Prologue
Dreamland is not like other lands: It is not like Disneyland, or LegoLand, or Potato land, or Alligator land. Of all places, real or not, Dreamland is most like the Hotel California.
You can come, but you can never leave.
The worst place in Dreamland is the Deepest Darkest Deep, Also called the DDD, or the Despair Diamond Deli.
The DDD is dark at all times of year, even in mid-may. It’s always cloudy and gloomy, and usually horribly cold. That’s because it never rains in the DDD – no matter how much moisture gathers above it.
The DDD is sandy as sand itself – As sandy as if the pyramids shook out their shoes over it, and then poured a few extra beaches out on top.
Sometimes it snows in the DDD, Then Samuel, whose job it is to sweep all the sand out of the parking lot of the Diamond Deli – not to be confused with the Despair Diamond Deli- has to rake snow out, instead.
The DDD is three miles by three miles wide. It could be ten miles by ten miles. Nobody lives there if they could live elsewhere. The DDD is a valley- like death valley, but worse.
Even if you can’t leave Dreamland, you can definitely leave the DDD. And almost everyone does – that is, if they’re unlucky enough to stumble into it in the first place.
There is only one surviving business in the DDD. And that’s not the Mafia – That is, any underground crime system. That’s because there’s not anything worth stealing, or killing, or kidnapping, or buying, or selling, in the DDD. The DDD is dull as dirt, but duller, and so is anything you might steal, kill, kidnap, buy, or sell there.
The Diamond Deli, not to be confused with the Despair Diamond Deli, is the only remaining business in the DDD. But the Diamond Deli was there even before the DDD was.
When you enter the DDD the first thing you see is a sign, on the sign is written:
Welcome, To the Deepest Darkest Deep.