A/N: This story is a reworked version of my original plan for chapter 4 of my story, Never Come Back. I decided it wouldn't fit well in that story, but I realized it works much better as a standalone dream story. So, anyway, here it is.

Nightmare in Elm City
by purplewowies

I have no idea where I am. It's dark and I hear screaming.

And there's pain. So. Much. Pain. It courses through my veins and has penetrated every cavity of my body. I can't move and I have no idea what is going on. The pain is so much that it's all I can do to try to use my one unaltered sense, listening, to figure out what's happening. I manage to make out someone saying something about I-95 and Exit 5.

I'm in New Haven. What am I doing there?

I try to make out other parts of the faraway speech, but it's being rendered unintelligible by the music blaring out of the radio. "Never Alone." What strange irony.

I hear voices getting closer to me. One is male, the other female. The man says something I can't decipher because of everything that's going on around and within me. He touches my arm, presumably attempting to get me to safety, but the woman speaks up. "No! Don't touch him!" she chastises. "Moving him might hurt him worse if he's got a head or back injury!"

What is she, a nurse?

So the man leaves me in the middle of the road and relative silence encompasses me.

Awhile later, a few screams pick up again as sirens wail into my conciousness.

The talking starts to return as well, but it seems to be getting farther and farther away.

In an instant, I feel hands all over my body. All of my bones feel like they've broken into a thousand pieces, and every time someone touches me, pain radiates into my every thought.

The people that the hands belong to are probing me more than a TSA employee, but I'm powerless to stop them. The people say things, but it sounds like they're speaking in a different language, even though I know they're not. My head feels as if a giant has accidentally stepped on it.

The people have moved me onto some sort of bed or something.

The sounds are beginning to fade.

I feel the thing I'm lying on lift up. It's much quieter now, but that might just be because I'm gradually hearing less and less. I feel peace encompassing me for the first time I can remember; where was I before I came here anyway? All the pain is gone, and I don't have a care in the world. There's something I can't describe pulling me back towards the pain and confusion, but my thoughts have become too jumbled and incoherent to even try to think about it. I have a vague sensation that something bad has happened, but then, all of a sudden I feel and think absolutely nothing.

I'm out.

Cody Martin awoke with a start. He shifted in the uncomfortable chair he had practically become glued to as he thought about the dream he had just had. It was so much like the many other dreams he'd had since he came here, yet somehow, there was something different about this one. He had never been blind and unable to move in any of the other ones, and the pain had felt so real. He would rather have had his arms and legs cut off than feel that pain for even one second.

He looked over at his brother, who lay in the bed next to him. There had been no change since yesterday. He grasped Zack's hand and stared intently at his once-strong older brother's face. Nothing.

It was all just a dream...

wasn't it?