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“I ondering if you were getting enough food You’ve lost soood”

“Thanks,” Maryplenty to eat”

“Did you get so?”

Mary nodded “Yes It was really great”

“Okay Later”

Sauest room It was nicelytowels He kept the room very neat and clean because it was still so his rooood question But it sure wasn’t his

Which did not stop hi almost instantly from hectic consciousness to sleep

But there was no peace in his dreams He had a dream of his mother Only she wasn’t really his mother in the dream, not the real person She was the creature who had called for him in the midst of ould have been the poof

Happy fifteenth birthday, Sam, now step out of the FAYZ into…into no one knehat

So what you wanted to see And yet, it had seemed so real at the time In his dream, Sam relived that moment

He saw Caine, his fraternal tithin a circle of blistering light He saw their irl, maybe twelve, thin, with a lot of thick ponytail He wondered in a vague sort of way about the girl There had been no girl there during the poof Not inside the distortion No girl

But now that drea at the botto as trash barrels rolling down the steps It started with a can of beans And then another And then a can of ravioli The cans started co to climb the steps but he couldn’t because every time he lifted a foot to set it down on a step, he found another can hurtling toward him

Now a cascade of little cans, al around under his feet He was tripping, slipping and sliding in a cascade of cans, unable to rise

In his dreaain Lots of brown hair drawn back in a long ponytail The girl She was at the top of the stairs But she wasn’t throwing the cans

The cans becareen Junior Mints label Cans of the Sam, who noas buried under them