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pale, unaware hand.

Alphabet soup.

Her blood would resemble alphabet soup, he was sure of it! Millions of little noodles would leak out from her body and join together in harmony. They would create conjunctions, sub-junctions, clauses, compound sentences! There was a novel in there, in her borrowed blood, and he was the author.

That thief! That bitch! That leech!

"Daniel, you're wasting my time, and I do not have time to waste."

Her voice shook him violently from his musings, and he raised his eyes sheepishly, forcing himself to look at her. Where could he begin? She wouldn't like it, not one bit. How could he tell her that he dreamed of dead things, dead things with their bodies pushed and crushed together? Compacted and compressed, they formed diamonds, they formed rocks, they were trees, they were clouds. The very atoms that made up his being were a billion dead things pressed together, packed together, until he was a diamond, until he was a dead thing. Would she like that? Probably not. He had best improvise.

"I dreamt I was walking on the clouds" He began slowly, watching her pen dart across the paper, filling the emptiness with her neat, feminine scrawl.

"But then I looked down, and instead of cotton or gas, I was standing on millions and millions of tiny, perfect eggshells. I walked for miles, never stopping, never breathing, always afraid that the next step forward might be my last. Gradually, my feet became heavier, and my movements slower. I looked down only to see that my feet had become cinderblocks. I knew I was dead, knew it. Eggshells and cinderblocks? The two just cannot coexist."

He paused, trying desperately to think of what to say next. He knew she wanted more, she always wanted more, but it was a difficult taskbeing consistent with the metaphorical bullshit he fed her.

"Annnnd" She pressed, already losing what little patience she had regained.
"And so I threw myself off." He told her bluntly, playing the whole thing off with a nonchalant shrug. "I knew I was going to die, so instead of enduring the sheer terror of an impending fall, I chose to exercise a bit of control over the situation and choose when I was going to die. It was liberating, it was exhilarating, it was the ultimate freedom."
"It was only a dream."

"Oh, but what a dream it was." He smiled with the knowledge that the lie was whole and complete. He was pleased with himself, proud of his skills of improvisation, and marveled at how believable he could make any scenario. He was almost beginning

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