[I sat there], listening to the ticking of the clock, waiting for Phfaall to begin his story. The old man seemed to me overcome by a strange kind of stupor, his pale eyes shifting around at random as he sought for the right words.
Suddenly, when the monotone ticking of the clock had almost driven me to sleep, he began:
“For 40 years now, I’ve had the same dream every night.
I’m driving down the Miami coast on a soft summer’s night. Next to me sits the woman of my dreams, the wind is in her raven hair, tousling it about. My car is a [INSERT-CONVERTIBLE-PERIOD-SPORTS-CAR-HERE], red and roaring. A smell of salt hangs in the air. Seagull-screams and music from a far-off beach party roll over us like the steady waves of the ocean on the sand. The woman of my dreams looks over at me and smiles, and I realize that in the whole world there’s nowhere I’d rather be than right here. We’re young and we’re in love, nothing else matters. She whispers something in my ear, and turbulent tranquility overwhelms me. She puts her head on my shoulder and I wrap my arm around her and I feel whole and then a sudden screaming metal noise invades my head and I wake up, terrified and sweating with the scent of burnt chemicals hanging in my nostrils."
The old man paused, scratched his chin and said:
"It has been that way for 40 years. I think it will remain that way until the day I die.”
I consider my questions and then I ask the obvious one:
“The woman in your dreams, What did she whisper?”
Phfaall paused for some time, and then, with what seemed like great hesitation, spoke:
“Every night, when I go to bed, I tell myself to remember it when morning come, and every morning when I wake up, I can’t remember.”