He hated the cold.  Hated the way that it bit down, through the skin, to the bone, to the marrow, to the SOUL, if he wanted to be dramatic about it.  So why was he standing outside on a sidewalk in New York in the middle of winter with no coat, no shirt, and no shoes?  Why was he in New York at all?  It had been five years since he'd been, five years since Amber and the booze and that ugly scene at Grand Central, and he'd sworn he'd never be back.

So why was he here now?  He didn't remember getting there, and while that wouldn't have been so shocking five years ago, he'd been sober since then.  No blackouts, no waking up in random beds or yards or shopping aisles.  A better question:  Where the hell were his pants?  His stomach lurched as he realized that not only was he not dressed for a New York winter, he wasn't dressed at ALL.

He was standing on a sidewalk, stark naked.  But there were no stares or gasps or sirens.  Because he was the only one there.  Footprints from thousands of pedestrians marred the snow, but in a city that never slept, everyone had apparently gone to bed, because he was out here all alone.  And while he should have been shivering uncontrollably, he felt nothing.  Maybe he was in the last stages of hypothermia, but even that should provoke some kind of physical reaction, and yet he had none.

Streetlights and Christmas lights cast a lazy yellow pall over the whole street.  Snow lay heaped on the parked cars.  It was eerie or peaceful, take your pick.  And something else, something that definitely fell on the eerie side of the equation.  It was quiet.  There were no stares or gasps or sirens.  There was nothing.  Not a sound.   And that's not the New York that he knew.

"Because it's a dream, you jackass."  He thought he said it out loud, but he wasn't sure.  It made sense, though.  Naked in New York in winter with no frostbite and nobody calling the cops and actually nobody at all.  He took a step, then another.  It sure felt real.  He could feel the sidewalk and he could see the lights and while he couldn't hear the sounds of the city, he realized he could hear something.  A muffled hiss, like the sound it makes when you press your hands against your ears.  The sound of a seashell.  The sound of the ocean.  And just underneath it something else. . .chittering?  Some kind of clicking or clacking, some scuttering sound just loud enough to barely be heard.

And then he knew why he was here.  And he knew why there was no one around.  And he knew what those clickety-clack sounds were.

And so he screamed.