As John awoke he looked at the clock to see that it was now just after noon. A restlessness sat like a rock in his stomach as he gazed out the window. Did this dream mean anything? He had felt such a kinship with the monster, but it was that kinship that consumed him in the dream. Something wasn't sitting right with John and he played the days events in his head over and over again. Even though he slept his skin ached from exhaustion, dreams like that were hardly restful. There had been nothing out of the ordinary that had happened today, that is to say, nothing out of the ordinary for John. Surely the act of dying and resurrecting was far from the normal of most people. John kept reciting the day to himself hoping something would stand out. He wanted to get high. His drug habit was in no way a physical addiction, for whatever reason the act of coming alive purged any foreign or harmful elements from his body, but for John drugs were almost a necessary escape. For a while John had self diagnosed himself with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but decided after a few weeks that this was an inadequate diagnosis considering there was nothing post about his traumatic stress. He pushed the thoughts of drugs out of his mind and kept playing the day in his head like a convenience store security camera. “Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.” he thought. “Nothing. Nothing... wait... Andrew.” Meeting Andrew in itself was not weird, John met people all the time. John had actually saved more than a few people with his naked fighting routine, and they were often grateful. Not all of them took him out for breakfast but there was always frantic genuflecting on his grace and bravery for coming to the rescue. No, the odd part about his interactions with Andrew was the invite back. John generally stayed away from knowing people too well, he had lost so much already through this curse, his job, his home, his friends, all because no one was prepared to deal with his resurrections and he didn't really want that kind of attention anyway. But John and Andrew sat down together, opened up to one another, shared and spoke of matters that fascinated them both; from different perspectives obviously, Andrew's was purely academic where as John's was real world applicable. He reached into his pockets and pulled out Andrews card.

“If you ever need anything, please call. I'd love to get together again for breakfast and talk about death. This was a real treat.” Andrew's voice echoed in John's head. He wanted to call, he wanted to talk about his dream, he wanted to learn more about these ancient gods and the curse he may share with them, but he was nervous. The idea of trusting someone, of letting them in even a little bit was hard for him. He wanted to get high, he wanted to tell someone what he was going through, he wanted just to stop and not worry that every moment was one tick closer to his inevitable death. He stood up, as much as he had needed the sleep he was angry at himself for doing it. Hours of the day gone, hours of his life, spent in the horrific fantasy of dreams. He got changed into some of his own clothes and walked towards the door, whatever he was going to do today it wasn't going to be in here. Something felt off to John, he felt like he hadn't quite ditched the feeling of the dream. He was pretty certain he wasn't still dreaming but his mind felt hazy and the colours he was seeing seemed to blur together as though they were the foil slides you use to teach kindergartners about primary colours. He had to double check his memories of the day to make sure that he hadn't gotten high already, that he just came to life, ate, and went to sleep. This didn't feel like a high though, this was some kind of augment on reality, although he thought “augment” was the wrong word. This didn't feel like a better picture of reality, it felt like a colour blind nightmare.

John stumbled onto a main street. His head was starting to ache and he was walking like a drunk. Sweat soaked his brow as he bent over to brace his knees from exhaustion. As he looked up he noticed the gaze of all the people on the street was focused squarely on him, but their eyes were missing something. The more he caught people's gazes the more panicked he became. Where was their humanity? Were these people? Or demons? John fell deep into the uncanny valley and began to be afraid of the people around him. He heard something thunder in the sky above him and he looked up to see the dragon from his dream. John screamed and fell to his knees waiting to be consumed in the flames of the dragon as his dream foretold. He covered his face with his hands and wept, pleading with the universe to not let him die this way, any way but this, not today, not now. John's fear and panic suddenly dissipated and John looked up to see a crowd of strangers surrounding them, nothing lacking in their features, but with concern in their eyes they helped him to his feet. He looked up to the sky to where the great beast was waiting to take him and he saw... nothing. There was nothing there. Just some grey rain clouds in a circular ring formation that in his delusion John took for the dragon. The thunder was just that, thunder. John felt an enormous droplet of water sploosh across his nose. He wiped it away with his hand and pushed past the crowd of people insisting he was fine.

“I'm sorry to have bothered you.” he said as he pushed through, “I'm fine, really, I just... I just need to...” He wasn't sure. John's days were always far from what most would declare as normal but this was extra. His meeting with Andrew started to seem more and more serendipitous as the day went on. A few more hours passed as John tried to process what was happening to him. He found himself coming to full cognition begging in the park and currently being handed enough change to buy some street meat. He thanked the stranger and got up to walk towards a hot dog cart at the edge of the park. John ordered a wiener from the cart and loaded everything on it, all the condiments and hot peppers. Two years ago this would have given him terrible heart burn and he would have spent the rest of the day feeling sorry for himself; but he didn't have any problems like this since he started dying (unless it was the thing that killed him). There seemed to be no lasting effects or consequences to anything John put in his body. As he stuffed the sausage into his gullet he realized that the spicy peppers and relish might not give an adequate escape from his delusions, and might in fact add to them, but he had to eat. The hot dog sank into his stomach like a rock and he let out a loud burp before collapsing against a wall and slowly sinking down to the sidewalk. He rubbed his hands over his face and through his hair and looked up at the sky. “This has to stop...” he thought. He had had this thought before, often in fact, but there was something different about the feeling this time. This time it seemed more like a need instead of a desire or want, no matter how desperate either of those could be. “Andrew.” he thought. “I have to call Andrew...” He reached into his pocket searching for Andrews business card and whipped it out staring frantically at the number. “Change” he thought. He reached in again and pulled out 35 cents, enough for a call. He jumped to his feet and looked for a pay phone. There were no pay phones anymore because everyone had cell phones. John grunted in frustration and began to run back to the park where he was fairly sure he'd seen a payphone earlier that day. He sprinted the whole way and was winded when he got there but he was right, he found it, he could make the call. He ran up to the phone, bracing himself for a moment against his knees as he caught his breath and then picked up the receiver. He plunked in the quarter he had and then realized a mistake. “Dammit!” he thought. “I forgot they raised the prices... I need more change...” he spastically searched the coin returns of the other phones on the stand, nothing. He dove to the ground and frantically searched on his knees in the grass and dirt for coins that may have been dropped. He spotted a small silver glint from over under the bench and scurried over to it. He didn't know why he felt such urgency, he just knew there was a reason he met Andrew today, and maybe in his study of death cultures he had, or could, uncover something that could free him from his nightmare. He walked back to the phone, brushing the dust off the knees of his pants and picked up the receiver. He plunked in the second quarter and punched in the numbers. John was nervous, everything seemed to be taking forever. Even the millisecond between entering the number and the calls connection seemed like an eternity to John. The phone was ringing. “Come on..” he said under his breath, “Pick up the phone...” He heard a click and his heart leaped before having his hopes dashed by the sound of Andrews answering machine.

“Hey, you've reached Andrew” it said, kind of monotonously, “I'm not home, but leave a message with your name and how I can get back to you!”

“Dammit!” John shouted and drew the attention of some other people walking through the park. John held the receiver in one hand and with the other he motioned to the people that he was sorry for disturbing them. “No way to get back to me” he mumbled. He heard the beep and, somewhat sheepishly, began to leave his message. “Hey, Andrew it's John. uh... the naked fighting guy... we had breakfast together today... anyway, I had this weird dream and things have been. uh... never mind. I'll try you again lat...” the phone clicked.

“John?” Andrew asked

“uh, yeah” said John

“Give me a second, I'm going to shut off the answering machine.” John heard a beep and a click and then Andrew's voice came back, “hey, sorry about that. How are you?”

“I'm uh, I'm ok, I guess” He said

“What was that you were saying about a dream?” Andrew asked.

“Oh, uh, I had this dream and it seemed like it tied into our conversation this morn... um. Can we meet up? I've been having this problem and I think you might be the only one who could help me... It's related to your field of study...”

“O...K...” said Andrew awkwardly “what's the problem?

“I uh, I don't really want to get into it over the phone... It's a talk in person type problem...”

“ok, sure. Do you want to meet in an hour or so?” They worked out the details of their meeting and decided to grab coffee at a place they both knew. John hung up the phone after saying goodbye and began walking towards the coffee shop. Their meeting wasn't for a while, but John didn't want to waste any time.