hold it within your grasp for a second, not because of the sun's intrinsic worth, but because it would make a fine tale. And should a human visitor appear, you can sidle up to him even as the others heckle and growl with condescension. In seconds you will awake, reenter this world, all sweat and great gulping breaths, but you have enough time to whisper in the visitor's ear: Pay them no mind. I know what it's like. Eventually sickness passes, as it always does, and you walk the streets once again. People look away, they look down, they occupy themselves with a newspaper, or a phone, but you know that should you fall to the pavement, moaning for help, that they will come. Power and comfort in that thought. To actually have another help you -- do you dare? It has the delicious air of sin about it. But time is running Lin Page 11 short. Even now, you notice that this city is dying: plastic wrap and dead leaves swamping the streets, or the avenues where no one walks at all, gleaming empty things. You overhear talk: Maybe that place is best, or We can get a fresh start somewhere else. Even the young scratch at their wizened foreheads, or pluck out premature gray hairs. The rest slowly surrender to madness, as if catching it from the air, from the breaths of others. They scream at no one in particular, shriek at horrors that no longer exist, and boils pop from their forehead as they yank at your arm. In their insanity, they have moved beyond time. The original source of the man's hatred was perhaps the government, or a vendetta, or a prejudice. No matter, he has long forgotten. All that is left are pulsing black eyes, hair that sprouts unheeded from his nostrils, breath that reeks of rotten bananas. In a moment of weak-