I am the protagonist of a very expensive movie, or so I tell myself. My name is Miles, and I am currently escorting a large, red, talking suitcase across the 42nd Street of a New York that has decided to stop making sense.

"Turn left at the fire hydrant that smells like cinnamon," the suitcase commanded. Its voice sounded like a mixture of a cello and a blender.

The first gate was a crossroads where the traffic lights were replaced by giant, floating eyeballs. To pass, I had to perform a perfect tango with a small, angry man in a tuxedo. I didn't know how to tango, but I improvised with a confidence that would have made a con artist blush. The man was so confused by my lack of rhythm that he simply stepped aside, convinced I was practicing some avant-garde form of performance art.

"Amateur," the suitcase sighed.

The second and third gates were even more absurd. I had to argue the legal rights of a pigeon in a court presided over by a small dog in a judge's wig, and I had to navigate a maze made entirely of oversized slices of rye bread. I "defeated" the guards not with violence, but with a series of increasingly improbable lies and a very loud singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" while standing on one leg.

By the fourth gate, the world was beginning to fray at the edges. The buildings were leaning at impossible angles, and the sky had turned the color of a bruised plum. I felt a strange sense of triumph. I was winning. I was the hero of the story.

The final gate was a simple white door standing alone in the middle of Times Square. There was no guard, only a mirror.

I looked into the mirror and saw a man in a white gown, sitting in a padded room, clutching a red pillow to his chest. He was talking to the pillow, his eyes wide and vacant.

"We're almost there, right?" the man in the mirror asked.

The red suitcase in my hand vanished. The neon lights of New York dissolved into the sterile, flickering fluorescence of a psychiatric ward. I wasn't a hero. I wasn't a protagonist. I was just a man who had forgotten how to be real.

I sat back down on my bed and waited for the nurse to bring my medication. I wondered if the pillow would still talk to me tomorrow.

*** OTMES_v2_Code: [M1:7.0, M3:9.0, N1:0.5, K1:0.9, I:0.7, R:0.1, theta:225, TI:48.0]