My dreams, they turn against me.

I walk alone. In constant fear. The dust from the road bites into my eyes, and i cast a nervous glance over my shoulder. Still nothing. Just like the last ten miles. I continue walking, clutching tighter to my heavy, rusted .45 pistol. Dilapidated buildings line this broken, wasted road. Skyscrapers, from every city in the world I wanted to live in and never did. Once, their broken, twisted faces may have haunted me. But I have lived in this hell for far too long. Now, I simply see their hollow, staring eyes as threats, places my dreams might pick for an ambush.

There is no night, no day here. I reach into one of my pockets for the rusty watch I have been using to keep time, and the ruined suit I'm wearing pulls against the wound on my shoulder, causing me to hiss out loud. I quickly clap a hand over my mouth. My involuntary noise of pain broke the still wasteland air, and someone or something may have heard it. 

Quickly, I rush to the side of the road, taking cover behind a collapsed cement pillar. I listen and wait, not breathing, not moving. I hear something, faintly, in the distance. It sounds like... an engine? In this place?

I peek my head out from cover. I wait for my eyes to focus through the windblown dust. And then a slow, paralyzing fear spreads through my limbs. It is one of my oldest dreams, finally here to repay my betrayal. Art. The most powerful of my dreams. With me since childhood, a dear friend to me, with whom I could have shaped the world. I sold him out for money, just to get by, to make rent. Look what it's come to.

He is driving toward me in a beat up, broke down '73 Mustang convertible. It might once have been cherry red, but it's color, like everything else here, is faded. All thoughts about the color of the car evaporate when I see Art himself. He is dressed, head to toe, in rusted pieces of scrap metal, fashioned into makeshift armor. He is driving quickly, heedless of the missing door on the driver's side of the car. 

Suddenly he slams on the brakes, and I duck down, wishing that I had not stared so long.

Now he has seen me.

I pull the magazine out of my pistol: four shots left. I curse silently, wishing Music had had more ammunition on him when he and I fought. I cross my fingers in the mad hope that Art won't have found anything more than a rusty pipe or a piece of a stop sign to fight me with. With both that car and the armor he's wearing, I doubt it. 

The unmistakeable CHAK-CHAK of a shotgun confirms my fears.

This is my life now. Trapped in this purgatory, no hope for rescue or escape. My only option is to keep fighting, and keep walking, hoping that someday my dreams will let go of their bitter hurt and forgive me, and we can start anew. 

I am doubtful that this will ever happen. I don't forgive myself, why should they?

The only escape is death. And death is no escape. I've tried that, believe me. I only end up back at the start, to face all my dreams again, to walk down this endless road once more.

Will it ever end?