I dream.

Colors, emotions, people, flashing through my head, meaningless. Laughter and screams seem as one, and nothing is the way it should be. Cities, on fire, madmen laughing in the rain.

My dreams are noticeably absent of sugarplums.

I sit down with myself, crying and pleading. My friends sell me pills, their eyes wide with drug-induced glaze. I build fires for warmth, but there is no wood to feed it, no spark to start it. Animals watch me from the corners of the clearing, waiting for my energy to run low.

Streets, trembling under my feet as I walk, speaking of love to a stranger, seeking her advice. 'Bid me discourse,' she says, 'I shall enchant thine ear.' Friends, now enemies, attack me, breaking my bones. I don't dare cry out, they would only laugh.

A library, with plush chairs and a fireplace is where I sit, speaking with a friend, all others suddenly unimportant. My hand strokes the fur of a panther, who coolly rests at my side. Vines cover the walls, hanging from the ceiling. Marble floors, a checkerboard that causes my head to spin.

Plague, madness, death. A sickness, a disease, and I am the carrier. No-one knows, while loved ones and family seek me out, infecting themselves in the process. I would take my own life, but my body is containing it. Were I to die, so would everyone else. Forced to kill those who've done me no harm, I weep.

I dream.

And I pray that one night, I will not.