(First posted here.)

I could almost see the standard issue pitch-black wings erupting from Ramon’s back in between blinks. But there were none, of course, just the laid-back stance of a battle-hardened mercenary moving in for a minor kill.

I am the aforementioned minor kill.

“What are your dreams about, Dante?” He hugged the mug of coffee and red chili dust with both hands.

“Nothing coherent. Such is the manner of dreams, yes?” I tried sounding philosophical to ease my throbbing skull but there was a mounting terror so thick I could almost drink it.

“Do you have flying dreams?”

I forced myself to come up with an answer. Yes, flying dreams. Tons of flying dreams. Glorious, liberating dreams of soaring through the clouds, above the world, above everything. “Madalas.”

Ramon chuckled, a charming sound, really, if you discount the circumstances. “How appropriate. Alam mo bang statistically, hindi madalas ang ganitong mga panaginip? Or at least the kind of flying dreams where you are in total control of the experience.”

“Statistically.” My turn to laugh. How exactly could he know a thing like that?

“The human mind worries by default. It is a gift, the pre-frontal cortex, a triumph of evolution.”

“Are you about to say my pre-frontal cortex is malformed?”

“I’m about to say you’ve been doped. You’ve been doped in such a way that you have access not only to your mind’s inner workings but to the universal consciousness’. That large, majestic machinery that runs all things in this plane of reality.”

“So that’s what the mental flip-outs are all about. Is this about the night at the bridge?”

“It’s about Nirvana and her unnerving preoccupation with defying fate.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We have all night.”