I was perched atop a tower made from rusted rebar and ancient beer bottles. It was nighttime and the air was very thick, although I could not quite feel it. It occured to me to wonder about this, and that led to a conversation with myself.

I am often alone in my dreams.

A large basset hound wandered across my lap and I tried to catch it, but couldn't reach. I had only hoped to pet it or maybe ask it a question, but now I noticed that it was attempting to choke down what looked like an old chicken bone. I got to my feet to follow it, and it was morning.

I suppose I could have seen the ground below if I had thought to look for it, but I was aware of how far it was, and how close it could be, and that was all I needed to know. The basset hound was making its way down the tower, meandering through a thicket of rust and debris, pausing now and again to gasp, and cough, and choke.

The tower swayed threateningly to every little movement of mine, and I cringed at every little movement it made, and soon we fell into an uneasy rhythm. I was suspended some two hundred feet above the ground, dancing on a serpentine scaffold of twisting iron and a million little circles of green glass that sparkled reproachfully through ages of grime. Its skeleton was soft beneath my feet, and as I crept down it, and as it got thicker and thicker and the spaces beneath me got wider and wider and as the bottles winked more and more hungrily at me, I realized that the danger was not falling down... but in. I could not hear the beat we were moving to, but I could feel it in my spine, and it was accelerating. Where the rhythm had been awkward before, now it became malicious and discordant and very, very rapid, and I became more and more afraid.