IRL.

It's like I'm James fucking Bond or something.

People are scattering, screaming, pouring out of doorways into the foyer. There's a bomb in the building, I know it. I can hear the screeching klaxons of the timing mechanism. I am a buoy of calmness in a sea of feral panic. I force myself to concentrate.

Something is wrong, however. I'm tuned in, paying attention, but no matter which direction I move the sound of the bomb's alarm system don't seem to be getting any nearer or farther away. I resolve to check door to door, hoping to find the device by sight since it's masking it's proximity.

It's hopeless, I am told. A pair of cruel, decadent, piercing eyes look straight through me as the villain approaches. With a few subtle, catlike movements I am embraced, our lips meet and the building explodes.

My eyes flutter open. My alarm clock is still screaming. Of course I couldn't find the sound by listening in my dream; no matter where I went the clock was two feet from my head out here. If it was a snake it would have bit me.

I have a groggy, lurching epiphany in the shower. Something about the teeth of gears too large to see meshing, subtle turns of phrase impossibly repeated like code words of an exclusive club. I wonder how many times the answer was two feet from my head if I could just wake up and look at it. So close if it was a snake it would have bit me.

The epiphany, seeming to condense like water on the shower curtain, suddenly evaporates and is gone to wherever epiphanies always run off to when you're trying to hold on to them.

Down the drain, maybe.