Shades of wonder steal my fancy with shrieks of revelry, sounding as familiar voices within the vast, starry expanse of passing daydream. For that is where they live, I know, in that house that horror and time illumine within the solid black of dreams.

I scarcely remember the manner in which I climbed atop the world, but, gazing down across this sleeping city, I have found some manner of peace. Fleeting though this calm may be I grasp wildly for it with my heaving heart, that I may keep it for a moment longer. To my surprise the calm wave washes over me, and does not flee from my mind as it has so many times before. I hold these peaceful thoughts close and cherish them with all the passion of a lifetime spent without, for I know that such feelings must always yield to envious time.

Slow are the innocent flakes that fall from grey soaked skies, gathering into icy drifts across the barren roof which I now stand upon. My face and hands, the only flesh of mine not wrapped in hoary wool, are fast becoming numb with each second longer of the wintry winds embrace. I recall with bitter nostalgia that this was once a passing fancy of mine, a remnant of youthful daydream, to stand aloft upon some airy summit and peer down upon an imperfect world, dulled to magnificence by sheer distance alone.

Yet, with my boyhood imaginings now painfully real I grip the frigid, frosted edges of the apartment roof with terror as I continue to stand numbly at the edge of my own mortality. My breath leaves me in near frenzied gasps and is carried off on the cool winter winds as a vapor, pale with fright. For a moment I dream that I may follow this vapor and be carried off to the high heavens on wings of light, but such imaginings are quickly forced from my mind as I find my hands obeying this daydream and loosening their grip. I shout in horror of both the great heights as well as my own betrayal, and fall backwards towards salvation. In that frantic moment I fear the tempting abyss above all else, and so with the horror of a thousand sleepless nights I close shut my tear-filled eyes.