It was like dropping acid in one of the rape houses in Buchenwald and getting hotwired into Hell.

I spent two days copious vomiting up every meal I'd ever eaten and willing myself not to set fire to my genitals. How I'd gotten free was a mystery. I had awoken in a flop house, smeared with lipstick and menstrual blood, wearing a blue cardigan and suffering from a four-alarm infestation of the crabs. Considering my little escapade, I'd gotten away lightly.

Lesson One: One does not lightly fuck with the repressions of a thousand writers without dire consequences.

It's a hard lesson, but a necessary one. And, it's the final one for now. I've walked the dark and shadowed paths of Subreality. I've climbed mountains, forded streams, and stepped into plots and cliches plenty. I've learned.

I have learned.

Did you know that at the furthest reaches of the Shifting Sands there is a group of fictives that worship Abyss' slippers as the gods of Death? Or that there is a whole cluster of sewers shaped along the descriptions of the Morlock tunnels, as described by every writer who's dealt with them? Or that, in an odd case of self-referential plots, we are downspiral on the Bleed, and recognized as a frightening and chaotic universe by the Authority?

We build sand castles for the tide, and never bother to look out of the ocean around us and try to understand. It's a sick sort of blinding set upon us. Especially since we don't need to.

It's a time for explorers and scientists; poets and madmen. It's a time for heroes on the horizon, in the blood red glare of a setting sun. It's time to stop being afraid of what we might find.

This is the limitless landscape of imagination. It's a world of heart-stopping miracles and inhuman brutalities. It's nobility and base evil made real. Dreams and nightmares solid and interacting with you on a regular basis. Do you really want to meet your alter-ego for coffee on a regular basis? Most people would rather scream and have it killed as soon as possible in terror of themselves.

A sled full of mukluk-wearing X-Men nearly wipes me out as I reach the street. Several Daleks prowl the sidewalk. John Constantine appears in similarly rumpled condition and offers me a cigarette. Morning in Subreality.

I watched a phoenix born on the slopes of Mount Excelsior. Some fantasy-happy writer has introduced one somehow. It swooped down, with wings trailing fire in miles long trails. Settled on a bare rocky shelf, and ignited with deep blue-green flames. In that hot inferno, it burnt itself out and a new one launched itself into the sky. How can you not watch that with awe?

Subreality is about seeing your imagination from the inside out, from all the bad, nasty wet bits you keep hidden in the corners to the greatest triumphs to the human spirit you can envision. We are children of nebulous ideas and tenacious creativity. We are happy spectators and participants in the only field that really matters. Science, medicine, physics are all thing which help us live, but it is that creative burst we live for.

It was five minutes to the Cafe on foot, where we first fell into this realm of scarcely controlled madness. Funny when you think about it. So much written about the Cafe, but it really didn't take off until someone asked "Well, what's outside of it then?"

It's what makes up all of us.

It's early for a drink if you're anyone but me. The cool darkness of the Cafe soothed shattered nerves and frazzled brain cells. In those familiar surroundings, it's almost easy to forget that I just took a hearty swig from the id of Subreality and gurgled with it.

A Guinness. Of course.

Brothers Drunk. Under the table. Dexx. Three years of images and words flooding back in a wave. Tears in the eyes and a drink at the elbow. It's a cliche. Subreality is trying to force a happy ending.

I can almost see Abyss, Phil and DuAnn in the seats. I can feel the edges of the plot. I finally understand what this place really is. And I grin as I understand finally how I fit in.

"Fuck you, Subreality. I'm in on the joke."

A grin ear to ear. A realm with a sense of humour. A rite of passage. It's so funny I'm almost floored with the laughter. The realm bought me a pint. How can you not wonder and laugh?

That's the secret of Subreality. It is a realm of dark passions, limitless dreams, unbridled ideas, bad characters, worse plots and rampant archetypes. It's a place of verbalized madness.

How can you not wonder and laugh?