I woke up and a man was sitting on my chest. the trauma king. white suit. white hair. white shoes. right on the bed. he looked startled but confident. told me to go back to sleep. I asked him if he knew my stories. "son", he says, "I put them there". the wall of statistics and hopeless logistics sewed into my eyelids. architect of a monolith with no address.

"son, you're paranoid. no one engineers these nightmares."