The texts and automated calls came at 3 A.M. Something odd and quite alarming was happening. Ethan was jarred awake from a serene dream about waterfalls and a mountain top cabin. The dream was so ornate and so real that it lingered for a bit as he read the words, a bit of water seeming to crest into froth in the corners of his room then away.
He was tired of the rain. It seemed endless. The rain was legion, it was a seeping mass on every little detail of even the most random place. He hated the droplets, the rivulets, the way it bent light like drunk lazy prisms. Most of all he hated the smell. How can something opaque smell so bad sometimes? Rain was this giant entity almost like it was alive and stretched across all. He cursed it under his breath, dreamed of fighting it with fists.
The city was also alive with spider veins of light, pulsing, moving along skins of wall and roof like a great weary spider. The signs for too many tiny shops beat against each other, the lettering slithering as far as one could see. He saw this too in dreams, but it was vines, kudzu, snakes, lava that was alive somehow but of a hushed spatial venom, of something portenous he sensed but had no clue of.
He was a police officer who dreamed of unicorns. He was in his early 30’s, some would even call him handsome if he ever smiled. He never did.