Orin's Phoenix morning — "It’s the mornings after the spider-and-heights…"
It’s the mornings after the spider-and-heights dreams that are the most painful, that it takes sometimes three coffees and two showers and sometimes a run to loosen the grip on his soul’s throat; and these post-dream mornings are even worse if he wakes unalone, if the previous night’s Subject is still there, wanting to twitter, or to cuddle and, like, spoon, asking what exactly is the story with the foggy inverted tumblers on the bathroom floor, commenting on his night-sweats […]
Context
The dream serial has genres — spider dreams, heights dreams — and each genre has a morning-after cost, measured in coffees and showers. Dreams here shape the waking day's whole architecture; the Subjects only ever see the residue (night-sweats, tumblers over roaches) and never the content.