That night, I had the weirdest dream. I was drawing with chalk in the middle of a highway, but the cars just went right through me. I don't know what I was drawing. I never finished it, whatever it was. I just remember a lot of weird shapes and symbols in bright colors. Before I could finish, the pavement of the highway cracked open. Bright light shown through the crack, but it was quickly snuffed out by all the bugs. Bugs started swarming out of the crack in the pavement. First it was just ants, but then it became spiders, and then it was butterflies and dragonflies and mosquitoes and pill bugs and fire ants and beetles, and they were getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and more and more bizzare until I swear giant, prehistoric bugs were flying out of the crack. They flew up into the sky, they divebombed me, and the cars went right through them, too. One bug, a giant beetle, got its pincers around me and carried me off down the highway. I was being passed from bug to bug as they carried me. I surfed on a sea of ants, I rode on jumping spiders, and while I was in the air, I landed on a dragonfly, and it flew me down the highway, gripping me tight in its little buggy feet.

Then it dropped me.

And I fell. For way too long, I just fell.

And then I landed, splat! and I crushed the mass of bugs underneath my body, and suddenly I wasn't on a highway, I wasn't on pavement. I was being under the surface of a sticky, lime green slime. I screamed, but then the stuff got in my mouth, and it felt like cement had dried in my mouth. I couldn't move my jaw, it was forced open. I felt the slime force its way down my throat, stopping up my airways and filling my stomach, and suddenly my whole body was full of cement and I sank like a rock through the green slime. My eyes were stuck open, for all the good that did, because all I could see was the green slime. It stung my eyes, but I couldn't cry, I couldn't close them.

Finally I settled against something. My chest felt like it was about to burst, like I was seconds away from breaking the surface of the water in a swimming pool after I'd been sitting on the bottom for too long. But this time, I didn't have the knowledge that I only had to hold on for a few more seconds, just a few more seconds and I could breathe again. I couldn't move, I couldn't swim to the surface here. There was this clicking in my ear that wouldn't go away, and I wished I could bat at whatever it was, but I couldn't move.

I felt two long, thin, things pinch me around my stomach, and then I was being lifted up through the slime. My vision was starting to go black, but then I broke the surface of the slime, and the things around my stomach squeezed tight, and then I was vomiting up the slime in my stomach, and I could move again. I was on a flat, splintery slab of wood. I got up on my hands and knees and heaved, spewing up the last dregs of green filth in my body. It burned like actual acid, and when I was done I just fell onto my side and lay there, next to the little pool of vomit. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to move, and I just wanted it to be over.

"Are you going to clean that up?" a voice asked from above me. I sat up, my head spinning, to see a woman sitting at a melting desk. A woman made of fire. Fiery skin, fiery eyes, fiery clothes. Only thing that wasn't fire was her brilliantly white hair. I, at this point, was beyond any ability to feel shocked, so I just stared at her. "Are you going to clean that up?" she repeated. "That floor is mahogany."

A coolly polite voice behind me said, "Leave her alone, dear. Poor thing ancient red infinity tree diffusion!"

"What...?" I muttered in response, twisting around to see, in opposition to the woman of fire, a man of ice. I suppose he looked wrinkly, but instead of folds in his skin, little icicles hung from his cheeks and his neck.

The woman made of fire groaned, and it sounded like crackling firewood. "Dammit, couldn't even get evergreen kite last chocolate! Pristine!" she banged on her desk, and the desk burst into flames, and then I burst into flames, and I woke up drenched in my own sweat, chest heaving, heart pounding, and the faintest hint of roaring flames in my ears.

*****

I lumbered out of my bedroom, not even attempting to be quiet. The sun was up, but the smog of the city was so thick today the light was a very dark grey instead of bright early morning light. The clock on the oven said it was six AM. I flipped on the light in the kitchenette and started making coffee, and I didn't even remember that Jimin and Jungkook slept in the living room until Jungkook groaned.

"Turn the light off!" he muttered. "What's your Grim for, a paper weight?" I grunted back, and flipped the light off. Going much more quietly, I felt my way around the kitchen as I the coffee pot and poured in the grinds. I sat at the tiny table, rubbing my temples and staring into the darkness as I waited for the coffee to finish. I felt better with my back against the wall. Dreams are supposed to be weird, but that dream was a little too weird, a little too intense and vivid.

The green light on the coffee pot blinked, signalling the coffee was finished. I grabbed a throwaway mug from the plastic sleeve on the counter, and carefully, finding the best light to see by, poured the coffee into the mug with minimal spillage. I snapped the plastic lid on and sat back down at the small table. I took a sip. Burned my tongue. Took another sip, just staring into the darkness, trying very hard not to think about the dream. Think about something happy, I told myself, but that led to the inevitable question: What was happy anymore? With so many people dead, even my happiest memories with Sunmi were now colored with sadness and grief.

But not everything was like that, I told myself. The past few days here haven't been so bad. Cooking a big meal and eating and drinking with the boys was the most fun I'd had in a while. The sleepy sort of funk that hung over the apartment the morning after was kind of enjoyable too. I was relaxed, if a little hungover. And last night, going out around Daegu with Jimin was really fun, too! I enjoyed pretending nothing was wrong as Jimin and I browsed the shops and sat under the tree in the park. Those were happy things I could focus on, as few as they were. I took another sip of coffee.

I slowly drained my coffee cup. By the time I was finished and was making another one, the apartment had gone from the color of angry storm clouds grey to dirty slush on the side of the road grey. It was horrible for your eyes to try and see in this poor lighting, but I didn't want to wake Jimin or Jungkook up again. Just because I was woken up at the hairy crack of dawn by a weird nightmare doesn't mean they had to suffer with me. As I waited for the second pot of coffee to finish brewing, I watched the clock on the ove