The dream returned. It was blackness. White dots floated by with varying speeds as if being gently swayed with an underwater current. A tide of stars, flowing on an unseen shore. The view suddenly shifted and the points of light jumped toward him in spectacular streaks. A gray mass loomed ahead, with patches of a glowing green the only ornamentation. It rushed forward with the points of light, closer and closer and closer. And then he was awake.

He sat up. It was four-twenty in the morning. He stepped into the shower, a moment’s relaxation. He let the water pound against his head, beating the dream into a fuzzy nothingness.

She had untied his tongue. That precious week of meetings with heads of billion dollar companies. A billion could not be comprehended, like the stars. It was too much. The fingers of a hundred million people. One hundred millions, and each million was one thousand thousands. A thousand, he knew how much a thousand was. A thousand was a lot. A lot of a lots, one million, so a lot of a lots of a lots was a billion. And there were even more stars twinkling in the sky. Pinpoints of light sparkling and glowing and twirling and wheeling and bursting with glorious splendor, sending the glory of life across the universe so he could see it. A lot of a lots of a lots of miles, more miles than companies had dollars.

That week when She was there. She was a star, sending Her beauty to him from wherever She was, bursting with bright joy. He saw that, because joy was like the lights of the stars. She had been here once, and the office lawn glowed with the splendor: green, luscious jade, emerald tinted gold. The lawn was always mowed in a perfect patchwork and sprayed with fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide twice each month. That didn’t make much sense, destroying everything else, only allowing that grass to grow. What did it do to deserve royal treatment? A throne would be nice, comfortable perhaps, but one couldn’t expect too much—beep—beep—beep—beep—beep He rushed to switch off the annoying clock. Four-forty. Only twenty minutes until the paper came, the beginning of the dread. But She had been here once.

He had made it once too. He had grabbed the paper and run back inside before his neighbor came out and began to waste time by asking him how he was doing. He always asked that first. No matter the answer to the first question, the second was always what he thought of the weather. A nonchalant “I’m sorry, what did you say?” followed. He always asked him about what was in the paper that morning. How could he know? He didn’t even read the paper. He paced, furtively glancing out the window for a sign of the paperboy. It was two after five. The boy was late, and he would be too if that paper didn’t show up soon. He paced some more. There was the boy, riding a tiny bicycle, chucking the bulks of gray through the air. It came hurtling toward the window, the black print blending with the white paper into a smooth gray. He stared. The gray rushed forward, closer and closer, then stopped suddenly as it hit the window, and slid to the ground. He blinked.

He checked the windows to make sure the paperboy was gone. He darted outside, snatched up the paper, and stole a glance at Her touch. Green and silver fluttered on golden branches, sending cascades of chimes to his ears. The grass sea waved with hypnotic trance into the inner mysteries of life. Maroon and tangerine clouds promised a sunrise.

“Hey there, neighbor, how’ve you been?”

“Fine,” he murmured. He despised humans. They were all facades, superficial. Except Her, of course. She was the queen whose grace caused the flowers to bloom. Where was She? He couldn’t find Her. She had a name, of course, but he couldn’t remember names. Names were only human descriptions of things. Only a thought could truly posses the intimacy of what something was. A thought of Her rippled through him like a crescendo of Mozart, thundering, loud, powerful, a vivacious glory of green life pounding through his body. She had been here once.

“What do you think of this weather?”

Her touch was here this morning. The weather could have stirred up a hurricane and all would be well. “Looks great.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“It looks great.” The neighbor was another name that he could not remember. Superficial, wax face. His stomach gurgled in protest.

“Let’s see, what’s in the paper this morning?”

“How should—” But the neighbor had already gone back to his house.

Good, the end of that. He breathed a sigh of relief. He hurried back inside. Torture after torture with a few glorious moments in between. He threw the paper aside, glad to have rid himself of that awful chore until tomorrow.

He drove to work quickly, taking backroads and alleys whenever possible. He could never enjoy the drive to the office. The only end of it was dread. He drove almost an hour out of his way to avoid seeing the other humans he detested. Stopping and going in stuffy air with hideous roars of tires and motors blasting into his head.

He parked at an abandoned restaurant and glanced anxiously about him as he stepped out of the car and dragged his briefcase out of the back. There was a line of bushes along the crumbling pavement. Behind those lush weavings of wood and leaves was a set of railroad tracks, and behind that a factory whose brick walls swayed and bowed with the pressure of the massive structure. He scampered along the unused set of tracks.

The office was covered in a black, reflective glass. The bushes were perfectly manicured in the front, and a bronze statue of some nightmare stood erect in a pool of water. Polished granite steps led up to an elegant array of steel and glass in the doors. He allowed himself a quick, longing glance at the intense green of the lawn, remembering Her. She would slide Her hand into his, Her fingers kisses upon his skin. She would speak, and walk with him to the office. He would become immersed in Her, and the disgusting facade would become bearable. But such was not the case today.

He ducked into a side door of the office. Safe for a moment. He watched a cockroach skitter down the hall and into a crack in the wall. He listened for footsteps at the foot of the stairs, there were some coming. He darted back outside, only to find the maintenance crew returning from their morning duties. His stomach roiled and stormed at the foul sight of wax faces at such close range. Fakes! Flesh molded into storefronts that hid factories of greed and ignorance. He could only see the gray of their facades coming closer and closer. His thoughts became a tangled mass of panic. His stomach lurched and heaved, and shoved its contents out onto the freshly cleaned gravel. The maintenance crew cringed at the splat. Their faces twisted into the evil contortions that truly represented them, and they swore and cursed and hated him with intense passion. He slowly retreated to the railroad tracks, while his stomach keeled and moaned and almost succeeded in hurling itself out of his mouth at the sights of the twisted gray faces. He had long since given up eating breakfast. That only made it worse.

He waited. The maintenance crew shuffled about in the gravel, their voices reaching his ears like an out-of-tune violin that made him cringe. He wished for Beethoven’s thunder to crash into their voices and splinter them into a lot of a lots of fragments and toss them into the stars. The stars would eat up that evil, destroy it. Nothing bad could come from the stars. Light would not be if the stars didn’t exist. Light produced life, and life produced Her. That made light good.

The light from the sun had intensified and weakened as he waited. A sea of clouds weakened the light further, creating an unreal place where there was no wind and the entire world turned olive. The first drop of rain startled him. The maintenance crew was still at its task by the side entrance. He would not risk the front door. His face became wet with falling water. It was already time for him to leave the office, so he did so. He slid across the mud and crunched his shoes atop the piles of trash back to his car, and then drove home.

He ate supper and went to sleep wishing that She would come and take him away to where he would be unburdened by the horrendous people who infested this place.

The dream returned. The gray object sped toward him again, stopping an instant away from his face. Gray, smooth gray. An ocean of gray with ships of green light anchored randomly about the calm. The edge curved away in all directions and beyond lay the underwater current of stars. He moved along the surface with a gentle peace. He passed over one of the green lights. It was a porthole to the inside. A lot of green figures moved and swayed around one another, each glowing with phosphorescence. There were strange appendages and arms on the figures and other unrecognizable details on each of them. Then he passed the window and fell away from the ship. It passed smoothly by him, trailing a stream of used fuel. He followed the object, amazed at the twinkling lights of stars that were transformed into brilliant lines. One dot suddenly became a small circle, then a larger circle, it’s light blinding him, until he woke up. He blinked his eyes several times trying to rid himself of the afterimages of such intensity. He then realized the alarm was beeping. The sound did not fully reach him. He only knew that there was a sound, but did not hear the sound. It was five o’clock. He was late. The water in the shower did no more than stream down his body for a minute before it was cut off.

He dressed quickly and ran to the front door as the paper thudded against the window. He watched the bicycle slowly roll away, teetering violently with the gusts of wind. He opened the door and was blasted with a chilled, Halloween air. Ominous clouds drooped from the sky. He leaned against a gust of wind and fell suddenly when it stopped.

“Hey there, neighbor, how’ve you been?”

The neighbor’s voice rang clear, unfortunately, over the howls of wind. Why must that neighbor always speak to him? He mumbled “I’m fine” into the wind, but it was instantly scattered.

“What do you think of this weather?”

The wind danced among the leaves of the trees. Her love was carried to him in that wind, and he relished its joy. “Beautiful.” His voice did not even reach his own ears.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

His eyes caught on the mustache of the neighbor. Greased, slick, perfectly twisted into spirals, the sudden sight made him flinch. It was fake, of course, like everything else; the neighbor did not have the mustache yesterday. He didn’t bother to answer.

“Let’s see, what’s in the paper this morning?”

He stared blankly at the concrete sidewalk, chipped and overrun with weeds. The weeds almost glowed with splendor. They had survived the onslaught of concrete. The neighbor returned to his house.

He was glad to be back inside, the warmth growing into his body. She was here, warming him with Her love. But She was really somewhere else, trapped in society. She worked for a partner company. It had been one week of glory. She was there and met him every evening. If only She would come back.

He drove to the office amidst the buffeting winds slamming against his car. He parked in the abandoned restaurant’s parking lot. The alley between the bushes and the factory created a wind tunnel that rammed him forward. He opened the door to the office and listened for footsteps. The stairs were empty, and he climbed up to his desk, his footsteps echoing in the hollow stairwell.

Filth ridden cement floors covered the entire office. They were covered with a damp, slightly slimy substance that caused him to slide rather than step to his desk. A pile of papers sat on one side, and two piles sat on the other. He took the papers from the one side and put them into one of the stacks on the other side. He could do a lot of a lots of papers in one good day. He had to wear headphones and listen to Beethoven’s thunder blasting into his ears to escape the distraught chords of conversation going on around him. He had erected a small wall around his desk, and had pushed his desk next to the door to the stairs, allowing him to avoid contact with other people completely. Yet they still came and shoved their gray, wax faces around his wall.

He watched the mice and insects roam about under his feet, scurrying through holes in the wall around his desk and off to their dens. The window in the back of the office had been cracked, and a large piece of tape snaked along the fracture lines, obstructing any possibility of light there had been. The remaining light bulbs randomly flickered, creating a spastic lightning show. Dim, dull brown predominated the area.

The epitome of humans.

He drove home and ate a small meal before going to sleep. The dream returned. The bright circle came closer, but stopped as instantaneously as the ship had done. The gray speckled green mass floated gently in orbit, bathed one side with white light. He soaked up the radiant beams of light, the warmth reminding him of Her. The stars lazily flowed past. Another circle approached him. An orb of white and blue and green. It approached slowly. He followed the ship onto the surface.

His office. A birch stood in the lawn; it’s trunk blindingly white against the black building. The lawn shimmered and glowed with Her touch. Pulsating, vibrating, humming, the light of the sun was soaked in and amplified. The leaves of grass flickered and fluttered in a kaleidoscope of greens. A gorgeous myriad of life curled and twisted and smoothed into perfection. He bent to look at one of the blades of grass, the single leaf consuming his vision.

He awoke. The alarm had already sounded and shut itself off. He skipped the shower and ran to the door. The paper hadn’t come. It was twenty minutes late. How could that happen? He waited. The gray clouds that covered the sky did not change. The paper did not come at all that day. He fell asleep at his post after the sun had set.

The paper did not come the next day either. He was baffled by this. Maybe the boy had been fired, maybe he had quit his job, maybe the printing press had broken down, or maybe the boy had given up and died. He didn’t know.

He decided to go to work the next day. No one pulled in front of him during his drive. He was alone on the roads. The horns were silent, and motors were nonexistent, a pleasant surprise. He walked to his office and was shocked to find the stack of papers from his desk missing. He did not have any work to do. There were no voices that morning of other people. Where did they all disappear to? The ship in his dream, phosphorescent figures swaying about. He laughed aloud and shouted with expressive joy, knowing that he was alone. The waxen faces were gone!

His joy was inexhaustible. He strutted about the office and commandeered the mice and insects with pleasure. He found piles of paper and burned them, glad that he would never have to move the sheets again. A fire was started in the office, and he threw upon it all the paper he could find. He burned himself, but grinned foolishly the whole time, knowing that he was alone. He could leave and enjoy Her beauty without interruption.

He bounded down the steps and out the door, where he paused and looked upon the office lawn. It was not shimmering or glowing or radiating a green joy. It reeked of brown death. The bushes too, he then noticed, were dull, scantily clothed in trash, and in a wretched state of agony. The trees outside of the office had been affected as well. Their branches tipped low to the ground, a wind sending screams of distress from their leaves. Sickly pale green. His thoughts began twisting themselves into a distraught web of panic. She was not here. Her touch was missing. He moaned in despair. What happened to Her?

He ran without realizing it, and found himself in front of the office with not a person in sight. The glorious white birch in his dream had fallen over in the desolate wind. He tore off one of its limbs and threw it against the black glass in rage. Sparkling black shreds burst apart in all directions. The lack of support caused the column of glass panels above the hole to slide down slowly, cracking and bursting and shattering into black rain that stabbed into the lawn and into him.

He screamed in terror and ran in a frenzied, crazy state randomly on the streets. She was dead! There was no love left anywhere, and the life that was left was quickly dying. The trees shed their leaves like skin. The leaves curled and twisted and swirled into tiny vortexes that were shred apart in the gusts of wind . He was surrounded by a maelstrom of death as he tripped onto his sidewalk. He crawled into his bed and hid, hoping that it was another dream.

It was not. He awoke several hours later and timidly peered out the window. Brown, ugly, disgusting, dull, deathly brown covered the world. He tore at the furniture in rage, a wild beast gone insane. The scraps of his furniture slammed through his walls and lay like a carpet on his floor. A table shot through the water pipes and caused frothing water to cascade about him. He paused for a moment in his terrific storm of energy. He bled from cuts inflicted upon him. There was nothing left to live for. She was dead.

He ran to his office in the little light that was left and climbed the stairs to his desk. He grabbed it and threw it out the window, leaving a gaping hole far above the naked stalks of trees. The wind tore at his wounds, stinging him with pain. He looked out on the lake below and saw a reflection of a patch of dark sky randomly dotted with twinkling stars. He stepped forward. At least the stars were still alive. He wondered suddenly where the ground was beneath his foot, and joined Her in the stars.