"I've had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They're about nonexistent people, figments of imagination, if they're fiction. And if they're nonfiction, it's worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another's gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost."

Captain Beatty, Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

~ ~ ~

"Are you awake?"

I groaned as the bright lights overhead pierced through my half opened eyelids.

"Well, you seem awake enough. So listen up."

I thought I recognized the harsh voice from somewhere, but I couldn't place it. I tried to open my eyes further, and caught a blurry glimpse of a face. Silver-white hair, high cheek bones. A maelstrom of blue and green in a pair of eyes that looked at me with contempt.

"So you have memories, hm? Well, whatever it is that you think you remember about... before, I suggest you quickly forget it."

The voice had a harsh tone to it. That was not a suggestion. It was an order.

"I don't give a fuck who you think you are or were. I don't give fuck about what you think happened to you, or about anything else about you. Down here, none of it matters anyway. But I promise you, if you go around spouting any of those supposed memories of yours, I will ensure that this turns quite literally into your very personal hell. And since we're all gonna spend the rest of eternity here together, I don't think you'd want that. So keep your mouth shut. Are we clear?"

I stared back at the stranger. Something was not right. Despite the resemblance, this was not the person from my other dream, Cloud. It couldn't be, he was not that mean. Or could it? My sight was still blurry, my head spinning. Unable to open my mouth, I just nodded weakly.

"Very well. Now get some more rest. You still look like shit."

I drifted back into the grey embrace of unconsciousness for what felt like just a moment, and when I opened my eyes again, I was alone in the room. I sat up on the bed and looked around. The same white room. The same pitch black darkness outside the window.

How strange. I remember going back to the dorm after I was at the infirmary. And I fell asleep in my bed. So is this another dream? The same one again, but... different?

A strange tingling sensation crept up behind my forehead, probably as a result of the bright lights that illuminated the room. I rubbed my palm over the spot to make the feeling go away, and suddenly noticed that there was something on my arm.

Didn't I return that?

There was a bracelet around my wrist. But I quickly realized that it was different from the one the nurse had given me – about a hand's width of solid metal and sitting so tight that not a sheet of paper would have fit between it and my skin. It looked like a shackle. I couldn't recall if it had been there before in my previous dream or not. Looking down, I saw myself dressed in white clothes - a pair of pants that reached to my mid-calves, a top and a sweater vest. A pair of white shoes stood beside the bed.

It all reminded me awfully of a hospital room.

The door slid open and a young girl entered the room, carrying a metal tray. She wore the same white clothes as me, and contrasted with her auburn hair, part of which cascaded over her shoulders like a fiery veil, while another part was bound into an elaborate, partially braided up-do. She was pretty, with a golden glow on her tawny skin that seemed to radiate warmth amidst all this white, a cute nose and slightly rounded cheeks with just a hint of a blush. She was most definitely younger than me – so probably too young to be a nurse, I figured.

With a yelp of surprise, she froze in the doorway as she spotted me, and almost dropped the tray she had been holding.

"Oh my. You're awake!"

"Seems I am."

We stared at each in silence for a few heartbeats.

"And you are...?" I finally asked.

"Oh, of course, s-sorry. My name is Bridge. I-I'm happy to... no wait, that's wrong. I welcome you to - no," she stuttered.

With a conflicted expression on her face, she stepped closer to put the tray down on the bedside table. It had a plate with something vaguely recognizable as food on it. My stomach clenched just at the sight of it. This place definitely reminded me of a hospital, and not in a good way.

I looked up at the strange girl again, and found her staring at me. A blush crept up on her cheeks.

"I should get Quill," she said, "Don't – don't go anywhere, I mean, of course you can't, oh, silly me. Sorry. Back in a second!"

With that, she hurried out of the room, leaving me to stare after her in confusion. For a moment, I just sat there, waiting for something to happen. If this was a dream, something would probably happen soon. My dreams were rarely so realistic that they followed a continuous narrative that made any sense. Perhaps the next moment, one of Steel's worm monsters would break through the door, or the floor would turn into applesauce and swallow me, or the furniture would explode into rainbow colored fractal shapes. But nothing of the sorts came to pass.

So perhaps I wasn't dreaming? Yet I clearly remembered falling asleep.

I pinched the back of my hand hard, next to that strange metallic shackle, just until I couldn't take it anymore. And with the bright red spot on the back of my skin, a sense of doubt began to grow inside me. This was definitely not a regular dream.

At least this time I have full control over my body again, I thought, flexing my hands.

As I got up from the bed and slipped on the shoes that stood there, I took in the room once more. Everything here was white. Except for one thing.

I went over to the black window panels and tapped against them. Their surface felt smooth like glass, but despite the bright light in this room, I wasn't able to see myself reflected in it – or anything else, for that matter. It was as if the panels completely swallowed all the light that hit them. The fact that I could not see my reflection made me feel uneasy, and I remembered the words of the man who had introduced himself as Cloud.

He said that I'm in hell. Sartre's vision of hell didn't have any mirrors either.

The sound of the door behind me startled me and I whirled around. The curly haired woman I had seen before – Quill, that was her name – came in. Behind her I saw Bridge and a teenage boy with messy, dark hair falling over his eyes, the two of them stealing a peek inside the room. All three were wearing these white clothes.

"My, my. Are you sure you are ready to be up and about?" Quill asked me with a friendly smile. She had something motherly about her – she spoke caring, but with a hint of sternness in her voice.

"I am fine, thank you."

I stared at her for a moment from across the room. I had never before dreamed of the same people more than once – well, not people I didn't know in real life, at least. Something here was wrong. Maybe this really wasn't a dream. But then what was it? Maybe the only way to find out was to play along.

"So... would somebody finally care to tell me what the fuck is going on here?" I asked.

"Very well." Quill heaved a heavy sigh. "Perhaps you should sit down again."

She shooed the other two out of the room before she sat down on the bed herself and patted the empty space next to her. "These two were Bridge and Arrow. And my name is-"

"Quill. We have met," I said as I sat down next to her.

In another dream, I added in my mind.

She raised an eyebrow over her steel-grey eyes. "I didn't think you'd remember..."

Talking to her made me feel restless already. I had the impression that there was something about this world that waited for me to be discovered, some hidden meaning to this nonsense that I would have to find in order to wake up again. I felt trapped in this dream, and I didn't like it.

"Can you tell me what this place is and how to get out?" I asked her.

Maybe this figment of my imagination, strange as she was, could help me. But Quill just sighed again and averted her grey eyes from mine. When she finally spoke, her words carried a pain so deep that I regretted asking.

"What Cloud told you about this place, it's... his interpretation of the state of things, I would say. I hope he didn't scare you. He is a pretty imaginative person, so he considers this place hell. The truth is, it is a prison of sorts. We are locked up, and cannot really get out. And some of us believe that they are being... punished for something. But since we cannot remember anything from before, we don't know for certain."

"Hold up a second," I interrupted. "I'm not sure I understand. No, in fact I'm sure I don't understand. What sense does it make to punish someone for a crime they cannot remember?"

It was strange that this should be the first question that had made its way from my mind to my lips. There were so many other things that didn't make any sense beside that. But this seemed to matter most.

Logic, I thought to myself. That's the way I break out of nightmares. When you find something that's so mind-bogglingly illogical that you finally realize that it's a dream, and you just snap out of it. Maybe that's what I have to do here, too.

Quill shrugged. "I do not know. Personally, I like to believe.... We are here for a reason. Whether that is something we have done in the past, or need to do in the future, that I don't know."

Her cryptic response left me with a feeling of profound sadness and confusion. When I looked at her, for a moment, she seemed less like a mother and more like a lost child that had asked that same question many times before, but it had always remained unanswered. I saw a lot of my younger self in her at that moment. So maybe she was some manifestation of some aspect of my subconscious. Not my inner child, but my inner... mother, or something.

Or playing along. That's another way to get out. Stop struggling, embrace the dream, and just let it pass.

"Okay. So what am I supposed to do here? What's the reason I'm here?" I asked her,

She laughed, but it sounded bitter. "I wish I knew. For now, you are a part of our community. So perhaps I should introduce you to the rest of our little family."

With that, she got up and stretched out her hand to me. I hesitated for a moment. But as long as I couldn't wake up and couldn't control what happened in this dream, perhaps there wasn't much else I could do. There was only one way out.

So I took her hand and let her take the lead.