It's Two-fer-Tuesday!!

Part XVII – The Dream

“Did you see the old man?” Rock asks the bald man, tugging at his sleeve while he talks at him.  “Just then, across the intersection.  It was him.”

“What are you talking about?  It was who?”

“The old man.  The one who created the sunlit city, before it became the twilight city.  I saw him.”  Rock rants on, “That’s the second time.  But he’s dead.  So are the lizard-men.  That’s why the city is in twilight.”

“Rock, pal, take it easy,” the bald man says.  “We’ll get you to a doctor for your dreams.  You’ll be fine.”

“No, you don’t get it.  They’re not just dreams; it’s a whole other reality.  It’s real.”  Rock closes his eyes, pounds his fist on the dash of the aircar.  “And I’m afraid of what those dreaded shadow-lurkers will do when they get me.”

‘Rock, my friend,’ the bald man thinks, ‘I hope we can get the kind of help you may need.’

“They think I’m this human-god that the dead lizard-men worshiped, and the twilight gods want me dead.  I try to tell them I’m not a god, just a singer in a rock band, but they don’t listen.  They just hang around and… lurk.”

“Well, as long as they don’t come any closer, you’ll be O.K., eh?” the bald man says lightly.

“No, you don’t grok;  they lurk; in the shadows.  They just… they…”

Rock passes out from the pill the bald man put in his drink.

‘Finally,’ the bald man thinks. ‘Rock’s really losing it.  I hope it’s just some drugs, or something.  Maybe the pressures of stardom getting to him.  I’ll take him somewhere to get checked out.’