I wake from the dream with a start and realize I’m not where I was before. The dark and damp alley is gone and daylight streams into the room. Where am I? A bed. A clean bed in a room somewhere. How did I get here? I remember the alley and the chop-shop and the ghoul and I wonder if this place is as dangerous. It feels different to me for some reason. I feel safe here. This place is familiar somehow. I think I know it, but the information slips away from me when I try and grasp it, as elusive as the images from my dream. I still can’t remember anything from before waking up in the alley where the body-snatchers found me and I wonder if I’ve simply forgotten coming here from the alley. Or has all of it been a dream? No. I’m sure what I recall of the encounter with the body-snatchers and their ghoul boss was real. I glance at the back of my wrist and I can still see the faint white line where the cutting blade emerged. That was certainly real.