The Dream

I fell asleep watching the Door. I fell asleep and dreamed.

I dreamed I was back in the hallway, the hallway that stretched on for eternity, trapped in a straight line. I dreamed I was back there and I stopped and looked through the window and I saw the City. I saw the City shift and change, like the ocean. Like the waves of the ocean.

I looked through the window and I saw a man standing on one of the City's streets. He looked up at me and waved.

And then I was no longer in the hallway, I was down there with the man. He was me. He (I) was standing there looking up at the strange building, at the window so far up that he couldn't even see the person, just a dark figure. He (I) waved anyway, certain that someone must be up there, even if he (I) couldn't see them clearly.

He (I) lowered his hand and then turned around to walk down the street. It had shifted since he (I) had last looked. It used to be filled with gardens, enormous and elaborate sculptures positioned in the center of each garden. Now, the gardens and hedges were gone, replaced by ruins. Brick walls crumbling, buildings broken, on the edge of collapse.

He (I) walked through the ruins and tried to remembered how long he (I) had been in the City. Weeks, months, years? Did the City preserve his (mine) life against hunger and thirst just so it could play with him (me)? Or was there something wrong with time here? Was time as tangled as the City itself?

He (I) stopped and sat down beside a gate that had once been majestic, but had been shattered into fragments. He (I) looked up at the amaranthine sky and felt small. He (I) felt as if he (I) was an infinitesimal grain of sand and the City was the beach that was unceasing, unending.

He (I) looked down then at the ground and made patterns in the dust with his (my) foot. He (I) scrapped away the patterns and then got back up. He (I) began to walk down the road again.

I (me) woke up. I (me) walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I. I wasn't me. He, the man in the City, was me. The man in the mirror wasn't me. I wasn't me.

They (the Nightlanders) were asking me a question. Are you Martin?

Am I Martin? If I'm not Martin, who am I?