Amurehna

The tower walls had a hollow metal ring to them, and stretched to unknown heights and depths. There were concrete platforms jutting from walls out of the void at irregular intervals. I flee from platform to platform, unsure where I'm going. I figure the only way out is up. I come to a swaying dark gray pillar, it looks to be climbable, but when I launch myself at it, I scrabble helplessly at the sides which are soft. I realize then that the pillar is all mattresses. The platform I'm on is also mattresses and jumping off has knocked many off the top. So if I don't climb the taller pillar then I will fall. I start to panic, seeming to hang in mid air. Then a hand seizes my wrist. It is a hand I know as well as my own.
Liam.
He doesn't so much pull me up, as make sure I have a hand hold before releasing me and moving away. I clamber over the edge. There's a set of pillows under a two foot high window that runs the width of the bed. I get a good look at my rescuer.
This is the weirdest thing ever, okay. This has never happened to me before and I don't fully understand why it happened at all.
My savior is a woman. She feels like Liam, though, and has all his physical markers. The angular features, red hair, blue eyes (though faded and icy). She is not quite his height or breadth. My heart catches in my throat. I can't believe he's here. I am not in awe, because he is a veiled avatar, but neither can I speak freely. I edge closer to...her. Fascinated.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, voice a whisper.
She flicks her eyes in my direction then averts her gaze, callous. “Did I say you could touch me?” I realize then how close I've gotten. The words seem more like “Who said you had the right to do this?”. I hastily retreat and sit back on my heels.
She won't look at me, suddenly intent on the dirt under her fingernails. From this angle she is male, clearly Liam. Hard-faced and bitter. Each word is distasteful, quick, bitten off. “It's...clear you aren't coming home. I know that now. I know you can't.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, he doesn't answer it directly. "How do you know?"
“Sometimes I wish you had just died with the others we helped.”
This one sentence changes what I know of our story. In my version I assumed that we ventured into the Between as incorporeal beings, broke the Serpent into pieces and then killed ourselves or each other to absorb the pieces and carry them here within us to this aether-dead world. In this story, Saja and the others left their bodies behind, having sent their souls onward through the veil.
He makes it sound like those who stayed behind, people outside the groups Wolf created, helped with the killing. I see him from the point of view of a young man, Liam's dressed in a loose white shirt, eyes flashing, mouth twisting with disgust for the task as he raises his arms overhead. His hands are quick, stabbing a thin straight blade down into the man's chest.
The image is lightning-quick and stuns me. I know then that having anyone on the outside of our group helping was a mistake. They were killed in the Between like Saja and the others, but their cords snapped almost immediately, ensuring that those sacrificed that way died within weeks.
“You...helped them?”
Still he doesn't look at me. “But you didn't. You won't. You...persist. Living endlessly despite the lack of sustenance. So I'll never be able to let you go.”
He's the woman again. I touch his knee, unsure if I can comfort him. Or even if I should try. I want to ask him if he still loves me, but you don't tell someone you love that you wish they were dead.
Then it became horrifying. I was trying to dig for information while I had him in front of me, despite what he had just said. We were running out of time. There's a flash, I'm distracted, and when I turn back she is laying back on the pillows as though dead. She becomes younger before my eyes, becoming a tiny infant, and when her age stops decreasing, the crown of her head shrinks from a grapefruit to the size of a golf ball. Then the top erupts liquid all over the pillow. Sick, I stare down at her. What now?



I tossed recklessly, before falling back to sleep. I am at work, but the layout of the building is kind of crazy. One end of the vast building is a restaurant on a beach, with an open patio overlooking the water. All the trim is bright white.

I only remember a few parts. Someone sends me to the middle of the store from Flooring to tell a man that we aren't sure about the price on a rug. As I'm running it occurs to me that I should have scanned the tag before listening to the associate who sent me. He's sitting at a table at the center of the store. This area is like a dining area, enclosed, with doors on each wall leading through narrow halls that go to every department.
“We couldn't find the price for it, I'm sorry. It isn't usually priced by the square foot....” My voice comes out with a Hispanic accent, even though I have no accent in life. His mouth quirks up in an unkind way. I narrow my eyes at him, suddenly feeling sassy.
“Of course you couldn't, look again?”
“I could go back and scan the tag...”
“Are you sure you can read it? Do you even speak English?”
I concentrate for a moment and my voice comes out normal, unaccented and cold. “I assure you that I do. Maybe if you weren't such an asshole, we'd be more willing to help you.”
He got up and left.

There's a blond man and a little Indian guy at the table. There's a phone booth on one side of the table and we hear a girl I work with telling a friend about a guy she met in California. She's bragging about how smart and successful he his. The two men think she's lying and start mocking her. I'm extremely offended and with a surge of protectiveness I tell them to shut their stupid faces, that it isn't fair for them to treat her this way just because they think she's a whore.

There was another instance with the two men but I don't remember it very well. I felt like they were mocking me.

A man tells me to check out the new attraction, because he's the leader of a Freak Show. There's a wide stable, the floors covered in straw. There are horses of many colors, they're all beautiful. I see the one he's talking about though. It is a large dray mare, a coat color they call 'fleabitten'. She's large and beautiful...until she turns to to the side and I see an extra horse head protruding from each flank. And then from the shoulders are two human arms above the horse legs. I'm fascinated and a little disgusted. Especially when I realize the horse is male...? Ish? And that it wants a hug. It speaks to me with a sudden human head and grabs me, making me really uncomfortable....