(Warning: Surrealism ahead.)

It’s 3:24 AM and the sun has long since set. I’m tired and I want to go to sleep, but there’s a riot outside. People are throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks and screaming through cupped hands as they are hit with tear gas. A little girl in a pink and white dress pounds on my window, but when I get up to open the glass, she is gone. Why can’t I sleep? I look out on the street and watch an armored personnel carrier melt into the ground, illuminating the asphalt with a fiery orange. A woman with grain-blonde hair points at her husband and laughs as they both suffocate, choking on the fumes they helped create. The screaming stops and I close my eyes to go to sleep, but the pounding on my window is back.