Through my broken vision, I make out the once pristine first floor of the hotel, serving as a restaurant now has chips on every square inch of the outside walls, the interior being completely destroyed. 

It feels as though it almost fits better with the city now… It seems very strange not seeing that man ranting about Corvus’ or whatever standing there staring at me or something, and what the hell happened here? The voices scream for me to continue, and so I give in.

The visions pulsate across my field of perception again stronger, taking more ground, the voices splitting my eardrums, getting clearer as I walk through the pain, nearly blind to what’s in front of me as I close my eyes so tight I can no longer feel them, stumbling across the rubble to my destination. My eyes are closed, yet it does nothing to stop the visions. Then, it seems as if the vision is one with the landscape I am walking on and I open my eyes.

The voices, finally audible, scream “If you build it, they will come!” In front of me, an assortment of broken ancient looking pillars is laid meticulously, as if taken from Mount Olympus.

“I don’t know what you mean!” I scream out back at them, tears breaking across and down my cheek. 

“She will save you!” They scream back with such volume that I lose my balance, the air getting knocked out of my lungs. My head impacts a hard object and in my inability to recover my vision goes black for a short moment. By the time I am fully aware again, the voices, the visions… They’re all gone as if they were just a fabrication reset in parallel with me knocking my head.

* * * 

Crickets chirp from their shelters of concrete. The sky rests its defenses of light, letting the stars shine through. A steady pace of footsteps grows closer before fading out as his consciousness seeps back into nothingness, then into the realm of dream.

As usual, no luck. A dream that cannot be recalled. For some reason I just can’t shake the feeling that they contain the answers to my problems. They have such an aftertaste of profound meaning. 

I grieve what I do not know silently.

*Drip, drip… drip.*

Beads of saline fall at the concrete irregularly. The realization has come that I don’t know what I’m doing. Have I gone insane? Where did it all go wrong? Where did my life go?

A raw scream escapes my lips towards the sky, grieving for the return of my normal life under the fall of tears. At least I knew what was going to happen. It was not a good life, but at least I could deal with it---

I sit under the starlight for what feels like hours, but there is only so much emotion to be shed through tears and they stop falling. My emotion turns into a void. I have nothing left to give.

What if there is a god out there?

No arguments come to mind. Maybe there is. People sometimes say that god can’t exist in a cruel world. Did they ever read the old testament? God was cruel. Maybe that is what this world is. Maybe God was trying to set some realistic expectations. 

Maybe it would be worse if there was no god in such a cruel world. Actually, I don’t think I could stomach the thought. If there’s no God, what chance at redemption do we have?

I recall the voices screaming. What did they say? Oh, right. “If you build it, she will come.” They said. What does that mean anyway?

So, “build it” is building an altar. First of all, I don’t know what the hell that means. And second, who is “she?”

What would happen if I built this altar, I wonder? 

“Maybe god would descend to the mortal realm and take care of all my problems.” I snicker aloud. Heh, yeah right.

The inescapable phenomena that is tiredness begins to absorb me and shortly, my consciousness finds itself put away.

Waking in the morning, well rested and absent of any residual pain, for a moment it feels as though I have awoken to my cozy bed in my apartment.

Contrary to the seeming reality, realization dawns. I truly am in the bed of my apartment. I stare unabated at the room around me, not daring to move my body.

That was a dream? Or were my hopes answered? 

“Of course.” Comes the reply.