"This is a dream," I could barely hear myself whisper over the noise, "This has got to be a fucking dream."

But as the heavy stench of burning rubber and gasoline began to become more and more real, I realized it wasn't. The smell and the noise filled my body until I felt as though that was all that was left of me, a pile of noise and air pollution. I felt as though I didn't exist enough to ever be able to move myself out of the way of the oncoming vehicle. The rider's eyes were hidden behind a mask of fire-orange, wreathing the front of her face in flames with each streetlight nearer she came. I was a deer caught in the headlights of something I could never understand. Bearing down on me. Closer, closer.

With a strength that wasn't my own, I flung myself away from the wall, tumbling into the street as the vehicle shot by, the cyclone tossing my limp, wet body around like a doll, like a puppet on strings. I felt the winds of it, the filthy claws of it, tearing at my body for one nightmarish second before the whole of it passed into the darkness from whence it came.

I lay, huddled in a ball of dirt and sweat at the side of the sidewalk, my eyes shut tight, my hands on my ears, trying to block out the bitter reality that blared all about me. But no matter how tightly my hands clasped my ears, I couldn't shut out a loud squeal that cut through the air, like the dying cry of an animal caught by the cyclone-rider. I wondered if that was a sound I made. I wondered if maybe she had hit me, that my soul had been flung away from the wall instead of my body.

The sound of metal rending against the asphalt of the road followed the squeal, the hiss of sparks punctuating it, underlining it. The vehicle skidded across the ground, riderless, robbed of its cyclone, spewing a rain of sparks into a thick night air. I looked up to see the rider land noiselessly in the middle of the road, the blue bass swept back, the other hand on her goggles, the black glove shielding all that was human about her upper face from view. Her thin lips were snakes, curved upward, trying to hypnotize me before they struck. The snakes spread and I thought I saw gleaming ivory fangs beneath them.

"Common, don't make this harder on both of us!" The voice shook, unstable, unpredictable.

With that, she dashed forward, almost as fast as she had on her bike. Her slender, sinewy black fabric-skinned legs pumping wildly against the empty street. I watched her run in awe, watching as her whole form seemed to blur with her speed, watching as reality seemed to sweep out of the way to let her through. When she drew close, she slammed her legs against the ground and propelled herself upward, seizing the bass with both hands and swinging it, like an axe, down towards my head.

Either my body or my soul rolled out of the way, and the bass hummed a low, angry note as it struck the road. Instead of shattering, the bass remained intact, but the road buckled with the force, cracking and sending shards of black flying upward. My jaw fell open as I staggered backward, gazing in awe at the bass, not even scratched by the attack.

"This HAS to be a dream." I mumbled.

The rider let out a short laugh as she slowly straightened, her eyes invisible behind their glinting shield of flame, looking more like a machine than anything human. Her smile expanded until I could clearly see the points of her fangs glinting like white daggers in the apathetic hum of the electric streetlight.

"Izzat so?"

With a flash of motion, she drew the bass back, gripping it tightly in one black-skinned hand.

"Then how about I wake you up, hmm?" The voice was the voice of a cat toying with her prey.

I stumbled backward, my footsteps awkward versions of the steady stomps of her boots, which seemed to echo for miles, or at least enough to send a shockwave through my body. I backed away, she advanced, the indestructible bass jutting steadily out behind her, us acting out the dance of man fleeing from death. I jumped slightly as I felt the familiar cold, rough surface of the concrete wall at the riverside stop my escape and send a sudden panic fluttering like a caged bird through me. The bird pounded wildly against the bars. Against reality. Against the injustice of being killed by a woman who seemed to break all rules of that reality.

I swallowed, hard. "Wh-Who are you?"

The snakes slithered into a half-smile. "Me?" The voice attempted to hide her internal laughter behind a flimsy mask of innocence.

Her free hand flew in a flash to grip the handle of the bass, and the mask burned away with the fire that I thought I could see flicker within the darkness of her mouth.

"Just call me the Sandman!"

I watched the perfect, gleaming blue arch of her swing extend from behind her, extend like an impossible rainbow across the thick black night. It cut through it like a knife, and all the darkness receded before it. It was like the sun at dawn. And it ended abruptly, ending on the same, rumbling note that was the only thing that accompanied me as I descended into a darkness deeper than the night. The note wasn't loud or anything, and the blow wasn't painful. I just slipped away on it, like gliding on a gentle breeze. I followed it as it faded. And I didn't really mind when it faded. Because I faded at the same time.

***

"It's raining, Aya." I had said, sitting beside her, my eyes to the sky, which answered my thoughtful look with droplets that burst and shattered on my clear white face.

She looked at me, the flawless pearl of her eyes corrupted with red, small droplets frozen in well-worn paths on her cheeks. "Yeah?" Her body shuddered with another sob and she managed to give me a quizzical look. "So?"

"So.why cry?" I smiled at the sky and felt the water seep between my teeth and disappear. I turned to her, with that same smile. "The rain'll just wash it all away."

The moon of her face turned to look downward, thick clots of her black hair cutting into the white and the shadow of her head closing off the rest. "Everything washes away eventually..." Her words shook with sobs and her body was tight and closed.

"That's the future." I kept smiling that same smile, feeling the water slide around it, wreathing it in a cool wetness. "Why worry about that?" I turned to look back to the sky, closing my eyes and feeling my face covered with a liquid mask, glazing over all my features. "Right now, if I smile, the rain won't wash it away."

I heard her turn to look at me, heard the creak of her polished leather jacket. "Tama."

I turned and saw her, black hair clinging to the gentle glow of her face, cutting fantastic shadow-shapes into it. The moon, peeking for a moment from behind the thick black storm cloud let it gaze fall softly onto her face, making her tear-stained eyes gleam like jet-black pearls floating in a pool of red and white. Her lips spoke without moving and the dark space between me drew me in like an abyss of unknown depths.

And that was the first time we kissed. The sound, the smell of rain crisp, filling the city, cleaning the filth from the air for the space of a night, so that young lovers might draw on the intoxicating breath of life, clear and pure.

***

When I woke up, I figured I must have been right. I was back in my bed, still swimming in sweat, still with the same sound and same symbol smouldering lightly in my mind. I wondered if I had even called Aya at all. Maybe I had dreamt it. Maybe I had dreamt the whole strange day. Maybe I had dreamt my whole life. Maybe I was still a child, full of the misconception that life held some secret. Full of that promise that would never be fulfilled. Wishful thinking.

"What a weird dream." I smiled and closed my eyes, reaching a hand up to wipe the sweat from my forehead. "I have to stop eating pizza before I go to-"

My mouth rumbled onward, though no sound came out. My hand hadn't made it to my forehead. It stopped, maybe a foot from it, resting on a sweat-slickened object, hard as bone, seeming to be covered in flesh. My eyes went wide and I slowly looked upward. There, at the edge of my vision, I saw the edge of a rectangular block with sharp, defined edges covered in skin the same color as my own. My hand quivered, probing slowly down the object like a blind animal, my mind stunned out of thought. At the base, a smooth slope connected the object to my skull.

"What.the.hell?" My words a whisper to a careless night.