Act II

I couldn´t really remember how I got to where I was currently sitting, but the two people in front of me seemed friendly enough, they didn´t seem to say much, other than idly stare at me in awe or confusion. I couldn't tell.

"So what happens now?" The blonde girl with crimson lips that glowed in this ambient light asked as she leaned over the fine antiquated oak table, fumbling with a tall glass of pink sparkling wine. 

"I keep on having this dream, and I'm not quite sure if it's real, or if it's just a memory that I've been suppressing or reliving inside my imagination. Its like it's on repeat, over and over it plays in my head. See it's about a girl...I remember this dream, like it was plain as day, as clearly as I see you all in front of eyes now." I said to the pair odd sitting in front of me.

I looked down at my near empty glass of lager and frowned. 

A girl with tantalising eyes and this almost silver blonde hair and a gentlemen in a dark suit, drinking a tumbler of chilled bourbon whiskey keep looking at me. 

Who are these people? How did I even get here? 

"You know, you can never really remember the start of a dream? Maybe it's like that?" The girl said from behind her wine glass,I could feel her  emerald eyes starring, fixated on me then quickly dart back to the edge of her lip stick stained glass. 

"No it's more than that, I don't just remember the tiny fragments you have in dreams . It's almost as if these memories are snippets of a larger picture and I can't place the pieces back together, you know?

It's like this particular dream is recurring, on a loop, Over and over it plays, like a song on repeat.

It's like I know what she's going to say before she even says it. 

So It starts out like this. I had found myself in some wonderland filled with strange lights and as most dreams I have it all starts with this girl, the girl with blue hair.

I can still smell the  that air carried the scent of cinnamon and apples, and I was intoxicated by this, drunk off love.

And I could feel this pale girls cold hand across my chest and I could hear the sound of her breathing against the inside of my ear.

The sound was rhythmic and enticing.

I could feel one of my arms draped round her, and she was cold, freezing almost. 

The other arm underneath the pillow where her head would have been resting, and there's a note in my hand, with this strange wax seal. 

I  had found myself totally captivated by this almost angelic creature lying against my naked body, our bodies locked together tightly. "

"Or made..." The man in the dark suit muttered beneath his breath from behind his  half empty glass.

"Shut up." The girl snapped toward the man in the dark suit.

"Her voice...her voice is like a silent whimper in a narrow cave. I can see her say these things, but there is no voice that follows, no voice to say these words, but I can hear her speak, I can understand the things she whispers in my ear as I lie there on a bed. 

"I could have forged everything...every little detail about her, the girl of my dreams could just be the girl of my dreams. 

She had wrapped herself round me so tightly it was hard to breathe, I had to claw and fight for every gasp of air.

As she kissed the back of my neck, her hands, her long finger nails, clawing down my back, running her cold hands through my hair. 

I had that dream, and it's changed now, I don't know how else to explain it.
Like...like, seconds turned into hours, minutes rendered into days and days passed into months and it all just suddenly shattered, like the world around me is crumbling and this dream has crashed into this twisted nightmare." 

The girl sitting across from me smiled from the bottom of her wine glass, she peered at me with shimmering eyes that cut through me like a diamond edged blade.

There was a gentleman in the black suit, white shirt with black studded cufflinks

He sat with his back rested firmly against the fine leather armchair and stared at the man at the bar.

He was a loud mouth who was getting louder and louder with each fleeting second.

 He leant against  the pinewood bar, slamming back shot after shot, pestering the bartender to fetch him something called "Gummy Roy" a cocktail I'd never even heard of before. 

I looked back to the man and woman infront of me. 

"Go on." The girl with the blonde hair said as she edged on the tip of her seat, I had her undivided attention.

"That's- That's when the dream turns," I said turning back to the conversation at hand.

"'What happens now?' The blue haired woman from  my dream said. She loitered around the apartment her presants felt cold, distant. Like she wanted to be somewhere else t in a white flowery dress that hung down by her feet, fluttering at the slightest gust of wind that broke though the cracks in the windows and underneath the doors.

"It was like she had intimate knowledge of my past...she could see beneath the lie I had created to live in. This dream world where I chase this ghost of a girl.

I have no memory of her, just fragments of lucid dreams, where her touch against my skin was cold, her hands froze me to the bone. 

"The room around me was a mess, I had suddenly found myself inside a dank apartment and cigarette butts laid discarded in a ashtray that was half hanging off the messy coffee table, half crushed beer cans, bottles of various sprits laid near empty all around the room."

"I will always remember the dress she wore, it was almost as if she was a pale ghost haunting my apartment, she danced gracefully  around the table that sat in the middle of the sitting room,spinning round and round. Drifting from room to room, hovering over the little things that somehow made up our entire relationship, the flowery dresses and the little knick-knacks you bond over, those little inside jokes that only you share...

She was graceful in wearing her hair freely she had dyed it an electric blue, in a short ponytail, her fringe dangled just above her forehead and parted on both sides that

I was sitting at the window, I don't remember much else, other than looking down and watching the world from an open window, so high in the world but so low in sprit."

Was this even a dream? Was this even real?

"In the beginning it was almost like a dream...maybe too much like a dream? 

I thought I had found the girl I could sit and watch the end of the world with.

The angel of a dream was a harsh reality, in truth. 

Because I knew I knew deep down inside it was all just a dream?

A place where my mind created all the subconscious needs I so longly crave?

And as much as I wanted to prolong this event, to prolong waking up back into the reality, it was always going to happen.

It was inevitable,and oh so  ironic really that I would push away the one thing that was really worth fighting for. Something worth dying for.

She had a cigarette in hand and  every few seconds she brought the white stick of tabacoo to her velvet red lips, puffing pretty greyish white smoke in small hoops into the air. 

Her eye´s  just stared at me, those eye´s that could turn a man to ice with her sinister stare. 

The walls of my apartment began to rumble and creak 

And here´s the thing I can never remember her name, but I can remember every single other detail about her, this girl with the blue hair that just seems to haunt me. But her voice is silent, she talks and I can understand but her voice has been lost to me."

Maybe I've forgotten it?

"I have all these memories all these little details that I couldn't have just created, like, like how She always smelt intoxicating this fragrance of apples and cinnamon, infused with the stale smell of smoke, that just seemed to linger on the edge of her rosy lips. Always taunting me always teasing me to draw in closer and closer, tantalising me to rush towards her and press myself up against her, push her against the wall and embrace her smokey lips, heavily."

"Her eyes stained red and black, a mix of mascara running, bittersweet tears.
A strand of hair dangled between her emerald green eyes that seemed to glaze off into the space between the front door of the apartment.
And her gaze, her constant gaze was the worst part, the way her eyes just stared into me, drilling away at me."

Words endlessly tumbled and spilled from my mouth as my audience eagerly await my next words.

"How long have you been having this dream?" The girl with the blonde hair asked sitting across from me.

"Since i can remember?  It's like I had created this world through a web of spiteful interventions I thought up the girl of my dreams and I broke her. What does that tell you about me....She was everything to me. My whole world wrapped up in a suit of skin and bone and flesh and emotion and it wasn't real, none of it was real." I said peering around the bar. 

It was dark, very few of the lamps had been switched on, leaving a rustic ambiance floating in the air, carrying with it the music and the fine stench of vintage whiskey and sophistication.  

However the emotion that washed over me wasn't despair or sadness. It was something else, something I couldn't place my finger on. Like looking at an old photograph of a loved one that has passed, this unbearable despair rose up from within. 

I tried not to show it, but I think the pair already knew. 

"As I sat by the window, the reflection of me was the only thing that started back , piercing the thing I call a soul, or what's left of it. I stared at the mirror image of myself and thought about what I happened to me, to us. She spoke to me in whispers, her voice a frail whimper, she tried to talk to me but I didn't reply. I couldn't reply. I just sat and watched my whole world crumble to ruins and there was nothing I could have done to stop this catastrophic s**t storm of events.  

However the question remains, the enigma of my existence still hovers over my head, 

"I linger in a world where silence greets me tenderly. My mind lingers in this world, or am I'm dreaming about the memory of my former life past life ? I cannot tell, for the life of me.
These words just slip from my lips. Or am I just dreaming all of this? Am I just fading back into the world of the conscious? while my subconscious unconsciously creates this world where I am not only present she is omnipotent. Like wandering the murky shores that is limbo...."

"Her eyes just stare at me from the broken door of this apartment. And that's when I wake up."

The man in black smiled from his tumbler of bourbon whiskey, taking a small sip from the glass, he spoke. 

"Dreams," he spoke quietly.

I watched as what little light bounced off his silver rings, into different spectrums of light

"I can see right through people, I can see right though them." He turned to me and said.

"I can tell everything about a person just by looking at them, that's the problem with dreaming, you can never tell if it's the person or a dreamer. See the a self destructive person, will always bottle themselves in they hide away from the death and destruction that the 'normal' the people who are just passive observers, the ones who chase the material things. People who lack any real life, you know? But for people like you, I can tell, if it's the reality that you dwell in or if it's just an illusion brought on my the chemical that lies to your brain and stuns your whole body while your mind is just paralysed and you're just on a huge trip you're just-"

I cut the man off abruptly.

"Ah but your mind is free."

The man in the suit was pale, really pale. 

"You project everything that you see yourself as In the dream world. And you never really see your self in the dream, not all the time...anything is possible, a world where you are free from the physical restraints that hold you back, all of your social tweaks, flaws, your so called 'mask' is lifted and everything about you is what your mind can muster.
Free of restraint. 

Everything about the dreamer is different in their mind.

But it's not just your mind that is free. the laws of reality are yours to control. Everything around you is yours to control if you know how to do it.
Have you ever had a dream where you can't remember the whole dream but just fragments, like tiny little bits of slender blissful serenity, where everything you've done in that part of the dream just sticks with you and for a few mere seconds after you wake, then poof!"

"It just slips back into the cracks of your memory, back into the chaos that you call a brain."

the estranged man shouted from across the bar.

He was still pestering the barman for what looked like a bottle of blue liquor, marked with strange letterings that ran along side the bottle.

The man was tall, he was also in a dark suit, but he seemed to be either quite drunk but he turned to us and waved. 

"Dimethyltryptamine." the man in the dark suit  sitting opposite me sputtered out.

"DMT, for short is the chemical that produces sleep paralysis in the human body. It's the drug that produces dreams, which is funny, because it's also the chemical the body produces when the body is about to shut down, when your ready to die your body unleashes a surge of DMT, for a few brief moments you gives you the biggest high you're ever going to experience in your life. One last trip before the long sleep. 

This is why people who've brushed along side death often say they've seen a light, or floated in the celestial murky shores of some bright waters, people said to have heard the very word of god!

People claim to have seen something that wish they shouldn't have.

All of that was made possible because the body wants to send you off with a preverbal bang, so to speak. But really they're just high."

"Or, is it perhaps, that reality is the dream and we're all just waking up from." I replied hastily, not thinking about what exactly I was saying. As if the words had been spoken before.

"Most people don't normally figure that part out so fast, he's a quick one. He's kinda poetic kinda poetic. I like it." The girl sat across from me smiled a little.

It was at this moment that it really dawned on me that I wasn´t supposed to be here. 

I should have been in my apartment, the last thing I remember was looking out of my window into the cloud of dirty smog  peppered with light that set a blaze to the night sky, pollution blocking out the heavens above.

I wasn't in the dank and tiny room looking out over the city with its lights that just burns long into the night, I was sat in the prison like apartment with it's broken bathroom door that wouldn't shut properly, or the boiler that wouldn't get hot past 7.
I was sitting comfortably in a thick leather arm chair tailored with the hight of luxury in mind. And my backside felt poor just from sitting in it.

Little natural light flittered in through the dirty glass windows, in fact barely any light seemed to pierce through.

It was almost as if a heavy fog had fallen upon this bar. Hazing my senses, or that quite possibly could have been the drinks.

I was surrounded by empty leather armchairs, dimly lit lamps, that emitted a eerie greenish glow from the shade, beams of yellow light flooded from below.

Magnolia walls with portraits that the eyes of the paintings seemed to follow and track our every movement . shadows ran along each of the four walls,the smog twisting that encased this establishment

The light emanating from the bar was polluted with a poisonous grey fog, that twisted the light into a spectrum of vibrant colours that stung my eyes when I tried to focus in on my surroundings.

However there was no one smoking, none of five patrons had a a cigarette or cigar in hand.

An eeire alien feeling washed over me and that's when I started to suspect something wasn't quite  right here. But the answer illuded me. 

There was a big bearded fellow, his brown suit clung to him like a well fitted glove , he was casually sipping a tall glass of white wine. His derminer seemed to be a picture of wealth and splendour.

Upon his face he wore thin framed spectacles and every so often he averted his gaze from the paper in front of him to the other patrons inside the bar, shifting his attention back to a big black and white news paper that he held in front of his face.

The unmistakeable melody of a song danced within the bar, although my attention hadn't been drawn to it until I stopped to fully take in my surroundings.
It was a sad song, unmistakably a classic piece of music reserved for this kind if establishment.

"You like the music?" The man in the dark suit asked. "It's Choppan, Predule 28 Overturne 18, dubbed rain drops. It's a funny story how it was called that, do you know?" I was there with him when he wrote this particular piece of music.

"Would you believe me if I told you I was there when he wrote this piece, Chloe?" He asked. 

"Oh really?" She snapped sarcastily.

"It was raining...he was very sick, very frail."

The man in the dark suit stare was broken, momently, his posture slacked and he threw himself back into the leather bound armchair, his stare looked out into the distance and his eyes back into the past.

And the pale pair in front of me stared right though me, their gaze fixated upon me.

The blonde girl smiled at me, she stared at me with sad eyes. Her button nose wrinkled up as she sipped a ros�- wine that was most likely older than herself.

Condensation trickled down the side of the crystal clear glass leaving a almost transparent 

But the wine wouldn't have aged as finely as her, the girls hair was almost like silver, radiating yellow streaks glistened in the aura of fog that shrouded and obscured everything around me.

The gentleman in the black blazer looked at me with with dark and unpleasant eyes and something else. Some other emotion hid behind his eye.
I couldn't place my finger on it, yet I knew he wasn't pleased to meet me, feeling was absent from his almost square face.

That's when I noticed something.
Something that I should have noticed the second I looked at her.
The girl sitting across from me, she was pale, too pale, her lips stained a dark crimson that seemed to trickle ever so slightly down the side of her welcoming lips.

at first I dismissed it as running lipstick.

Her skin was as white as crisp fresh snow, and her eyes beautiful, but dark, life was absent from a vibrant person.

She was covered in only a small bath towel and drenched from head to toe in blood.

"Oh god! Are you okay!" I said franticly.

My jaw locked shut and my eyes widened until I thought they was going to pop from my skull.

"You" she said pointing at me. "This is the tricky part and I'm sorry I'm the one to tell you this but this isn't a dream, we're dead. So I'm not okay. This is what I was wearing when my...my..." The girl seemed lost for words to speak, "whatever he was decided to stab me seven times in the chest."

"Boyfriend" the man murmured beneath his breathe who was sat at the bar.

"Shut up" She said picking up the glass of wine, taking a long sip of rosé wine that settled at the bottom.

"How, how are you doing that!" Shock had turned my throat into razor blades.

"This is limbo, the rules of living and dead don't apply here, it's like we're suspended in a moment of time, like a merry go round, the world as you knew it spins round, and round and round and we're at the very centre. Heaven, hell and earth are spinning around us, up and down they go but we're standing perfectly still." 

she motioned her glass in a circular motion, the wine sloshed from side to side.

"To us the whole of creation has given birth and died all at the same time. Every star in the universe has burst into creation and withered away and died all at the exact same time.
Day is night and night is day...so to speak. I like poetry. Don't judge."

"In this place there are no laws of physics. anything you desire you can muster into this realm, I wanted a glass of wine, and I shall drink my wine....for all eternity. I shall sip my ros�-, thank you very much."

"Then who's he..." I said pointing at the man. "If you're dead...we're dead...who's he?"

"Him?."her eyes met with mine, if only for a second and within that split second I knew she told no lies.

"He's Death." She smiled. 

"Then how did he reply to you earlier?" I questioned, not actually thinking of what I was saying. 

"No, no." She smiled at me with a cute quizical look plaster across her paw face. "I don't mean he's deaf, I mean he is Death. He's the Grim Reaper.
The guy who rides round on a pale horse carrying round a big scythe and a black hood but turns out he's a guy in his mid twenties, who knew right? ." She chuckled.

She rested the glass back upon the oak table and frowned

"I can touch anything in this reality, the wine, the wood, everything is just as we perceive is just, well basically everything is just an illusion... He isn't an illusion....he is always here, he is real in this world. He can choose to let me touch, or drink in this place." She frowned as she stroked the side of the glass, her slender fingers tracing the bead of condensation 

The man in a black suit and black shirt sat down at the table.

Carrying drinks and a smile, a solemn smile that I could tell was fake, straight off the bat. 

Yet in his eyes there was  this great sadness  about him that I could sense weighted him down. 

His long hazelnut hair covered his left eye, parting in the middle like a veil, covering half hi

The man took a sip from the golden glass of chilled beer and grinned.

"Alright, mate, how's it hanging?" 

"He shouldn't be here..."Death said, staring at me.

"So?  You said the exact same thing when I came through that door there in the back. Here I am!  Explain that. I too thought that my existence would have faded by now. Since I caused a rip in the forth dimension."he said raising his pint glass up, before downing the entire glass in a single go. 

"Huh? "I said staring at the pair engaged in a argument. "A rip in the forth dimension?" 

"Slick," the girl covered in crimson said while she hoisted the glass to her blue lips once again, she pointed the glass towards the stranger, and she spoke, "over there....well he's a time traveler. He crossed the line into the past, he tore a hole in the universe. He says his name isn't important, blah blah blah, and he's here for the same thing. A girl, all these nice guys and look where I ended up."

He waved at me with a huge grin and offered his hand to me to shake.
He reached out in hesitation

"Ah, the whole dead thing. Sorry buddy, I would try and shake your hand but it'll give me the creeps." The Time Traveler said withdrawing the hand he went to shake mine with.
However he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a a sealed envelope and placed it firmly in my hand, with a wink of his left eye.
Then he flashed the hollow smile again.

"And he's a a*****e." The blonde girl smirked.

"Say it like you love me, baby" The Time Traveler said with a grin the size of the Grand Canyon across his smug face.

"I despise you..." Death said to the Time traveler with poisonous intent.

"How can a Time Traveler be in limbo?" I said, staring at the man sat next to me.

"More importantly, why am I even in limbo? How did I get to this place, I find it hard to believe that Limbo is a bar. Where the hell are all the other souls? The other lost people and animals that have died?"

He drank from the tall frosty glass of golden beer, with delight.

Death reached for his glass of amber whiskey, taking a long hard sip of the liquid. His face was like a pale stonas old as time itself e.

Death´s eye´s locked with the tTime Traveler 

Death ignored my question and continued to sip his drink.

The sound of two ice cubes rattled as the glass rested back on the varnished oak table.

The Time Traveler and death locked eyes over their drinks, taking it in turns to move the glass to and from their lips.

"My name is Chloe." The bloodied girl smiled. "He won't tell us him name. He appeared sometime ago, he hasn't left here ever since."

The Time Traveler smiled, it was a false smile that he probably practiced a million times.

"Why leave when there's a open bar? In fact, why haven't you left? skull face has said not a single sprit has stayed here, for more than a week or so. So, so why is Chloe and the new guy here then?" His eyes grew sadder if only for a moment, he had dived into a memory of which he´d rather have left buried in the shadows of his mind. 

"And, and,  I just appeared here. I walked through the other side of that door in the back there.  I just phased into this world like a bad penny, one  that can never leave."

I mean I've tried, I just can't get a signal to the time vortex in this place, and every time I try to leave that door right there, I just end up walking back into here. I can see the world outside whizz by but it's like it's on fast forward, like as if I'm stuck in the middle of a fast tornado, a furious storm, the psychical universe is within my grasp but yet just an inch, just one inch from me and I cannot touch it, but I can smell it, I can almost taste it, it's on the edge of my lips. Isn't that strange, so in short, I cannot leave this world." The Time Traveler spoke, as he reached into his inner jacket pocket revealing a packet of cigarettes.

The brand was hidden by his sudden shift of motion, he plucked one slender stick of death from the small packet and placed it in his mouth.
With his other hand he flicked open a silver petrol lighter, with a snap of his fingers he sparked the flame.
Drawing the white cigarette closer to the fire until the paper was scorched and an orange glow with tiny clouds of grey smoke puffed from the end of it.

"On the plus side it's a free bar."the Time Traveler smiled.

He breathed poison, he revelled behind plumes of smoke churning into fabulous clouds of gray.

I had expected a glowing white Skeleton shrouded in a black cloak, wielding a great scythe, who would carry you away with a single touch of his bony finger.  

But I looked older than him, A man with scruffy blonde brown hair that parted in the middle with slight curls that dangled in front of his right eye.

His suit was brand new, yet his aura, this invisible sense of his character was old, older than old, ancient, possibly even older.

And this man, this man who travels in time, he was a liar. I could tell, I could sense it from just the way he looked and smiled, his shifting blue eyes always scanned the searching for something. Always aware of his surroundings in this unusual place.

"So, what happened?" Chloe intoned.

"It's strange because I felt as if I wasn't even here, in this place...It was as if I was in a -" I was abruptly interrupted.

"The girl" The time traveler said blowing cancerous smoke into the air around me, yet I couldn't feel the smoke, against my face, I could smell the pungent nicotine and Tabbaco hang in the stale air.
"She was talking about the girl in your dreams, I'm assuming." He inhaled as he pulled the ciggetrte away from his cracked lips.

"Oh, yeah...the girl." I replied nervously.

"Do you want a drink?" The time traveler asked, motioning to the pinewood bar, accompanied along with complementary bartender, in full formal attire.

"No, I'm fine. I don-" I was cut off by the Time Traveler. 

"No seriously, Paddy makes a mean cocktail, you've really got to try his vodka martinis, they're to die for...sorry, no pun intended."

"I must respectfully decline the offer, I feel sick enough already."

"Some tea? Water? I think I could make Paddy whip you up some food" he whipped his head round to the bar. "Hey! Paddy whip the new guy up some food or something would ya, he's dying of starvation. Who ya gotta kill to get a bite to eat around here!"

"Me, apparently." Chloe sighed as she teased with what little ros�- was left sloshing at the bottom of her glass the rim smeared with of what I mistook as crimson lipstick stained the rim.
However on closer exception it turned out to be blood.

For a moment there was an unbearable silence between the four of us, sitting around the table.

The girl fumbled around with the near empty glass of wine, her gaze focused on the blood that tinted it like a crimson paint.

Her elegant hands toyed with the last tiny drop of ros�- that swayed from side to side, Chloe toyed with the last of her wine for some kind of amusement.

"Paddy will whip up some good grub, don't cha worry pal, so this girl. Who is she? " the Time Traveler motioned onwards for me to continue, to elaborate.

"I can't remember who she is, or why we was in this place to even begin with. But this dream felt so real, I could feel her cold hands press up against my bare chest. I could smell the fragrance of her hair linger in the cold air that we so tenderly hid from underneath warm covers. "It's like this place...I may be dead, however it feels as if I've been here before now, like this too is from a dream. Everything just feels all too familiar. Even this song...this song..." When I spoke it was as if there was an echo.

"That's the thing about dreaming, you don't know you're actually dreaming until it's too late, but our minds aren't restricted by the 4th dimension of time and space, we create our own realities, places where we can catch slight glimpses of the future, or the past or perhaps even the worlds that never were, where the days of the what ifs became a reality. I want you to do something for me, this is the most important thing you'll ever do from now, so please try your hardest." Death said looking back at Chloe with a grin. 

"Okay?" I replied.

"Stop it." 

"No."

"Please, don´t let him find out like this, please."

"He has to, Chloe. Now I  want you to try and remember how you got here, why you was talking about this girl with the blue hair, what is it that made you come here? Can you try and do that for me?"

Death said finishing the last of his drink.

"Sure...I was...I swear I was...I can't, I can't remember.mi was sitting on a ledge by my window, looking out at the city. I can't remember leaving " I chucked.

I stared blankly at the time traveler beside me

Deaths gaze shifted from the Time Traveler to me.

"I can understand why he's here..." His eyes averted back to the Time Traveler.

"But what I don't understand is, what I can't wrap my head around is why he's still here. And what baffles me the most, is you."

His glare shifted back towards me. Dark ancient eyes stared right through me and my very soul trembled at his gaze.

"You're showing off again..."Chloe rolled her eyes as the words just slipped off her tongue.

"Who are you?" His voice was as cold and as dark as black ice. "Who are you really? Why have you come here?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Chole's voice shrilled " He's dead, just like me! He's just another lost soul. just another lost soul that's just lingered behind here, like me, like the Time Traveler, he still can't accept it. He can't accept that he died, like me, like you, like all of us! Dead, dead, dead!

It was her eyes that told me the rest of her story, big sad green eyes that screamed out more than her voice ever could.

"No, no, no he isn't, he's not, he's lost I'll give him that, he's very very lost indeed but he's not dead...I've seen dead. I've dealt with dead since the birth of creation. I've reaped Super Novas, planets, peasants, priests, lovers, criminals, dictators and kings. I've guided all the souls to what lies behind that door in the back...I see past the mask that everyone calls 'life' and what I always see is fear...I look at him, like I look at you and Time boy. And you both fear me, you fear what happens next, just like he does, but this man doesn't fear me. Because you." His finger pointed at the this man next to me, "You ripped a hole in the universe....and you."

His finger now pointed at Chloe.

"You can't accept that someone you love, someone you trusted the most without even realizing it hurt you so, so much. But you both have ceased to exist you have both vanished from time and space and now you choose to haunt this place, and I must  confess. That's heartbreaking... You both can't let go of the past and just move on. But you're dead, Chloe."

Then his finger glided back to me. Slicing through the air almost like a scythe, reaping his next victim.

It stopped and he was right, because I didn't fear him, I looked Death straight in his cold dark eyes.

"But this is where I'm lost...You're not dead...yet you wander the realm of limbo like it was a second nature to you, you sit here along side lost souls and ghosts of the never were and talk among them like you've always been here. Like they aren't strangers to you. Why? It's like you're afraid to even live, you're so focused on losing the most precious thing to you, and you can't even decide if it's real or not .This dream you've been telling us about, this girl. I know who you are, I can see right through you like the window. I can see that very clearly John Renton, I see it perfectly. But you don't belong here..At least not yet."

"So what happens now?" I asked looking over at this man with a face of that of mighty and powerful storm. 

Suddenly, unexpectedly the man they called Death reached out from over the table, his arm stretched out so far and his hand formed a closed fist.
Striking me in the face, so hard and with such force I was jolted back from my seat.

My body violently convulsed for a split second, and I could feel the impact of his fist jettison me off the chair, the feeling was bizarre, like being stuck by a car or hitting the ground in a dream.   

It felt like I was falling, though the matter of the universe, my skin felt wet and cold, and I could feel the wind run though my hair. 

And then I wasn't in the bar anymore. I wasn't surrounded by chairs or smoke or ghosts or Time Travelers or an omnipotent being posing as Death.

I was lying in bed, my hands tightly wrapped around a warm and soft person.

That's when the smell of cinnamon and apples hit me like a truck crashing into wall at full speed.

And as I open my eyes I see the sight of elegant, blue hair, twisting all over pale and soft skin. 

A pale face with red velvety lips attached to a face I could only have dreamed of lying beside me.

The girl looked up at me with eyes that only.

And a voice ever so tender and gentle whispered into my ear.

"So, what happens now?"

The words crept down my spine and the warm breathe sent a surge of adrenaline coursing through my veins, I shot up from my slumber in a instant.

Was I awake? 

At least I thought I was conscious , everything was a haze of intoxicating fragrances and what little light fought though the window was dirty and ambient.

The smell of stale cigarette smoke clung to the hot air inside the room, that almost overpowered the unforgettable musk of cinnamon and apple candle wax and wild berry tea.

The world around me, was grey, abstract almost, almost like looking though the eyes of a drunken fool, who's had one drink too many. 

The words tumbled over and over again in my head, a million thoughts raced though my mind and I couldn´t hold it together any longer,  her voice was distorted and that's when I noticed the envelope that the Time Traveler had handed me was still tightly in my grip.

I opened the seal and with great care withdrew the message.

The paper had all been crumpled, but the message inside it held little or no understanding.

The message read.

'Dream a different dream, help me change the past."

The world around me began to crack at the seems, the floorboards began to uplift themselves, and the walls began to crumble, into a swirling vortex of great plumes, the whole world disintegrating into nothing but dust. 

Voiceless whispers called to me and I listened.