The room was so dark that at first he wasn’t sure his eyes were open. He wandered down the hall and into the living room. The clock on the DVD player flashed a sickly green “88:88” mournfully, clearly as lost as he was. The front door was not locked. Outside the grass felt strange under his bare feet. Indistinct. It was green, too; green, where it should have been grey. Everything else was grey in this murky light. Gloaming. That’s what they called it.

There was something off about the street. It looked precisely as he would describe his street in this light, this gloaming. That was the problem. It was as if it was a set built by someone who had heard that description, but had not thought to fill in the details. Broad brushstrokes, like a child’s painting of brick, mortar, asphalt, grass and azaleas. Away to the left, away from the cul-de-sac, the sky bloomed yellow and orange over the distant, indistinct grey blobs in the middle distance. It was not dawn; more like an explosion he could not see or hear lighting the low-hanging clouds from below.

His mind clicked into place, finally fully awake. He had had this dream before.