I dreamed I was a blue glowing orb that floated above the street, flying as fast as the beat of my heart but as cool as the touch of ice.

The alleys of San Francisco blurred as they rushed around me, melting into a stretched plastic imitation of reality that was sometimes solid but sometimes ran like swirling colors of paint. My blood jack-hammered through my veins and pounded in my skull as though I were about to explode.

I was a hunter and I was hunted. Somewhere in the dark, hidden in the quicksilver corners of consciousness, was a panther, sleek, black and sweating from the thrill of manhunt. Watching, waiting to drink my blood, waiting to spill the blue light that coursed through my nervous system.

There! Wedged in the angle of an alley with no escape, I found the panther, pacing nervously, wailing the scream of a saxophone with a broken heart.

"Why?" I asked, as though I expected a dumb beast to answer.

"Life," she answered. "And death." Then her eyes narrowed to yellow cat slits that focused on me as I had seen them once before.

Swift as her reflection, the panther catapulted through space in a long arc that seemed eternal. With the flash of silver claws that cut sharp as a stiletto, the blue orb's neon blood spilled and spattered on the ground and reflected off the wet pavement like diamonds spilled on glass, turning to ruby tears of blood at the touch of darkness.

The blue light staggered back, amazed to see light pouring from a gash in its side, amazed at the fear of death that pounded in its heart and the blood that hinted at the orb's mortality.

The panther sensed the vulnerability, circled for the kill, its lips curling back to show white teeth that laughed brilliantly.

"The Earth won't remember you when you die," said the panther with a sneer, preparing to plunge her stiletto claw into the heart of the orb. "You were never here!"

And the light shivered with fear, vibrating and paralyzed, unable to remember the primitive instinct that allows a wild beast to fight for its life. Life, that precious vapor that even a jackal will cling to with its last breath, that was something the light creature had not learned to treasure. The orb would have died then and there, unremembered by the Earth just as the panther claimed.

But standing at the entrance to the alley there appeared an essence, a passing thought only, a dream of life and survival. An illusion perhaps, or reality unsure, a woman so beautiful she made the heart ache

"Follow me," she said. "Follow me," said Ell. And then the light fled, or ran, or floated in panic following this passion, following this dream through a world that would just as soon swallowed both of them whole in its black void.

Faster, faster, the blue streak of light bulleted through the pitch black fog of a cold San Francisco night with screams of fear echoing through its mind mingling with the loneliness of its coming death tingling in every nerve. Except the blue orb had no nerves, it couldn't feel the six inch gash that raked its side and spilled light that turned to crimson red drops of blood when they struck the black pavement.

All it could feel was Ell. Around him, above him, inside of him. Ell.

Deep in the dark alleys of San Francisco, frequented only by one-eyed cats and by derelicts so hyped on Black Orchid opiates that their souls had long left them, the being of light ran for its life like a hunted beast. It must have run for an hour judging by the desperate wheeze of its labored breath, hiding first from one, then a multiple of pursuers whose footsteps echoed in staccato on the pavement.

Then, the lightbeing began to slow, its footsteps becoming distracted, disjoint, robotic, without direction, until all its energy had been drained and exhausted. With each new drop of blood, the light dimmed as the blue orb's life force sublimed into nothingness.

A machine when broken winds down and stops but feels no pain, but this creature, though it felt no pain, was in pain. Impossible to explain such a contradiction even to itself, pain without feeling, the blue orb ground to a halt, teetered, its eyes searching in desperation for salvation before it crashed to the pavement face down, to lie nearly smothered in a trickle of fetid water that marked the center of an abandoned alley.

And as the light being's blood, a bluish light, continued to drain from its side, turning to red rivulets as it touched the ground, the creature muttered the cryptic letter L. and fell unconscious.

I dreamed there was a rock and a red sun which scorched the land with simmering heat.

I dreamed I was the carcass of a man, pinned to the rock, gnawed by vultures, my body ravaged by the beasts and infested with the maggots of decay. I was split open like an overripe melon and death beckoned like my best friend.

I laughed. I laughed. I laughed. I laughed . . . . .

Imagine, that life could grow so cold that you could laugh at your own death, even if you knew it was an illusion. Of course, I knew I was just dreaming, but don't you see, there was no pain in my torment, it was as though I were under a narcotic, lying in a field of poppies and that life and death had no pleasure for me, it was all the same.

Even my nightmares had grown old and stale.

Pain, an illusion within a mirage within a dream. It wasn't real, it didn't affect me . . . . .

Until she came.

Walking across the desert, a mirage, beautiful, alluring temptation, coming towards me. Dressed in Red, Red as the hot sun.

Pleasure.

I screamed.

"Go away, I don't want you here. Leave me to my agony!"

"Ah, but life comes from feeling pain, S." She said quietly, standing silhouetted by that damnable red sun, red on red. "You feel no pain!" said my tormentor.

She was right.

"Who are you," I asked through lips dry broken by the desert sun. "I've been looking for you, forever."

"You lie so well," she smiled. "I am no one and I am everyone. I am your dream. I am Ell"

"Can you take me from this rock, can you take me from this pain!" I begged.

"I can do better than that," my dream replied. "I am Ell I can do anything . . . ."

There was a rock and a red sun which scorched the land with simmering heat.

I was the carcass of a man, pinned to the rock, gnawed by vultures, my body ravaged by the beasts and infested with the maggots of decay. I was split open like an overripe melon and death beckoned like my best friend.

I screamed. I screamed. I screamed. I screamed . . . . .

I screamed in pain, real pain, searing pain like I'd never experienced before. This was no illusion!!

"Elllll!!!!" I shrieked. "What have you done!? Save me!!! I feel the agony!"

She stood there as before, silhouetted before the red sun, smiling.

"I can do better than that," my dream replied. "I am Ell I can do anything . . . . . . ."

A rock and a red sun flaming with simmering heat.

I was the carcass of a man, pinned to the rock, gnawed by vultures, my body ravaged by beasts and infested with maggots. I was split open like an overripe melon and death beckoned like my best friend.

"I screamed. . . . . . .

I must have dreamed the dream the entire night, for I only woke with the sun, whose light burned my eyes with its brightness, forcing me to squeeze my eyelids into thin blurry slits. I felt like shit, like a reincarnation of Shaquille O'Neal had beaten me with a baseball bat.

Thank God I had only dreamed about the blue orb and its flight from the panther, you could go nuts if something like that were real. And thank God the nightmare about being picked at by buzzards was just a nightmare; it was loony farm stuff that could get you committed by the white coats. Plus, that wacky broad Ell had returned to my dreams. What my mind wouldn't do for some cheap thrills!

I really needed to get a hold on myself.

"I must be at home by now," I reasoned, "asleep in a soft bed. Boy, I was so drunk at the concert I must have passed out and had to be carted home!"

I cracked my eyes open just a slit more, usually Emma closed the shades for me so the morning sun wouldn't wake this nightowl. What an incredible illusion! I appeared to be lying face down in a puddle of sewage in an alley, a rat eyeing me suspiciously from a nearby cardboard box and the hot sun slicing its way between high buildings, glinting off mirrored window panes to focus on me.

"Oh God," I panicked as I tried desperately to move, squirming like a pathetic slug in the slimy alley. There was no light left in the fiberoptic strands to energize my useless limbs. I was helpless.