We were having fun floating through the candy littered river that was the street until someone came out of the restaurant we had just departed from.
And then another.
And then another.
And then another.

And they all started to scream.

"Dream error! Dream error!" They shouted. Their faces twisted into agonizingly grotesque forms; they splashed into the water after us.

"Ah!" Alessandra shrieked as an ashen hand reached up from the grey depths of the water. Another one surfaced and grabbed her hair.

Swiftly I kicked it off and grabbed her hand. I tried to stand upright, but the familiar street beneath us had disappeared. I struggled to tread water. The Extras' shrieks filled the air.

Hands were everywhere, grabbing Alessandra, grabbing me, trying to drag Alessandra under to wake her up and me under to kill me. They did not seem to be attached to other limbs, but were powerful nonetheless.

I managed to pull us to the curb of the street. Alessandra and I scurried onto the sidewalk. More and more Extras piled in the river, but melted like candle wax into nothingness. The rain clouds dissipated and the charcoal waters turned unnaturally dark blue, like a perfect landscape river.

"Kenny...?" Alessandra asked.

I sighed. "Come with me."

I pulled her through several winding alleyways until we got to a sunset kissed landscape, with a dusky red-violet sky and a fairytale castle sitting on the horizon. The storefronts we had been in front of disappeared.

Clouds floated from the sky down to us, tickling our faces with cottony water droplets and wrapping around us like blankets. They were warm and soft; I resisted urge to wrap me and Alessandra up like hot dogs in biscuits.

"Why are they coming after us?" Alessandra asked.

I was planning to tell her, about the marbles, about my plan. But suddenly I got nervous and lies began to come out of my mouth.

"Oh. Don't worry. It's...it's just nightmare stuff. You know?" I said. Alessandra nodded.

"I feel really weird. Like I'm concentrating or something. It feels weird when I blink..." Alessandra looked at her hands, which now jangled with mysterious black hairline bracelets with simple pewter charms.

"It's what happens when you are lucid dreaming. You are in a lucid, or conscious state at a time when you normally are 'unconscious'. Your brain is used to not having to work the conscious side of the brain while you are sleeping, so the sensation you are feeling...it's your brain trying to remain in that state."

Alessandra nodded again. "Isn't it kind of weird, like I am me, inside of my brain?" she laughed. "That probably sounded really ditzy, but I have never had a dream...like this."

I smiled and leaned over to kiss her cheek and she turned all sorts of red.

"Kenny, do you have dreams?" Alessandra suddenly asked.

The question caught me by surprise.

"Erm...no...?" was all I could say.

I think I am much different -no, I know I am much different- from the other people like me.

For one, outside of dreams, the Extras don't socialize. But I guess that would mean being a "real life vision" full time, or just voices in someone's head. (That happens when there is a mega Dream Error, all the dreams revolt and try to become sentient and separate beings and as a result, schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder.)

They don't have daydreams or wishes like me. They don't have ambition or desire, they don't diverge or idiosyncrasate. They just are.

I just don't understand how one can live and not be alive. Doesn't life have a purpose?