don't want to fall. I tell myself it's not the fall. Falling doesn't hurt… it's when you stop.

I flailed and screamed. I suddenly remembered that this was familiar. This was a dream - but not mine. "PAUL!" I screamed.

Dream was falling after me. "Rose!"

He reached out to me, and grabbed a hold of the back of my robe.

Back. Gasping. Sweating.

Dream's hands were on my shoulders. He was gazing at me imploringly.

Behind him, John was staring at me - cigarette smoking, hands stuffed casually in his pockets. "Yeh all right?"

"I'm fine… just a dream… no." I glanced at Dream: he was infinitely more concerned than mister nonchalant John. "It's never 'just a dream', is it?"

"No. Here less than other places…" Dream raised an upturned hand. "You need more light." A glowing orb appeared floating in the space above his palm. "Is that better?"

It was not better at all: I could have lived without seeing the stairs in that much detail.

It was covered in a pulsating mass of red and green… flesh. Innards. Something alien and biological.

"What IS this stuff?" I asked.

"Human bodies. What is left of them. The woman's roommates, I surmise."

Constantine poked at it, watching as the slime oozed off his fingers.

"Constantine!" I reprimanded. "Why are you touching it? Did you not see what just happened with me?" But then I stopped, realizing. "It's not affecting you. Why?"

"Maybe I've built up a tolerance, like - I've had a few bad trips in me day," he said, still messing with it. He seemed both disgusted and fascinated. "It's still alive…" he murmured. "How?"

"The Pouch." Morpheus walked up the stairs with the light. I followed right on his heels, and Constantine was right on mine.

"Yeh know wot, I'm really startin' to regret that hot dog an' coffee I grabbed to eat before I got here," he whispered to me. "They're tryin' teh fight their way back up fer air."

"Hot dogs? Coffee? Are you sure you're not an American?"

"I left the bubble-and-squeak uneaten in the soddin' fridge, before the fight with the demon-blokes."

"I was thinking more like fish-and-chips with tea. What the hell is bubble-and-squeak?"

"Potato and cabbage leftovers. Don't get too excited - I don't actually 'ave any. I don't cook. At most yeh'll find me just bungin' somethin' in the microwave."

"I haven't eaten anything for days - not anything 'real', anyway."

Constantine stifled a gag with his hand and groaned. "Lucky you..."

Upstairs there was more of the fleshy mass. We came to a hallway, which was absolutely covered and lined with it - it looked like some sort of diseased internal passageway, an orifice that tightened reflexively at our approach. Arm-like tendrils extended and stretched outward from the walls, like that dangly-thing in the back of your throat. The tear-drop heads turned into blobbish faces.

"Rachel?" I called out. "Are you here?"

A dozen little voices whispered back, all at once: "Leave…" "Leave here…" "Leave her" "Leave the woman" "Do not disturb her..." "She is ours…"

One of the blob-uvulas peered closely at me. "Get away!" I shouted. "Or we'll have to hurt you!"

"Foolish meat things…" "Very foolish" "Hear it posture?" "Hear it threaten?"

"Let us through."

"Who said?" "Who spoke?" "Not him" "He's gone" "All gone…" "Long gone…"

"This has gone far enough. You have far exceeded your bounds, Nightmares."

There was a collective gasp from the blobs. "Master…?" they asked, in unison.

"Indeed."

The little voices start wailing, panicked. "Master!" "Do not..." "...chastise..." "…destroy us!" "SORRY SORRY SORRY" "We thought you long gone…" "Yes yes..."

"I shall clean this up," Dream said to me and Constantine. "Please, continue on."

Constantine made a frustrated sound. "I thought I told you wot I thought 'bout splittin' up."

"Fret not, John Constantine. I will be here, able to join you in a moment's time if you should need my assistance. She is on the other side of the door."

He meant, of course, the door on the other side of that icky hallway.

After this, I was determined to throw out the fuzzy slippers I was wearing... maybe even burn them, just to be safe.

"Come on, John," I said, taking my first step onto the grisly horror. I felt him hesitate. I looked back at him, and saw that he was white as a sheet. "John?"

"...I'm comin'," he said, but I noticed that his eyes were glistening. Unthinking, I offered my hand to him. He reluctantly took it.

All of a sudden, I got just a brief flash of insight: the image of a young girl, holding his hand, walking through a hellscape very similar to this hallway.

And then a flash of that girl's arm, the hand still clasping his - but the rest of it was hanging limply, because it was separated from the rest of her body.

He wasn't in the hellscape anymore - there were hazy figures of regular people watching him in horror, but he wasn't looking at them, and therefore I wasn't either: he was… I was, through his eyes… just gazing, dumbstruck, at the severed arm, hearing the blood drip noisily, plip-plap, onto the basement floor…

I let go, shocked and dismayed by what I had seen.

John must have somehow intuited that I knew what was in his mind. He broke his gaze away. His latest cigarette was nearly done, so he spat it out onto the flesh-blobs (which screamed and shuddered a little), fumbled another Silk-Cut into his mouth with trembling fingers, and put his hands back in his pockets. "I'm coming," he reiterated, blinking back tears. "Right behind yeh."

My heart was breaking for him. I felt bad about taking his hand, and about letting it go. He never let go, I thought. In more ways than one. "Okay," was all I said to him. All I could say. I was real crap at this sort of thing.

It was only a few steps to the door - but through that humid hallway that smelled of bile and blood, it felt like an excruciatingly long and difficult journey.

There was the faint sound of a female voice behind the door, saying something inaudible. Rachel. Was she mumbling to herself? There was a strange cadence to the words.

The doorknob was covered in the fleshy blobby stuff, which I knew might make me trip out again - and so instead of grabbing it and charging in like I normally would have with any other door, I very daintily stepped aside and let the traumatized man do it for me.

He took a deep breath of that rank hallway air and turned the handle. The door swung open with a creak, and the odor that wafted out of that room and assaulted our nostrils made the hallway smell pleasant by comparison: it was like a sewer, a morgue, and a garbage dump all wrapped up into one, laced with the particularly pungent smell of nail polish remover. It made my already-empty stomach still feel like hurling, and turning itself inside-out just to start over fresh. Meanwhile, John Constantine just stood there in the doorway, staring with wide eyes.

I could hear a weak, raspy voice faltering sharply over the notes of a song, squeaking in places like rusty metal:

"Dream dream dreeeam… whenever I want you…"

I looked inside.

I wished I hadn't.

There was only one source of light, a small window - and there was precious little light that could filter in through the sheer window curtains.

It was too much.

The ragged mess of hair moved toward the nightstand; the naked back that trailed behind looked only vaguely human, covered in cankerous sores surrounded by rings of angry, inflamed red flesh.

There was a framed picture on the nightstand, of Rachel (dressed for a night on the town with a sexy black skirt, and looking like a celebrity with her sunglasses and a flash of her million-watt smile). She was walking with Constantine clinging to her arm (who looked like a startled deer in the headlights, or a crook slinking away front he scene of the crime).

Next to the picture frame, a leather pouch sagged open, with some of its glinting, granular contents spilled out over the top surface of the nightstand. It was definitely Dreamsand, I could feel it.

A shriveled hand reached toward it, fingering the yellow sand with ragged and equally-yellow nails. It took a pinch of the sand between shaky fingers, and the arm wobbled, bringing it under the mass of tangled hair, and making a dry sucking sound.

The body limply, slowly rolled back onto the bed pillows, head lolling to the side. Her breasts sagged over sharply-defined rib bones and a swollen stomach; every inch of her pallid skin, from her sunken eyes to her skeletal jutting-out hip-bones, were covered in greenish spots of necrosis. The bed was soiled.

"... All I have to do… is DREE-EE-EE-EE-EAM…" she croaked out, the last of her broken, scratchy melody (no, I did not know that the word I was looking for was 'scritchy', but you're exactly right - the perfect combination of scratchy and screechy. Thank you, Delirium).

"Rachel," Constantine breathed.

The corpse-woman twitched her head. She seemed to take notice of him for the first time. "...Johnny?" She sounded somewhat hopeful, but then she saw me and grimaced, stretching her flaky and blistered lips taught over yellowed teeth. "What're you doing with HER?!" she roared.

"We're here to help you," I said, because John wasn't saying anything. "You need to stop taking the Dreamsand, Rachel. It's making you sick."

"No," she hoarsely rasped. "You're here to take it from me!"

"Rachel-" I began as I stepped inside the room.

Except I didn't.

What I stepped into was a different place altogether.