I woke up in the middle of the night and I was cold.
 I was shivering, my teeth were chattering, my flesh felt
like it was being torn off my bones and frozen solid.
 It was the middle of summer. I went to sleep without a
shirt, wearing only a pair of boxers and a flimsy sheet as a
sorry excuse for a blanket. I grabbed it now as my body
curled itself tightly, too cold to even move.
 After a few torturous moments I got up, threw open the the
cabinet doors, and dug out the heaviest woolen blanket I
could find. Then I jumped back on the mattress and buried
myself inside.
 It did no good. I felt as if the temperature was sub-zero.
During the rest of the hellish hours left till dawn, I got
up again a few times and put on warm clothes, a second
blanket and even turned on a stove, and none of that helped.
In the morning I was still freezing cold. Also, I had slept
not even a moment since I woke up, and yet the bed was
drenched in my sweat.

I took my temperature come morning. It was normal. My
parents, who would usually insist on my going to school at a
time like this, took one look at my face and fell silent. I
crawled back into my sealed cocoon of a room and shut the
door.
 Then the nightmares began.

About six weeks earlier, I was involved in a car crash that
killed my two closest friends, my girlfriend, and put me in
a hospital for more than a month. I was the only survivor,
if you don't count the other driver who rammed into our car
after it wrapped itself around a tree and broke Shelly's
neck.
 It's strange, though. The only snippets of memory I have
of that night are the ones of the second between the
crashes, with the incoming car's headlights framing framing
Shelly's face from behind like an unholy glow. Then me,
stupidly thinking: everything's gonna be all right.
Everything's gonna be just fine.
 I wasn't driving, you understand, but I was the only one
in the car, aside from Shelly, who wasn't completely drunk.
I had my share, sure, and if I was driving the whole thing
might have happend all the same. But still, I was the only
one with enough brains left in me to insist on NOT taking
the car back that night. In that sense, I felt I was
responsible.
 Responsible. As if anyone could accept the unthinkable
accountability for another person's life, not to mention
three. When I was lying in that hospital, trying to piece
together the details of that night and failing every time, I
was visited by a lot of people. Friends, relatives; the
faces blur into each other now but the message remained the
same: It Wasn't Your Fault. There Was Nothing You Could Do.
God Works In Mysterious Ways. They were full of shit and
they knew it, but pretended to know were talking about
anyway.
 So I pretended, too.

I pretended so well that they didn't even send me to a
psychologist more than one or two times once I could stand
up again. I smiled and said it wasn't necessary. I don't
know if they believed me or sensed that I wanted to be
alone. It didn't really matter. I came home and ate my food
and went to sleep and woke up and went to school and and
everyone was SO sorry and was I okay and sure I was just
fine I'm a tough mother fucker aren't I and it doesn't even
matter that I killed my friends and the girl I love no it
doesn't matter at all does it?
 I had nightmares, but that was okay since I could never
remember them and besides, I deseved them anyway, haven't
I?
 I stopped talking to people I knew more then the casual
word here and there, but everyone assumed that was all
right, what with everything I was going through. That I just
needed some time to work it out.
 I felt barriers falling between the rest of the world and
me, so real I could almost touch them.
 I never called Shelly's parents because I knew what they
would say, and I couldn't find the balls, not in a hundred
years, to face them as they said it. Hell, I didn't even go
to the funerals. Why not? I'm just not a nice guy, I guess.
We can't all be born saints.

Things went on and on. Time flowed forward like a giant,
uncaring river. The event that reshaped my life wasn't even
a pebble in the stream.
 In the other world, the one I once considered real, the
final exams were taken. I had my final exam every time I
closed my eyes and saw faces. Shelly framed in the
headlights. My friends laughing on the way. The times we had
on the trip south.
 I failed it each time. And every night it's gotten colder
and colder, until one day I went to the cemetary and said
I'm sorry to Shelly and the guys. Then I went home and blew
my brains out with my father's gun.

Clouds. Beautiful gray clouds rolling over each other,
silently merging into impossible forms. The occasional shaft
of sunlight appears here and there, only to be choked off a
moment later.
 And I understand, I understand it all now. The dreams, the
coldness. I see it all so clearly. No onw is really the
master of his soul.
 Everything's gonna be all right. Everything's gonna be
just fine.