Mike awoke, and as was often the case did not immediately know where he was. In that space between light and shadow he dreamed. Mike called these awake dreams and often began speaking aloud to characters that were not present, even before he was unconscious and by all accounts, still awake.

This morning his dream framed images of his uncle shot at close range by his cousin and then a victim list on a television news broadcast. The confusion of time shifting always makes perfect sense in a dream and when Mike would become cognizant of an absurd shift is usually when he would wake or on other occasions fall deeper into the dream.