I am in the passenger’s seat of a car, looking down at my phone,
and all of a sudden we pull into a parking lot. It’s Evanston.
I look at the driver and see a skinny Indian man who I don’t recognize,
and definitely didn’t notice upon entering the vehicle. We both step out of the car.

He and the car disappear and I am alone. I look at the address on the building we parked by.
Five hundred something Foster street. SafeRides. What the fuck? I don’t drink.
I then begin to think myself into a drunken stupor for justification.
I walk out of the parking lot into a post-apocalyptic version of downtown Evanston,

you know, by the theaters, where there’s the Urban Outfitters and the American Apparel and whatnot.
It is empty, except for an oblong-bodied version of a girl named Carmen
who I only knew from my math class Sophomore year. She has wings and is flying around.
Kristen Bell walks towards me in a very stressed manner. I hold her,

stroke her soft, beautiful face and tell her, “Everything’s going to be okay.
We’re going to get through this.” Jack Black runs to us screaming,
“DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU’RE DOING?!
YOU’RE GOING TO DISRUPT THE EVOLUTION OF HUMANITY!.”

We storm off past him into a shop, where various people walk around.
It is initially a pink-walled store, but there is a section in the back that is divided into two parts:
one for items relating to God, and one for items relating to Satan.
There is only a voiceover of Satan speaking, telling us what to buy. Satan hates everything.

We ponder, though, and ask him, “C’mon Satan, even beer? Everyone loves beer!”
Again, what the fuck? I. Don’t. Drink. There is a quick silence, and he replies, “Okay, yeah. I love beer,”
and everyone cheers, and I awake. I still feel a little dreamy though.
I see visions of a different beautiful girl, though one unrecognizable.

I picture her in the same car in the same parking lot that began the dream. She is dead.
Presumably from driving drunk or from a drunk driver. Why am I having this reoccurring imagery?
I then picture a white room with a human-sized test tube branching off into different tubes.
A woman that looks like a cross between the aforementioned unidentifiable woman

and my latest ex-girlfriend floats naked in the middle of the tube, seemingly unconscious.
After twisting and jerkingly being pulled into various positions,
she is sucked down one of the tubes, never to be seen again.
I follow this scene up with a reflection of my most suppressed memory,

and I realize, though this is technically “waking up in the middle of the night,”
I’ve gone to bed later than this the last five nights. I figure, I must tell someone about this,
someone that isn’t the notes app on my phone. So I go to my laptop,
wake it up in a similar manner that I awoke myself (suddenly),

and turn the brightness up one notch. I go to my recently revived Twitter account
and see a friend of mine post these five words: “I am allergic to waking up.”
I feel that her and I have similar allergies. More so than that,
we also have similar interests in the musical world, but I believe,

unfortunately, the interest in each other is one sided (guess which one).
It was, for a brief moment, years ago, mutual, but of course I ruined it
like I do most things. And because of my strict rule I don’t think that
it will ever be a possibility that her and I could be together,

but then again, why the fuck must I wrap myself up in these things so much?
It is a weakness I will never shake. So, I respond to her, she responds to me,
I respond to her again, she responds back, I respond one more time and then nothing.