Wait for the night, wait for lights out, wait for the dreams to sink beneath the ground.

Sometimes I think I must be the one dreaming, tossing and turning to some nightmare sound scraping along my eardrums and piercing my brain, overwhelming all senses.

I live--sleep--beneath a building filled with darling little specimens from various walks of human life. The woman in bed on the second floor, who cries alone and wonders whether her absent husband is still being "faithful", then using her answer to justify the younger man who lies beside her in his stead. The businessman on the first floor who forgot his childhood and now sobs into the wine that lowers a black veil over his sleep. The man next door, who never leaves his apartment--except for two hours on a Thursday morning, to go fetch food and cigarettes--hiding in curtained daylight, muttering to himself while administering a random number of lashes from a pocket-sized whip. On the ground floor, the young girl whose baby never stops crying--but oh, you know there's one way you could stop her crying, don't you, my dear? How long will it be? What are these creatures, in the end, to such creatures as you and I, Lorelei? Hiding between the cracks in the brickwork, all of them: a blur of suits and festering madmen.

I am not up there, playing pretend with them. Not for me their golden shadows. I have my basement, my own little cell. And so all of their dreams come down here, come to me; they circle my head in a fetid halo of smoked blood, and pool in the base of my skull, only to drown in my own nightmares. I don't want them, don't want their screams violating my brain. But I wanted you, Lorelei. Oh, yes, I wanted you.

It is nearly twilight, but tonight, no anticipation yields no spark. My body is neither hot nor cold, refusing to burn. I roll onto my side, stretching my fingers across the stippled concrete. Cold, lifeless. Let the dreams go all the way down to die. The halo shifts and swirls around me, clouding my gaze. I close my eyes, summoning the memory--my memory--of our dance, and finally, the way you looked at me. Do you know, my darling, I don't think the possibility of you forsaking me for those same golden shadows ever crossed my narcissistic little mind. Were you so very scared, seeing yourself reflected that way in me?

Now, for this slice of eternity, our eclipse has passed, and it seems Fate's will would call me away. But they can not touch me, so you need not worry, my darling. There is nothing I can give them, only forgeries and tricks and sleights of hand and such lovely, lingering deceptions. Lucifer. Loki. Morpheus. Puck. Odin. Dionysos. Coyote. Raven. Angel. Demon. Messiah. So many names I've been given, at any given time, and yet my form is my own and takes not from the male. And I have such terrifying, beautiful memories, of sharing this form with you before. I've seen you forget, and I've seen you remember, and I've seen you let their wailing voices and their oh-so-predictable world crush the truth of you and I way down deep. That's why I did it, darling. It's why I gave you the key, and why I made myself a copy.

And so I hope you can forgive me, when at last you find the door, and step through it, waking like a phoenix from that empty dream. You will remember what you are, and who I am, and you will be all alone and you will know how to hate me. And we will belong to each other, just the same.

For me, for now, the white halls of Fenrir are calling, howling with the stars, a symphony of madness underscoring those petty, mortal dreams. And with the waking of the moon, I rise, and I will go to them holding only an echo, a forgery, and so I will carry you with me, more real and alive than the blood in my veins, as I have carried you always.

You can run from me forever, if such is your wish. And how I will love to watch you try, until the end of everything.