Daniel came to mid-stride and nearly tripped over the curb. He stumbled into somebody, a large man, who subsequently pushed him away, cursing him out. The man’s breath reeked of booze. Daniel reeled for a moment, trying to grab hold of something which had just disappeared from within his grasp. The smell of smoke still filled his nose. The drunk took a swing at him and for moment his vision blurred.

Daniel blinked. He felt his cheek pressed hard against a filthy curb and tried to lift it off, but a terrible splitting pain shot through his head. The drunk was gone, and those few who remained on that half-deserted street chose to pass him by. For a while he just breathed, trying to make sense of it all. With a trembling hand he touched his face, smeared the blood across his cheek.

Through no small effort, Daniel managed to pick himself up and stumble into an adjacent alley. Somewhere in the distance he could hear church bells and the rumble of thunder as he lowered himself back onto the ground, leaning against a dumpster for support. He tried to wipe the blood from his face, but only made a mess. Thankfully, the rain started to pour just then. It felt cool and fresh on his skin, skin, which he could recall with sickening clarity, that had just previously been burning in the heat of that terrible blaze.

He tried to steady himself. He closed his eyes against the drops of water and let them wash the blood from his cheek, from his lip. Slowly his memories started to return to him. Yes, he’d been having trouble sleeping, he’d gone out to get some air. Or had he been sleep walking? In any case, where had he ended up?

He tried to stand. His head spun, but only for a moment. A nearby door opened, and he looked as a man in an apron stepped out to dump some trash. The man looked at Daniel suspiciously, but said nothing. Through the open door Daniel caught the sight of mangled bodies, the flayed skin, and the burnt flesh. He looked at the man once more. His face was round and greasy and there was a stubby cigar tucked into the corner of his yellowed mouth. He glared at Daniel. It was a face he recognized, though the man was undoubtedly a stranger. Daniel found himself reaching for a pistol that wasn’t there, panicked when he realized it. Without a word, the man with Johnson’s face stepped back into the building and shut the door on that bloody scene.

Daniel hurried back toward the street. The rain was falling harder now. He tried to look for a street sign, but couldn’t find one. He thought of Johnson’s face, one of the faces in his dream. But those bodies… He shook his head, wiped the rain from his eyes. He knew he had to get back home, but where was home? An apartment, across from the church. He had heard the bells, but they were quiet know. The thunder still rolled.

Under a churning sky and swaying buildings, Daniel made his way up the narrow street passed grey pedestrians, their collars turned up against the bitter wind, and all the while felt like he was being watched. Twice he turned and thought he saw someone following him. With great relief the street he followed came to an intersection with a main street, filled with people. He stopped the first normal looking person who passed him by to ask where the church was.

“The church?” The pedestrian repeated, looking Daniel in the eye. Daniel gasped. “What are you looking for a church for, son? Got some confessing to do?”

The words he spoke came with a high pitched whistle, probably on account of his missing nose. It had been blown away by a bullet from behind him, along with one of his eyes.

“I’m only joking,” Marlowe gurgled, blood running from his mouth, and he pointed behind Daniel. “You’ll just want to head down the road that way. Turn left on Church Street, it’s not far.”

The wet slap of Daniel’s shoes against the pavement was drowned, along with Marlowe’s words, by the murmur of the inattentive crowds. Daniel disappeared among the gathering of streetwalkers, heading in the direction he had been pointed, bumping into people as he stumbled along. The church bells sounded once more. He looked up, and above the nearby buildings he could see a lofty spire, peeking over them as it were. The bell sounded clear through the heavy pounding of the rainfall.

Things started to return to Daniel. He could recognize where he was now, well enough. He took a turn and headed down the street towards his apartment building. The only thought he tried to hold onto was the thought of home. He pushed everything else aside, for the moment, the carnage, the familiar faces, and even the vague smell of smoke which still lingered around him.

Up the stairwell he hurried, losing his breath in the process. He ducked into his hallway, gasping, and for a moment panicked as he reached into his pocket for his keys. After some fumbling, he felt his fingertips brush against the cold, metal teeth. He fished the key up and opened the door. Slamming it behind him as he gulped at the familiar air.

Here he experienced a wave of relief. He felt safe, momentarily. As he scanned his room, his mind began to call up memories, and before long he was feeling like himself again. Though whether ‘himself’ was how he wanted to feel was another matter. The place was small, dingy. He had not cleaned in weeks, evidently. The bed he stood before was like a battlefield in a war against insomnia – the sheets were bunched, torn away from every corner, and his pillow looked like it had taken more than a couple beatings. By his nightstand were scattered bottle of sleeping pills, illicit and otherwise.

Yes, he had had trouble sleeping alright. He had been experiencing walking dreams, nightmares – hallucinations, one supposes, but nothing like what he’d been encountering today. No, today it was like he couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. It was enough to make him wonder if this wasn’t his dream right now, and that other place, the raging fire….

The thought made him sweat.

With shaky hands he reached for the bottle and poured himself a glass, spilling it slightly upon the already messy floor. He lifted the glass to his lips and took a pull, but as the pleasantly biting liquid rolled down his tongue, it changed to smoke. He closed his eyes and felt the glass between his thumb and forefinger itself change form. He was no longer drinking, but rather taking a drag from a cigarette. He opened his eyes, and he was in a bar with Johnson by his side, the ape of a man, with that cigar fixed to the corner of his mouth. He removed it only to take a gulp from his stein.

“What abut Marlowe?” Daniel found himself asking.

“He’ll get what’s coming to him,” Johnson answered, his voice like the crunching of distant thunder. He patted the pistol on his hip. “More for us, eh?”

Daniel felt hesitant. He looked around at the denizens of the establishment. It was a small but nevertheless diverse crowd. He and Johnson were certainly the most intimidating of the lot, and the others all refused to meet his stare. There was a family eating dinner at one end, a few travelling business men, it seemed, at another. Directly across the room from the bar where he and Johnson sat their mark: a nervous Roma and his haughty wife.

“How do we even know he has it?” Daniel asked.

Johnson laughed softly. “Look at the fellow,” he said, “He’s got it. He keeps looking over here too.”

“Well, you’re so ugly, who wouldn’t stare?” Daniel joked, but Johnson did not smile.

Johnson rose and immediately made a beeline for the foreigner and his wife. Daniel tried to get his attention with a silent gesture of protest, but it went unheeded.

“Good evening, sir,” Johnson said, and turning to his wife added, “Ma’am.”

The man grew pale. The wife, however, stared him in the eye. “What do you want?” She asked as she drummed her ring-laden fingers against the table. Her eyes were as black as her hair, which she wore in loose braids.

“Well, I just couldn’t help but notice your husband looking over towards my friend and me, and I thought we might as well come over and introduce ourselves.”

Daniel noticed that the bar had gone silent. Everyone was listening to them.

“He’s probably look at you because he knows you’re a killer,” the woman said, and then looking at Daniel directly added, “You and your friends, the both of them.”

Something twitched in Johnson’s face. He gnawed on his cigar for a moment. “Now, that is quite the accusation to make, ma’am.”

The woman’s husband was as still as a statue. He did not look at Daniel or Johnson, but rather kept his wide, horrified eyes fixed on his bold wife.

“Your soul is tainted. You’re a big man in this life, but your soul is small and more hideous than your face. If you keep living the way you do, you will know only tragedy.”

Now Johnson laughed. “A fortune-telling gypsy!” He declared. “Never heard of that! What, are you going to curse me next? What have I done to you anyhow?”

“What’s done is done,” the woman said, darkly, “I do not need to curse you, nor threaten you with the fires of hell. This world is a hell for people like you.” She turned sad then, and lowered her eyes at last. “Kill us or embrace us, what’s done is done.”

No one moved. No one said a word. Even the hovering smoke which filled the room seemed to be stilled by the tension. Then everyone turned as one of the floorboards at the top of the stairs creaked. Down stumbled Marlowe, his eyes all red and weepy. He had been sleeping off a raging a drunk. He walked heavily down the steps until the silence presumably touched his ears. He stopped and stared as everyone watched him. With some alarm he noticed who Johnson had, apparently, been speaking to.

“Marlowe!” Johnson said, staring back at him. “Fetch us some whisky. I think I’d like to have a drink with our new friends here.”

Hesitantly, Marlowe did as he was bid, wiping his face nervously. The second his back was to Johnson, however, Johnson drew his pistol and fired. Someone screamed as Marlowe fell to the ground, blood rushing from his head across the barroom floor. The scream seemed, to Daniel, to come from somewhere far away, drawing closer, and closer, until the sound was like a siren, splitting his ears.

He blinked and watched as the flashing lights of an ambulance rushed down the street. He was outside again, thought the rain had lightened a bit. It was almost dark. He whipped around as the siren passed, ready to fight, ready to do something, disoriented as the world spun around his head. He cried out, “God! What’s happening to me.”

It took him another moment to recompose himself. A few who passed him by watched him wordlessly, though only for a moment each. Something, however, told him that he was being watched continuously. He looked around him and sure enough, further down the street, someone stood and stared at him.

“No,” he muttered and began to walk in the other direction which, luckily for him, was back towards his home. “Why do I keep coming out this way?” He asked himself.

His sense of direction was better now, and he realized he hadn’t gone far, though he’d apparently been out long enough to get soaked to the bone. He just needed to get back inside, get warm and dry. He would stay awake, if he had to, he told himself, though a kind of hopelessness was beginning to spread through his body in the form of a terrible inertia. He was heading towards something, he felt, and this would not be over until he reached where he was going.

Soon he was at the church, and for a moment, grasping for any kind of meaning, he stopped. He looked towards his apartment building and then back to the church. The bells rang suddenly, startling him, and he turned quickly and could see that the figure he had seen before had followed him all the way to the church. Without a second thought, fear welling up in his throat, he dashed inside, the bells still ringing loudly overhead.

Inside the church, the air changed from moist to musty. The murmur of the crowds died away, and the sound of the rainfall, harsh upon the pavement, turned into a kind of light pitter-patter, not unlike the sound of fingers drumming against a table.

Holding his head between his hands, he made his way up towards the alter, the heavy cross beyond. He fell to his knees and began to weep softly.

“Excuse me,” a slightly nervous voice sounded from near the entrance. “Excuse me, sir, are you alright?”

Daniel turned around slightly. It was a priest calling to him. He rose and started to walk towards him, unable to find the words to express his current plight. The priest stood where he was as Daniel approached him, and as his face became clearer to him Daniel began to recognized him.

“God, no,” he muttered to himself, tired of it all. The face of the barman, suspended over the priest’s collar, stared back at him bewildered. “Please,” Daniel said as he approached, faster and faster.

He reached for his pistol.

The barman had a shotgun in his hands but Daniel had the drop on him. Someone was still screaming, and now Daniel could feel Marlowe’s blood soaking into his old, worn shoes. Johnson was yelling something, but Daniel couldn’t make it out. He turned slightly to hear and that was when the barman made his move. Daniel pulled the trigger, almost without thinking, and the man went down.

“Everyone out!” Johnson was yelling. “Get the hell out of here, right now.” He was pointing his gun at the man and his wife. “Not you two. Come on, we’re going up to your room. No more fooling around. You know what we’re here for.”

The man was shaking like a leaf. The woman simply looked dejected. Daniel followed her gaze to the body of Marlowe in his pool of blood.

“Come on, you too, ma’am,” Johnson said, and then with a smile added, “It’s just as you said. I’m a killer, so you know I’m not playing. Let’s get a move on.”

“Johnson,” Daniel said, “What the hell. You said we weren’t going to do it here. We had a plan!”

“Well,” Johnson laughed, as he shoved the barrel of his pistol between the man’s shoulder blades. “Plan’s changed. Might as well get it all over with, eh? You get the lady.”

Daniel’s ears were ringing. He turned to the woman who was now staring at him, her eyes a mix of disgust and sorrow. He gestured with his gun. “You heard the man,” he said to her, trying to keep the shakiness from his voice.

She rose without a word, and the two of them followed Johnson and her husband up the stairs. Then they were in their room and the man was taking the suitcase out from underneath the bed.

“Hand it over, my friend,” Johnson said. The man did as he was told. Keep his gun on the man with one hand, Johnson opened the case with the other and looked inside. He grinned.

“Is it there?” Daniel asked, without looking away at the woman, whose eyes were fixed upon him.

“Oh, yes,” Johnson said, “Boss’ll be happy.”

“I don’t know about that,” Daniel replied, wiping the sweat from his eye, “I killed the barman.”

“Of course you did,” Johnson said, shutting the case, “You had no choice. He shot Marlowe!”

“Fiends!” The woman snarled. “Your boss is Satan himself.”

Johnson’s smiled began to fade. He sighed. Daniel, who was still looking directly at the woman jumped when he heard the gunshot. He turned. Her husband was on the floor, bleeding from his belly, choking on the blood.

Now her pride crumbled. Her composure was shattered. She wailed, and the sound was awful to Daniel’s ears. “Johnson!” He shouted.

“Come on, kid, let’s get out of here,” the large man said as the woman threw herself on her husband. He removed the cigar from his mouth and tossed it on the floor.

The wails of the woman followed them as they descended the stairs. Neither said a word as they stepped into the carnage below. Daniel hurried for the door, but Johnson stayed behind.

“What are you doing?” Daniel asked.

Johnson, as though in reply, pulled a couple of bottles from behind the counter, uncorked them, and began dumping the contents on the bar, splashing some on the curtains.

“Oh, you know me, Daniel,” he said then, pulling a fresh cigar out of his pocket. “I can’t help myself. It’s an addiction.” He produced a lighter, flicked it open, and lit his cigar, taking a long, satisfying draw, before tossing the still lit lighter. With a loud poof, the flame went up.

There was a breeze against Daniel’s cheek. He blinked at the darkness before him. Slowly his eyes began to adjust. He was in the park and the rain had picked up again. It was now falling in heavy sheets across the empty greenery. He was far away from home now, and yet a kind of peacefulness filled him. Beyond the darkness he could see the figure who had been falling him. She approached him now.

Her eyes were as dark as her hair which hang loose and wet upon her shoulders. She looked at him only with pity now.

“Kill us or embrace us,” she said, “what’s done is done.”

Daniel trembled as the cold rain fell hard upon his head. He felt as though he were swimming in some vast, freezing ocean. She came to him with arms outstretched. He tried to close his eyes, but the shutting of his eyelids was like the opening of a pair of curtains, unveiling a new scene: The public house was burning, a tower of flame. He and Johnson were standing before it, feeling the heat of the blaze upon their cheeks. In the doorway she emerged, naked, dressed in fire, her arms open.

He shut his eyes again, again unveiling another scene. She stood in the darkness, rain soaked, arms open.

He shut his eyes. He now approached her, walking into the unbearable heat of the blaze. Johnson was shouting.

He shut his eyes. The cold wind cut at his face. He was being torn apart, but he knew that in her arms he’d find peace.

He shut his eyes. She wrapped her arms around him as the arch of the doorway collapsed, spilling fire over both of them.

He shut his eyes. She dragged him into the wet, cold earth.

He shut his eyes.