It was Deus but not as he knew it, the furniture slanting off on illogical planes and closed doors which somehow he simply knew led to nothing but solid wall on the other side. The hallway was vacant, stretching off into hazy forever and he knew that this hallway at least existed nowhere on the real island, existent only in his memories, it was partially a hospital, a place from his past, the faded mural of Mr Benn stretching out into the distance.

It had been his favourite show as a child and the mural in the children’s ward had always been something he’d looked at when given a chance, dragging his mother to stare at it and he’d forgotten all about it as he grew older. The television programme had told, a story about a man who went into a fancy dress shop and tried on fantastical outfits only to become part of the world the outfit belonged to. At the end of the episode he’d return the outfit, never actually buying anything from the shop and leave, back in his formal business suit, to whatever life he lived outside the show’s premise. There was something almost ritualistic to the rigid way it always went and the show had been used often to draw him out of his own little world and back into the world everyone else inhabited. The repetition had soothed him and the escapism had given him hope. It felt somehow fitting that now the character was here at the bridge between worlds, painted in strange colours, faded now as if in too much sunlight too long and different than how he remembered it, more outfits than he’d ever seen and so many of them never from the show. In one piece he was an astronaut, another a caveman and then in others he contorted into a cowboy, a father, a liar, a vet, a psychic and a murderer.

He looked away from the mural, too old for childish things now and walked instead, his footsteps echoing dissonant and different from the sound his footwear should make, his usual flat shoes sounding like heels on the scuffed and stained linoleum floor. It was the children’s ward at the hospital and it was Deus and in the dream world both of these things were equally true. He didn’t know where he was going but that was no different from any other time in his life, he just walked because walking itself was repetition and he knew in some intrinsic way that if he did it long enough he’d reach perfection and he needed that more than he needed anything else.

That was also a lie, he didn’t know anything other than that he needed to walk because the alternative was death. He didn’t know if he’d be perfect just like he hadn’t known if he’d ever get better, but he’d tried because...

And then as dreams did, things simply shifted, and he was somewhere else.

It was a jungle, pressing in all around him, long raking vines and soaked waxy leaves lashing at him as he ran in loping strides, swiping with long claws to cut a path through anything that got in his way. He was a cat, a large pale and faintly striped creature. He knew this because the view was simultaneously inside and outside of his own head, watching the lean bony predator lunging through the forest in pursuit of its prey.

And the prey, well that was obvious, a flash of red hair and the scent he knew better than any other, followed by a glimpse of freckle mottled skin and a bright, sharp voice. Time and again he reached out and his talons closed on nothing, America’s figure like a ghost weaving and ducking just out of reach. He wasn’t angry but the want and need was almost unbearable. She was his, she would be his, closer and closer. He’d been here before, chasing her through the forest and it had felt so good. Here again now it was better than he remembered, exhaustion returning the taste of blood to his tongue. Twists, turns, branches, jumping at the last moment, gaining and gaining, stronger and stronger and stronger.

He leapt high into the air and as he finally landed on her and felt his claws gain purchase in flesh she disintegrated in his hands, turning into luminescent moths which fluttered away, followed in turn by the jungle itself, the green flapping away as a hundred thousand powdery wings.

The agony of her absence remained, deep in his gut like a hook, worsening into a real and twisting pain that tangled into nausea and made his thoughts able to focus on nothing at all but how much he wanted it to stop. It was the closest concept he had to fear, a discomfort turned up so high that it was akin to physical pain and many times more intolerable. There was no way to grit your teeth and bear this sort of discomfort. All there was was to fight it, to do anything you could not to drown in it. His body was sheet music swiped blank by her leaving and he could feel all that he was start to bleed out. With a jerk of pain he leapt and twisted, no longer a cat but with the pain made real, written in flesh and bone, able to see organs on the outside which should have been inside, dragging his sprawled intestines like the chains twisted around his claws, gathering them up and running now himself, not out of fear but necessity, able to hear the slow and impending panting of a huge, huge dog behind him.

The blood was hot, all of him was hot, but the panting got closer and closer, biting and tearing at him as he ran, devouring more and more of him until he tripped.

When he woke it was in a cold sweat, twisted up in his sheets, hair plastered to him and swearing that he’d cut back on the pain medications even despite the agony which seized him bodily at any movement.