He woke up and he didn't know where he was.This wasn't a particularly alien concept to him, but he wasn't exactly comfortable with it. He was never comfortable with it, no matter how many times it happened. You wake up in an alley, head pounding, the sickeningly familiar sensation of cold, coagulating blood on your skin. You wake up in the men's room at a club near Coney Island, missing several buttons, a couple of teeth loose, a couple of ribs broken. You wake up in a filthy apartment on someone's bug-infested couch, disguise gone, no memory of any witnesses or even whose couch you're on. You wake up in a hospital bed, your mind and face a mess, but the police aren't asking you any questions. You wake up tied to a chair with some leering mask spouting incomprehensible exposition at you. You wake up facedown in the sand.

You wake up in a formless void.

After taking a somewhat liesurely inventory of his various body parts and coming to the moderately comforting conclusion that he was more or less in one piece, our frighteningly wholesome-looking young protagonist groaningly rose to a sitting position and immediately said something which should have earned his mouth an intimate encounter with a bar of laundry soap.

He had absolutely no idea what the hell he was sitting on.

DC: SECOND COMING and POP CRACK MAGIC ENTERTAINMENT proudly present a GINA ACTION DONAHUE production

The Sandman: Dust to Dust #1

"Little Sandy's Adventures in Slumberland"

or,

"Where Is My Mind?"

Wes checked the indicators one more time, refusing to look at the towering glass tank in the back of the basement. He stared at his hands for a moment, then remembered one last thing - one kindness, one courtesy. Something his ward would have appre-- would appreciate. He hoped.

Pushing his glasses up on his face, his motions almost completely automatic, Wes slowly walked toward the exit to his sanctuary, his back toward the monster he'd created. He hadn't meant for any of it to happen. He hadn't thought that-- no, he hadn't thought at all. What did he hope to accomplish, letting a child into his world of nightmares and endless fighting, of mortal danger, of fates worse than death? Did it have anything to do with the boy, or was it simply to keep him sane?

Climbing the stairs back to the land of the daytime, Wes felt older with every step he took.

Dian still didn't know.

Muttering under his breath, Sandy got to his feet and stared at the emptiness below him. Totally blank, it was; there was some sort of light, but no apparent source. He looked behind him and to his sides, but didn't see a shadow, and then he looked down at himself. He could *see* himself, and he was still in costume, but...well, that didn't establish anything.

"Hello?" called the kid, cupping his gauntleted hands around his mouth. There was no answer, and no echo. He tried it again, this time louder. "HELLOOOOO! Is there anyone out there?"

Nothing.

Time to take stock, then. Not that he hadn't really been doing that pretty much the entire time since he woke up, but a little formalization couldn't hurt. And since no one was around to catch him talking to himself, Sandy figured that couldn't hurt, either. He sat back down on the nothingness, crosslegged, and leaned on his knees. "I have no idea where I am," he started.

Looking rather pleased with himself and feeling vaguely silly, the teenager continued. "There's no floor, or ceiling, or sky, or ground, or sun, or...well, much of anything." Still sounded good. Stating the obvious is generally fairly cathartic, if redundant. "I don't remember fighting anyone with any weird powers or gadgets or anything, recently. I don't see anyone here, either. No death threats, no dark and manic cackling...darn! No girls, either."

Sandy was silent for a moment, as the reality of his situation finally began to sink in. Well, the reality of what he lacked in his situation, anyway. "No _girls!_"

Well, all right, he could work with this. There was always a way out of everything, even if you didn't seem to be anywhere at all. Getting back up and looking distinctly nonplussed, the Golden Boy began walking.

Wordlessly, alone, Wes Dodds unplugged the portable wooden radio and lifted it from its place in the front sitting room. The telephone started ringing, and he paused, looking in its direction.

He just stood there, radio in his hands, staring at the ringing telephone until it stopped. It could be anyone, but he knew without a shadow of a doubt that it had been Dian. But - it had stopped ringing. She'd likely be over later, and then there'd be no way he could keep her from it. For the first time in years, the Sandman was at a total loss.

How in the name of all that was holy could she possibly forgive him?

How could he forgive himself?

Finally, Wes looked down at the radio again, and started heading back to his study - back to the secret entrance to his secret lair full of secret secrets. He walked painfully slowly, unwilling to face what had become of his ward, but owing him at least this. Owing him so much more - his choices, his unwavering belief in justice and his supreme arrogance in thinking that he should be capable of dispensing it - these had cost Sandy any semblance of humanity. His precious secrets, kept as close as a hidden forest treehouse, had resulted in the monster in his basement.

Laughing bitterly as he came to the room in which the giant, gas-filled tank kept Sandy prisoner, Wesley wasn't unaware of the irony in his last thought. Back to monsters in basements and being deathly afraid of the dark - and he hadn't dreamed at all last night. The nightmare was right in front of him.

"Sandy," he whispered, broken, setting the radio on the floor near the tank. Looking in at the prone form contained therein, Wes lightly touched the glass, then leaned his forehead against it and closed his eyes. "I'm so sorry. I *will* find a cure for you...I won't let the darkness keep you forever. Please - please forgive me."

Having said this, the Sandman fell silent once more, bending to plug in the radio and turn it on. He spent a full five minutes tuning it once it'd warmed up, making sure (with a sick sense of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic) that not only was it receiving a station that played Sandy's favorite shows, news, and music, but that the clarity of reception was perfect.

He stood up once more, now unable to take his eyes off of his sleeping, monstrous ward, and just stared. It would still be a few hours before Dian arrived.

It felt like hours that he'd been walking - walking from nothing to nothing, on a surface of nothing whatsoever. He felt better about it than when he'd started, though; like some bizarre, otherworldly city department store, he'd suddenly acquired piped-in music. A personal radio station, playing his favorite songs, giving him a sense of the passage of time. In about ten minutes, according to the programme, it'd be time for the Shadow.

Sitting down again, taking his boots off, the Golden Boy wiggled his toes and mused. "Stupid formless void...what I wouldn't give for a nice, cold, well-mixed egg cream about now..."

All of a sudden, at the edge of his sight, an image flickered. Instantly, Sandy was all action, springing to his stockinged feet and adopting a defensive crouch, gasgun drawn. He almost didn't notice that he was actually standing on an identifiable surface. He was standing on sand. And it was already getting into his socks. But this flickering image - it was the first *anything* he'd seen since he'd gotten into this place - whatever this place was - and God only knew if it was friend or foe. Most likely foe, and most likely the responsible party in this...this bunch of malarky, he thought. "Who's there?" he called, uncertainly at first, and then angrily. "Who's there?! Come out and fight like a man!"

There was a hollow, endlessly morose laugh, and once more the image shimmered into view. It was a tall, dark-haired, painfully thin figure - still a long ways off, but approaching at a fair clip. "Poor little mortal," he said pityingly, his voice closer than his visage.

Sandy stood his ground, not even remotely relaxing, a distinctly unimpressed expression on his face. "Who are you? Are you - look, are you the guy responsible for this...this..." He trailed off, waving his gun-free hand around vaguely, in a gesture encompassing the entirety of the formless void. "This?" So it was a lame finish. It was no less irate, however, than the most verbose of annoyed inquiries.

"It is an edge; it is a Soft Place," came the man's voice, still patronising, still filled with a depthless pity. "The edge between your plane of conscious human thought and perception, and the Dreaming." He paused. "I am Dream."

"Oh, you're that dirty rat that won't leave Wes alone!" exclaimed Sandy, taking aim, completely forgetting how silly he looked in sock feet. "Don't you come another step closer, unless you want nightmares like he has!"

Shaking his head and smiling -ever- so slightly, Dream continued to approach. He was much closer now - only about fifteen feet away. "Your nightmare gases cannot harm me, young one. I am he who authors dreams. And you, you are trapped here in this place, where time is fluid and dreams and the waking world mesh. It is but a small part of my realm."

Looking uncertain, Sandy didn't lower his weapon - just audibly cocked the safety and mannaged a scowl. "Listen, buster, I don't know what you mean by trapped. I'm not trapped, I'm just in this weird place that you say is yours, all right? And if you're the schmuck that makes those horrible dreams, then you deserve everthing yer gonna get, you hear me? You let Wes be!"

"Wesley Dodds was a man cursed by the dark shadows of the future, but I am unable to free him of his ailment in your time. He is burdened because I had been forced from my realm," explained Dream patiently, as if to a small child with a large vocabulary. He stopped about five or six feet away from Sandy and looked down at him, practically towering over the smaller figure.

"You're talkin' a load of hooey! You let Wes go - take away his dreams - or you'll be sorry!" threatened Sandy, eyes wide but resolute, locking his elbows and eyeing Dream over the sight at the end of the gas gun's barrel.

"I cannot," said Dream simply. "And I will not, and would not have at that time if I could have," he amended. "There must be a receiver, a target, if I am not present. Oftentimes, even if I *am* present, the Dreaming selects one such as your mentor. The horrors of the Dreaming cannot be allowed to roam free; they must be channelled. Who better to do this than one whose moral code forces him to act upon the scenes he witnesses in his sleep?"

This cold statement, not only placing Wes firmly in the past tense but showing what an utter lack of any real care - just pity - that Dream had, was all itt took for Sandy to feel compelled to spring into action. For all his blustering with the gasgun, he could read Morpheus' stance, his bearing - there was no way in Hell the guy felt threatened by having a gun pointed at him, full of gas or not. But there was also no way Sandy could just stand there while this skinny pale guy explained why he wouldn't help Wes, when as far as the Golden Boy was concerned, he was inflicting Wes' misery in the first place.

"That's IT! That's the END, mister! You asked for it? You got it!" the teenager yelled, dropping the gasgun and leaping forward to tackle the Lord of Dreams. Within a second, he was pounding relentlessly at the guy and kicking up the endless sands, trying to inflict a decent amount of hurting upon Morpheus, frail or not.

The doorbell rang, and Wes looked up, raw fear taking posession of his features. His mind was screaming, his hands were shaking, and for a brief moment he was utterly unable to move - to leave the basement. It...it was supposed to be hours from now! Hours!

It rang again.

WILL MORPHEUS GET A BLOODY NOSE? HOW WILL DIAN BELMONT REACT TO THE NEWS CONCERNING HER NEPHEW? IS THERE ANY WAY SANDY CAN GET DREAM TO LAY OFF WES? IS DREAM REALLY TO BLAME IN THE FIRST PLACE? WHO ELSE CAN OUR HUMBLE NARRATOR WEASEL INTO THE STORY? DOES THE DOORBELL RING LIKE THE PHONE?

The answers to all these and more can be found in the next issue of THE SANDMAN: DUST TO DUST, only from DC: Second Coming!