Requiem for a Dream

Darkness. Expansive, unending darkness. Everywhere and nowhere, all at once and not at all. There is no movement. There is no feeling. My existence is a moment that stretches in all directions indefinitely. This shadowland has no definition. A gloom sans purpose. A void without beginning or end. This bleak, bottomless nonexistence will never be bargained with. I’ve tried. I’ve screamed with a voice I do not have and begged with tears I cannot feel. It won’t be reasoned with. It simply endures, and somewhere in this nowhere land, I am floating through obscurity, locked in an invisible box that I cannot see or touch.

Darkness. Expansive, unending darkness. Everywhere and nowhere, all at once and not at all. There is no movement. There is no feeling. My existence is a moment that stretches in all directions indefinitely. This shadowland has no definition. A gloom sans purpose. A void without beginning or end. This bleak, bottomless nonexistence will never be bargained with. I’ve tried. I’ve screamed with a voice I do not have and begged with tears I cannot feel. It won’t be reasoned with. It simply endures, and somewhere in this nowhere land, I am floating through obscurity, locked in an invisible box that I cannot see or touch.

How long have I been here? Time feels like a joke I keep telling myself over and over to replace the rhythm of a heart beat I no longer possess. The Entity gave me the choice. I accepted Its offer—and yet, here I was sent, to languish indefinitely in the void.

How many times have I thrown myself this same pity party? Don’t answer that. It’s what I get for trusting a giant ink cloud with tentacles. It promised me if I accepted that I would be in control. If I didn’t? Oblivion. I accepted and was sent here anyway. Pathetic Yelena. Trusting some Lovecraftian nightmare come to life? You fell fucking victim for the classic blunder.

STOP. Do not fucking quote that movie. We’ve replayed that movie a thousand times now. Oh look. Now I’m using plural fucking pronouns and having internal arguments with myself. This is what I get for never wasting my brain cells on Hollywood garbage from the last two decades. My mental rental selection is made up of whatever old American shite was allowed on state television. Princess Bride. Rambo. Ducktales (Woo-hoo!). It wouldn’t have been so terrible if they weren’t dubbed with the same Russian voice actor flubbing the lines in poorly-spoken English.

I remember the first time I saw the Terminator with the original audio. I was very confused when I heard Arnold speak. I was in England for a judo competition. Sitting in the hotel, power-loading carbs before the tournament, flipping channels. Fuzzy signal gave way to the Terminator approaching the officer in the police station.

I’ll be back.

I thought someone was playing a joke on me.

(Thunk.)

What was that? What the fuck was that? It sounded like… like an axe sinking into wood. The sound still vibrates through a skull I don’t have. There is no air here. No molecules to carry waves. Yet I can still feel the echo. Heavy. Distinct. Am I finally losing my fucking mind? All this time… STOP TALKING ABOUT TIME. THERE’S NO SUCH—

(THUNK!)

A loud chop hammers at the nothingness. I didn’t imagine it. It happened. Another THUNK! Far above, where that had only been impenetrable nothing, a breach forms—jagged light splints into my personal hell. Bright. Painfully bright. Another follows, this one louder and meaner. The opening ruptures, revealing a blank canvas of pristine white without texture or seams.

Then a hand reaches toward me—black scaled, taloned—and seizes me. I can feel it. The sensation is horrifying and yet welcomed. It then yanks me upward, fast and hard, until suddenly—

I sit up in a darkened room. Sweat is pouring down my face. I look around, my mind radiating with pain that causes the air to hiss through my teeth as it breathes into my lungs that feel alien to me. The room is massive and grotesque, like some horror-themed episode of Interior Designers went amok. Everything is black and slick, with an oil-like shine. Strangely-shaped furniture, all asymmetrical, impossible angles, screams of Tim Burton sketches given life. Even the bed feels completely unnatural, like at any moment I might sink into it like quicksand.

“Maraeth?” a voice says next to me. I jump, immediately scooting my naked body across the sheets to the edge. A shape moves in the space next to where I’m lying, a silhouette that feels familiar to me as it shifts to reach for the lamp on the bedside table.

Click.

My hand shoots over my face to block my eyes. The light stings—not my eyes. My eyes feel fine, as if the sudden flood of information is nothing new to them. It’s my mind that buzzes with static as it tries to process the sudden influx of data it had long been denied access to.

“Maraeth, what is wrong?”

“I recognize your voice,” I say. My throat feels… strange, like finding the seat of a car out of place after someone else has driven it.

A hand reaches to me, its fingers circling around my wrist gently. Slowly, it lowers my arm, and a shape takes form against the soft, violet light. Short, chopped blonde hair. High cheeks. Blue eyes brilliant as aquamarine.

Emilia.

I lurch forward and throw my arms around her. She feels so small against my chest and I squeeze so hard the air rushes out of her lips.

“I missed you so much,” I say as tears spill from my eyes, wetting her neck. I cry with my whole body, shoulders heaving, heart that I always took for granted beating like a drum. The last time I cried this hard was next to my father as he took his final breath.

“Maraeth,” she says meekly. Her hand taps on my shoulder. “What is wrong?”

“Don’t call me that,” I say quietly as my arms slacken, and slowly pull away. I see black hair fall over my face that I don’t recognize. I grab at it and begin ripping, trying to tear it off me. Emilia shouts, “Stop!” Her hands grab at mine, pulling hard until I give in and let my arms fall to the bed, no longer willing or able to fight.

Her fingers pull the black hairs from my fingers as they slowly unclench. “Why are you doing this?” she asks but I don’t look up. I sob quietly. I try to speak but the words come out broken, and pathetic.

“I… never thought… I’d… see you… again…”

I feel her come closer, the heat of her body warming my skin, then her hand moves between us, rising to my face to cup my cheek. She presses against the weight of my face, lifting it until her gaze meets mine.

Her eyes widen.

“Yelena?”

She doesn’t wait. She throws herself into me, her long arms wrapping around my neck. “Is it you? Is it really you?” Her words ride a tidal wave of emotion that only feeds my own fragile state. I break down fully, completely collapsing into her. I came to terms with many things during my time in the void, but the thought of never seeing her sweet face again or her laugh—oh that laugh, how it came like a knife after a dead-panned delivery that stretched far longer than appropriate—or the way the slavic accent still clipped her words like a captured bird.

She holds me like I’m a child thrust back into the waking world after a horrifying nightmare. “Shhh,” she whispers to me, rocking me gently. “Is okay. I am here. You are here. Everything is okay.”

I finally get the nerve to ask the question scraping at the back of my brain, the one I must ask, but whose answer I am terrified to know.

“What is today?”

Emilia doesn’t answer. Not right away. Not until I pull back to look her in the face.

“Tell me,” I say as our hands interlink between us.

“Wednesday,” she says, then her eyes turn away, as if there’s any hope I’ll accept that answer.

“Emilia.”

She looks back, eyes wet.

“November. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.”

My teeth clench. In the back, my tongue is caught in the crossfire. Metal fills my mouth, but I can’t stop now.

“Year?” I ask her.

Her body droops down, as if the question itself makes her heart break.

“2025.”

“Well, that’s something, at least.”

Her thumbs are tracing circles on the backs of my hands. She asks me what’s the last thing I remember. The question feels like a saw carving into a block of ice. Inside is the last moment of awareness I can call my own. Everything after feels like playing back someone else’s life captured on damaged celluloid.

“I lost to Aurora. Went to the locker room. Next thing I’m on an airplane. Then in a car. Then I’m standing in front of my father’s house in Fredensborg.”

“Yelena, that was—”

“—nine months ago,” I finish, delivering the bad news with the detached practicality of a scientific article about the death toll of an ebola outbreak.

“Then who…”

She hesitates. I know the question already. Her silhouette shifts against the back light, altered by the discomfort of learning that all this time, she has been living a lie wearing my skin.

Protective mode kicks in. My hands find her shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay, listen, I know. I know how fucked up all this is but I’m here. I’m back and I promise I’m not going anywh—”

The last syllable never leaves my lips. The air is locked off when tension tightens every fiber of muscle in my body. Behind Emilia, past the diffuse violet glow of light, there is something in the darkness. Two eyes. Yellow. Burning. Set inside a detailless form standing in the corner.

“What is it?” Emilia asks, then turns to follow the path of my gaze. I grab her, focusing her back on me.

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

Movement draws my attention back to it. An arm extends outward. Not smooth but hard, ratcheting jerks as the limb sails upward with a single, elongated finger pointing towards the door.

“I need to go,” I say as I slip out of the bed. The cool air hits my naked body. I look around, searching for a robe or something, anything, to put on.

“Yelena,” she says, her voice wavering as she chases me across the mattress. “Do not go. Please. Sit down. Hold me.”

“Stay here,” I say after finding a black kimono draped over a chair with upholstery that feels like someone tanned a human face and called it furniture. I slip both arms in and turn back to her as I cinch the belt. She’s staring at me like she’ll never see me again. Maybe she won’t. Just in case, I lean down and kiss her. It’s the kind of kiss that someone gives before going into surgery they know they might not survive. Our lips don’t want to let go. Even as I pull away, the skin tries to hang on.

I look into her eyes, brush a bit of her short hair from her forehead, then make a promise I know isn’t mine to keep.

“I’ll be right back.”

“No,” she says, her body shaking, her hands grabbing after me as I walk away. The kimono stretches as she tries to hold on, but the silk slips from her tightened fists. “No, Yelena. Do not leave me again!”

Her voice chases after me, even as she stays behind like I asked. For a moment I’m afraid she will come running after me, but she’s always listened to me, going back to when we were kids. I try to ignore the pleading, the way it cracked her voice into a thousand splinters of pain. I have to stop in the hallway as I suddenly become overwhelmed with an amount of emotion I never thought I was capable of. I lean against the wall with my hand. It feels less solid and more like a living thing that subtly presses back.

What the fuck is this place?

I continue walking, drawn further down the hallway by nothing more than feeling with my hands clutching the robe closed. Everywhere I go, I feel like I’m being watched by something. The house I remember has been infected with strange perversity that I’ve never seen outside of a movie theater. Abstract paintings follow me with rainbow-colored eyes. The cracks between the floorboards glow faintly every time my feet press into the next. Even the architecture feels off. The hallway continues longer than it should, and crossing it becomes a journey in and of itself, but eventually it opens onto a balcony overlooking an expansive atrium below. I stop to lean over the rail and look down on the marble sourced from Greece that I had installed prior to moving in. My eyes then lift to the skylight, forty feet long, and through it I can see the full moon staring down at me, as if welcoming me back.

I breathe, and take a moment to rest my body against the balustrade. Even walking this distance makes me feel tired. My mind had gotten so used to not having to direct all this flesh, bone and water around. Every step feels like I’m walking through sand.

Before I continue, I’m halted by what looks like a floating rock suspended thirty feet above the atrium floor, nearly level with my gaze. It has the appearance of obsidian, slightly reflective, but it's riddled with deep veins that shift in hue across the color spectrum, pulsing at a steady, predictable rhythm.

A slideshow of pictures flick across my neocortex like the world’s most obscene power point presentation. I see the structure being installed by black-eyed men in coveralls under the direction of a squat man in a labcoat. A word comes to me—Resonance. That’s what the squat man in the lab coat called it when it was unveiled to Maraeth. It’s a device built for a singular purpose.

To control the minds of the enslaved.

“Like what I did to the place?”

I know the voice. It’s like my own but deeper, rougher, more visceral, like the speaker is chewing glass between words.

“No,” I answer matter-of-factly then turn to see myself standing at the top of the stairs. No, not myself. A disturbing copy of me. She’s wearing the same kimono but it’s covered in muck, and her hair is stringy, matted ropes filled with bits and pieces of vegetation. She looks like she just crawled out of a swamp.

It’s the Other Me.

The Entity.

Vora—

“No no no,” she says, wagging her finger back and forth like a windshield wiper. “Don’t even think Its name. I don’t think this is a Beetlejuice situation but I’d rather not tempt it. It’s not happy with me.”

I stare at her, confusion causing my brain to lurch in different directions. I thought the Other Me was It.

“No,” she says, finishing my thought out loud. I always hated that shit. “I’m not It,” she explains. “I’m you. Or a version of you. That splintered little id of yours, if you want to talk Freud. Personally, I’m more of a Jung kinda gal. It lied to you. Lied to me. Lied to everyone. ‘Course shouldn’t be surprised. Shouldn’t expect H.P. Lovecraft’s wet dream to be honest.”

I take slow steps towards her, keeping my hand firmly on the railing. “And of course you are a bastion of truth, aren’t you? Never lied to me ever. Ms. Manners wouldn’t like that.”

She bursts out laughing. It’s hoarse, like a broken air pump being actuated repeatedly. Her hand slaps her knees as she hee-haws back and forth.

“I ain’t ever lied to you, baby cakes. Never. Maybe I’ve spun a little truth into something more fanciful than it was for dramatic effect, but outright lie? Never.”

A white pillar crawling with tendrils of vegetation passes between us, and for a moment she disappears from my sight. I can still hear her breathing though, rattling like lungs about to fail. On the other side, she’s now bent over, elbows pressed to the rail, hair hanging down like tattered ends of a dozen used nooses.

“I fucked up,” she admits. It's an admission that catches me off guard. My Dark Half was never one to own up to a mistake.

“No other way to say it," she continues. "It made me an offer. Gave me the keys to the Bugatti while you went wherever you went. I thought I could handle the speed. It was nice being in charge for a change. Unfortunately I can’t drive for shit. Went total Paul Walker on the lightpost of life.”

Anger boils under my skin. I want to grab her by the throat, strangle the bitch until her eyeballs burst out of the sockets.

She grins. A very Spiral-like grin.

“Don’t you fucking make that face,” I say before shoving her ass backwards. She trips over her own feet and falls backward down the stairs. Flipping end over end. Her laugh hitches every time her body hits the edge of a step, until finally she collapses onto the landing.

I hurry down, bare feet making quick work of the smooth stone. She’s still laughing, eyes peeled open as I come to stand over her.

“That’s my father’s smile, you bitch.”

I raise my knee then drive my foot down, heel first straight into the bitch’s face. Bone crunches but she’s still laughing. I stomp down again. And again. The crunches give way to something wetter, meatier. She chokes between high pitched cackles and deep, low, volatile chuckles, the kind of laugh that rumbles in the chest.

I step backward, falling down onto the stairs. Her face is a mutilated, deformed mess.

“He… was my father… too…” she says as an arm rises into the air before falling over towards me, followed by a shift in her bodyweight to turn herself over to face me. Blood pours out of her mouth and nose. One eye hangs down by the optic nerve.

“Fuck you,” I say between ragged breaths as I pull my foot up to begin picking teeth out of my foot. It’s odd how the mind works. I know she’s not physically here, but here I am with a bicuspid judding out of my heel. I pluck it from my skin with a wince.

“It thought you’d be too difficult to control,” she says, crawling towards me hand over hand. “For all Its infinite wisdom, It ain’t too smart sometimes. Choosing me to run the circus is just asking for the Big Top to go up in a ball of flame. Hundreds of people came to see elephants dance around a pit to Julius Fučík. They all leave in body bags burnt to a crisp. Meanwhile I’m sitting on the cinder, laughing my ass off.”

She climbs her way up the stairs next to me, then flips over to mirror my position with a huff. She says, “Honestly, it’s embarrassing all around. I wasted the biggest opportunity of my life. It picked every bad instinct you’ve ever had to shepherd Its plan to take over every mind on the planet. First thing I do? Got married to three broads.”

I feel my stomach turn. Kat. Mari. Angel. Marisol I’ve known for years. The other two are little more than disorganized images of faces scattered across my memoryscape, like furniture that came with a dead man’s house after auction. The Other Me dragged them into this and now I'm left to sort through the mess.

She continues, “Yeah, then I mixed all our DNA into a big pot and baked it into a baby—her name’s Lira by the way—infected thousands of minds, lost a wrestling match to some asshole in a leather mask with mommy issues. It’s been a trying time. There were some good times, though. You’d be amazed how many people drop trow to fuck the world’s hottest elder god with a big ol’ alien cock.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I scream at her, then shove my elbow into her chest to push her away. “And fix your fucking face. I’m tired of trying to decide which eye to stare at. The one still in your skull or that one dangling down by your lip.

She tries to lick the eyeball dancing about her cheek. I hit her again.

“Ow! Okay, okay.”

With a grunt, her head begins to whip back and forth in a blur. The sound of her cheeks flopping like flesh sounds wet and gross, like a dog shaking off after getting caught in the rain.

“That’s better,” she says as her face reforms into the dirty, messy reflection of my own, teeth, nose and eye back in their proper places and healed.

“So why let me out?” I ask. My hand shoots up, silencing her reply. “Let me guess. You turned my house into some freak show Upside Down meets Minecraft land and now I have a giant pink castle overlooking my duck pond.”

“Well, I…”

Air shushes through my teeth. “You had Marisol deliver you thousands of idiot fitness freaks to turn into mindless slaves. You got married—thrice—and one of them told all the people living here to go on social media and start calling her mommy and me daddy. Yeah, that went over real well, didn’t it?”

“But I really…”

“Shut the fuck up. You take a contract with a company, infect all these people with your mind worm, then walk the fuck out and leave them to take care of business, like any of those idiots could manage their way out of a paper bag without a ladder.”

“Okay, now hang on,” she says with a huff. “I sent Emilia like a month later to clean up that mess. You know she’s the only one around here capable enough to handle the logistics while I was busy… entertaining.”

“And how did that work out, hmm? Where is Sarah? Aurora? Holly? Where the fuck is Enigma?”

All members of this fucked up Black Rainbow cult she put together. All missing in action. All loose ends—every single one. I hate loose ends.

I grab her by her rancid-stinking kimono and drag her towards me.

“You put your pussy first. That’s what you did. You bragged about having a fucking sex cult to the whole world. You let whats-her-name—”

“Christina,” she says, already knowing what I’m about to say.

“Thank you. You let Christina post pictures of you and her in some fucked up dungeon on twitter and then acted shocked when the prudes went for their torches and pitchforks.”

Her eyes are fixated on mine, moving back and forth, wide and unblinking, like a reptile. It’s strange. She almost looks afraid. She’s never been afraid of me before. Then again, she never had reason to fear me until now.

I never thought she would sell me out for the chance to take my body for a joy ride around rainbow road like this is one big game of Gorgo Kart.

I shove her back then turn forward, my knees pressing into my elbows as I lean.

“And worst of all, you go on live television and brag about doing all of that. I’m lucky the religious right hasn’t broken down the gate and burned this whole place to the ground. I guess the one wise decision you made throughout this was sticking Vorazd’s Whisper in half of Washington. Wise move going bipartisan. Of course a side effect of knowing all the fucked up shit those people do behind closed doors is having the fucked up shit those people do behind closed doors permanently on display in my brain. Speaking of fucked up shit…”

My shoulders twist enough to face her.

“Where is It?”

My jaw clenches when she doesn’t answer.

“Where is Vorazd?”

Her voice hitches at hearing the name again. “I don’t know. I got tossed out of you then Its buzzing went away. You know, the Whisper. I mean, Its reliquary is in the house but I don’t think we should go—”

She yelps when I yank her off the stairs and march her across the landing to the next seat that leads up to the other half of the balcony. “Thank you for reminding me. You stuck that thing here in my house—in the room that was supposed to be an art studio.” I look back at her. “You know how much I wanted to work with pastels.”

“Yelena,” she says meekly, “you can’t paint for shit.”

I yank her harder as we turn a corner into a dark, skewed hallway, with an uneven ceiling and a low haze drifting around our feet. “It’s not like judo,” I snap at her. “It’s not about being the best. It’s about doing something for once without the pressure of having to be fucking perfect.”

I throw her against the wall next to a black door, its surface shimmering like an oil slick with a wet, iridescent shine like the serene stillness of a tar pit. Images of the carcasses of animals suspended in viscous pitch make me wary of pressing my hand against the door. I hesitate, but only for a moment, my hand trembling slightly as it reaches—not from fear but rather anticipation. I want to face It, and I’ve come too far now to walk away without answers. Imagine my surprise when my palm flattens against the door that it feels like cool, dense metal.

“Hey, Yel,” the Other Me says nervously. “It ain’t too late to turn back. C’mon. Let’s go fuck Emilia. She always liked you more.”

A hiss escapes the seal. I turn to look at my disgusting twin and tell her to shut the fuck up as the barrier opens for me, pushing inward then slowly sliding left. The air that rushes out to greet me is stale, and acrid, like singed hair mixed with the pulpy scent of old paper.

“You first,” I say.

“Yelena, wait—”

I yank her in front of the doorway and shove her hard between the shoulder blades, sending her stumbling into a red-drenched gloom. She skids across the floor on bare feet but the momentum carries her deep into the center of the room.

I walk over the threshold. It takes time for my eyes to adjust to the chaotic strobing chamber. This was meant to be a place where I could find some amount of peace in a world that required me to be anything but peaceful. Instead, it’s been desecrated into a cathedral for the profane.

Above the middle of the room, an iron chandelier hangs precariously by a bundle of exposed wires from a broken ceiling mount, swinging back and forth in a wide, violent pendulum arc. Six pear-shaped bulbs sway in an unpredictable arc, casting frenzied light across the room. Shadows react erratically—expanding, contracting, and mutating into warped silhouettes that are unrecognizable to their sources. The motion is nauseating, shifting the perspective of the room with every uncharted sway, making the floor feels like it's tilting beneath my feet.

The Other Me steps forward next to me.

“It’s gone,” she whispers, voice trembling.

She is staring at a dominating raised dais of wet, black stone rising to a waist-high plinth topped with a distinct hexagonal surface. It’s scarred and grooved, designed to cradle something specific. Something heavy.

The Chrysalis.

But the pedestal is empty.

My gaze snaps past the altar to the far wall—or what’s left of it. A jagged, gaping maw has been ruptured through the structure, blasting the reinforced concrete outward as if it were drywall. The humidity of the Florida night is pouring in through the breach, carrying the sound of rustling palm fronds from the acres of trees that surround the mansion. Beyond them, some fifteen miles in the distance, the purple and orange haze of the Miami skyline stains the horizon.

I look back up at the light fixture. It’s still swinging hard, its momentum undiminished. I reach overhead and touch the iron with my fingers, ceasing the movement.

We hadn't just missed It. We missed It by seconds.

“Welp,” the Other Me says with a sigh, “I guess that’s that. Things can go back to normal. Right, Yel?... Yel?”

Eyes drift away from the gaping hole, falling to the stone slab beneath me. There are figures etched into the surface, carved into shallow grooves into characters I recognize from the underground chamber beneath my father’s house where I first discovered the Chrysalis—Vorazd’s reliquary. It’s a language not meant for the human mind to understand. At the time I didn’t know what to call it, but Maraeth’s memories name it for me.

Vor’gotan.

The Other Me tries to hide her thoughts from me. It’s always been more of a one-way street. She peers into my mind while locking me out of hers, but it’s different now. Her anxiety is emitting a constant on/off pattern of electrical charge that I find myself suddenly able to decode.

I stand slowly, like a tower erupting from the earth. When my eyes fall upon her, she retracts.

“You know something.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

“Who, me?” she says sheepishly, her eyes darting back and forth as her fingers fidget with her mildewed kimono.

I step forward, eliminating the distance between us. Immediately her heels back pedal, fumbling away, trying to keep space as if the air itself will protect her.

“Yes, you,” I answer in pursuit.

“I, ah, I don’t know nothin'! I swear!”

My hand plants in the center of her chest and pushes until her back slams into the wall. Debris rattles loose from the impact, sprinkling across her head and shoulders like a bad case of dandruff.

“Okay,” she relents with her hands raised. “All I know is, It kicked me out, brought you back, and then flew the coop. I mean, it wasn’t very happy with me and told me that it was a mistake trusting me to run the show, which I thought was a pretty cruel thing to say. I mean, Vorazd is supposedly this ancient cosmic being from some other universe. Putting me in charge was Its mistake. I’m certifiable! Of course I started dressing like the Joker and turning everything into a pornographic parody of Hellraiser!”

My fist crashes into the wall next to her face. The sheetrock bursts into the cavity, leaving a craggy outline of my hand. Her eyes shoot left, widen, then forward again.

“We need to work together, okay? Like dad did when he was in our position with his own little helper. That’s me. Your personal assistant. GorgoGPT.” Her fingers curl around the wrist of my hand still pressed into her sternum, but not to pull away. There’s a tenderness there, and a desire to form a sincere connection.

“Remember when I saved you? When the assassin tried to whack you and that Chinese douche bag in the hotel room? I… complete… you.”

I can feel it, that old feeling of our psyches being stitched together. Mixing the two of us together is like pouring bleach and acid together. It’s a volatile mixture that produces something inherently lethal. All the worst parts of us spiral together into something new, something violent. A lethal combination of primal instinct.

The sensation creeps up my forearm and past the elbow. Muscles twitch, then strengthen. Veins thicken around my bicep. Then the shoulder joint begins to pop and reset. There is a moment where I almost allow it to take me, when the feeling is crawling its way over the meat towards my neck, and the static begins screeching in my ear like a buzzsaw, when the allure of power makes me want to close my eyes and give in.

But I rip my hand away from her grip before it goes any further.

“No,” I say. The ringing cuts out. My arm feels normal again. The psychic wall between our minds reforms. Taller than before, and stronger.

Her face sours.

“Fine,” she huffs. “You’re in charge. You can do whatever you want. I’m here to help. But you can’t do shit without me. Any of that old time religious mumbo jumbo? It ain’t gonna work on your own. That’s Its solution. Neither of us can be trusted with the power, so we gotta work together—one way or another.”

A smile begins to form across my lips.

“If Vorazd is all-knowing…”

“Uh,” she mumbles.”

“…all-seeing…”

Her eyes look everywhere but at my grin peeling my cheeks apart.

“…then whatever I plan on doing is exactly what It wants.”

She tries to deflect. “No, see, what you don’t get is—”

“So when I say I don’t give a fuck about Its plan for world domination and just want to focus on getting my own life back together, then that must mean that’s what it wants. Right?”

She doesn’t breathe. She doesn’t blink. Her mind, my mind, is working overtime to calculate a counterpoint to prove me wrong, but it never does, and eventually all she can do is admit the truth, no matter how much the devious little monster wants to keep mind-fucking every person who happens across her path.

Her shoulders sink. Her chin dips to her chest like a chastened child.

“As you wish, Yelena.”

I turn around and start walking, my hands tugging the kimono closed where it had come loose from my body which no longer felt like my own. Even my tits are bigger than I remember. How do I even begin to get my life back and order? There are so many things that need done, so many wrongs that need righted.

Then there’s my career. The Other Me let this insanity invade not only my personal life, but my professional life as well. A quick rifle through my memory warehouse reveals several horrifying policies my companies have instituted as part of Vorazd’s grand design. All of those will need to be ripped out like weeds.

Then there is the ring. The Other Me did her best to ruin my reputation across the industry but there’s still PWC and MWA. Both places are alien to me but I feel connected to them nonetheless. There are faces in both places that I know, that I respect even if I do hate them. Thais in PWC. Lex in MWA.

I could quit wrestling altogether. Take this weird little family I have now and leave, go somewhere and forget about ever showing my face in a boardroom or a ring ever again, but that isn’t my way. I’m too fucking strong for it. I am my father’s daughter. I am Spiral.

The Other Me’s voice calls to me as I near the door. “You tell me then, what do you want to do?”

Her question stops me mid-step. Slowly, my head turns, led by my eyes until they find her in that same spot against the wall next to the hole I put in it. A very Spiral-like smile crawls up the sides of my face.

“I’m going to win the MWA world championship, then the PWC world championship, and every fucking other world championship I can get my hands on to prove to you, and everyone else, that I don't need fucking help from a space god or some split personality. I'm going to fucking do it so all this—”

I look around the room before my gaze attacks her like a dagger.

“—doesn’t end up being what I’m remembered for.”

Then I leave to go back to Emilia where I belong.