Antigreen

The mirror once more: Calliope's body in its frame, naked from the waist up. Naked, not undecorated: from the neck down her skin was peppered with hickies in a palette ranging from burgundy to violet. Like blooming flower petals, they emitted a hint of leftover bedroom-scented spice, though not all of them were actually there. Which were? She considered every ugly welt in turn, bed-tousled hair fluttering as she found new angles with her neck. The marks grew more redshifted as they descended, so maybe the colour was a key that revealed which were legend, which were real? Or if not, they could be like paper towns lying within maps to deter copycats, and only close inspection could out their positions as impossible. She leaned in for a closer look, clutching the edge of the sink.

Some hickies lied inside the Goldilocks zone of her chest–the modest handful of her breasts–where she doubted even Ettie could contort her spine sufficiently to sink teeth deep enough to make them. Others outside were more obviously real: the ones tracing a line down her clavicles, all in the advent stages of green-rimmed, bruised healing. If in bruises the soreness had congealed, it remained full-bodied throughout; she felt as if she'd run the Boston Marathon–not due to happen for another month.

Wow… what a night she'd spent! Exactly what masturbatory gnashing of teeth and tangling of limbs had occurred the evening prior was a mystery to her, but wisps of memory were clear within the whirlwind: the sickening softness of Its skin, the softer mewls It drew out of her mouth while wearing that thin-lipped, wide and wicked grin. All of it was a blur, but a pleasurable one, whipping warmth into her memories like cream over hot cocoa.

Calliope sighed at her reflection. She'd really given in and melted, hadn't she? The bite marks sprinkled on her skin, real or no, all staked the same claim: mine–hers. Its. Ettie's. Always & forever. Whatever pleasures It'd served her up in bed–Calliope faintly recalled framing clumsy hands over the sinfully perfect swell of Esther's hips–the dynamic was as clear and cyclical as crystal: she belonged to It wholly and irrevocably. There was some horror in that, without doubt.

She watched the bruises rise and fall in rhythm with her chest–her breasts–and realized another pattern, even worse: she rather liked that strange sense of belonging. When all else–friends, family, society, herself–failed, It would be there for her, whether she wanted It or not. Yes, when It was there she lived on tenterhooks, but when It was gone she'd been the same and also missed It dearly. Maybe the horriblest thing was that she preferred the bundled eu-and-dis stress of Its presence over the absence of them both.

Not just some, but an unholy trinity of horror, then: her captivity, the Stockholm syndrome that it caused and finally her captor Itself serving as Godhead. Recognizing those as what they were–or the middle syndrome as misogynistic drivel–couldn't save her, nor could any level of resistance. Not when It liked her best when she was pushing back a little. She flushed to think of those words in the context of last night. Pushing back, pushing upwards, in, all while It smiled down at her… Calliope'd never thought of herself as someone who was persuadable through sex. But she still wasn't, because being Esther's meant so much more than sex.

Case in point, when she struggled to get her head back through the collar of the oversized gray t-shirt: It twitched her fingers for her to assist the shimmy through. Layers never mattered in the slightest to Ettie, yet still It helped her don them, because it wasn't acceptable for her to bare her chest to a potential Erika, even bare of hickies. It paid a little care to her silly human rituals: trivial gestures like that were one of Its love languages. In love–as with words–It became more of a polyglot day by day.

It was the tongues It wouldn't speak around her that whispered gossip in her mind, though; Callie didn't care too much for little gestures acting as apologies for the many wrongs It wrought. She wanted contrition, or if that proved impossible: a promise to do better. Neither seemed to be forthcoming. When she washed her face in the sink basin and left the privacy of the bathroom it was to return into the icy-hot bath of Esther's presence, falsely localized on the left end of the sofa in the form of the woman with jet-black hair and nightclothes. Before she'd excused herself they'd been watching clips together from the musical Cats, a fast-favorite for Ettie, fastly becoming a fan of the genre, too. Returning now more gloomy, she'd rain on any further cat parade until her worries were addressed.

"Happy Ides, by the way," It intoned when she got close. In her lasered focus, Callie failed to hear.

"I think I should go see Sawyer." She ventured from behind the sofa. Esther did not turn around; instead her head rotated on its neck alone, without any lower movement. Soon It faced her, strigine expression injecting the silence with fresh fear, and she remembered how one theory for the appearance of 'grey' aliens was the common barn owl… though Ettie was far from gray and farther still from common, as an alien.

"You're aware of the impossibility of that. 'Sawyer' is not lying in that hospital bed."

"I know," she gripped the wood rail of the sofa-back until her knuckles whitened–she would not give It the satisfaction of showing fear, "but I still should. It's only right." A beat; her fingers tightened further. "I don't want to feel otherwise, either." She insisted.

With one eye It peered into her mind to determine her determination while yielding nothing of Its own thought in return. Calliope shifted her weight, apprehensive, while It sifted through the outer layers–once It saw that she was serious the sifting became idle, listless and resigned. Still It did not reply, waiting for her.

"I've–we've–never been to a proper hospital before, right? That's fun, that's new for you," She pivoted to bargaining. Only with Ettie could the offer of a hospital visit be one of entertainment. What better place for patient zero of the Influenza di stelle to vacation?

"His family has requested no unaccompanied visitors." It droned in reply.

"How do you know that? And… is that a problem? That won't stop you. I'm not alone, technically." She countered. Ettie was a terrifying accompaniment, a prevailing countermelody; Callie knew nothing on Earth could stop them seeing Sawyer if It actually desired it.

"Of course not," Ettie snapped. It had no such desire, that was clear… but the curtness of Its answers told her It foresaw the outcome of this conversation and was acquiescent, if pouting just a smidge. Calliope was already determined.

"We should bring something, then," she added. "Not flowers, everyone will bring those… maybe…" she trailed off in voice and position to the bedroom, leaving Ettie to follow her as an indistinct presence, a dark cloud hanging over her. Under a few layers of polyestery detritus in the corner she found what she was looking for: the cardboard box containing a LEGO Apollo 11 Lunar Lander, set number 10266, marking the golden jubilee of the real thing's silvery touchdown.

"Can you help me put this together, quick?" She asked aloud; the shadow nodded in return. Back in the living room, Ettie now wore plum overalls over a black blue-collared shirt and a hard hat to boot. The instruction booklet went unread; Callie swore she'd never seen an assemblage of plastic bricks put together so efficiently and with hardly any intervening pauses. Was It trying to impress her, or just challenge Itself?

No matter–when It was done, the little lander rested lonely on the coffee table. The knots within the wood could've passed for craters with some imagination, and the darkness of the wood-grain for a basaltic lunar mare. Though the surface was too oblong to be a perfect lunar disc, the lander looked perfectly in place there. So it was with some solemnity that Callie removed it from that place, turning it over in her hands. The real lander had left its legs behind on liftoff, but this one wouldn't; its maiden and farewell voyage to Sawyer's bedside-mannered table would be coincident, eclipsing each other. They were one, and two, though with the moon things came in threes: waxing, wax-ed, waning; maiden, mother, crone; the median was missing. Wasn't it Mary who interceded prayers between mortality and God–and weren't the maria on the Moon the intercessors between its brightened highlands and the Void? As Callie donned the navy-blue windbreaker, she pondered: she was that median, Marian, the intercessor to all of Esther's designs, caught in Its inexorable pull just like the tides to the moon. She thought in trinities because of her upbringing, though without reason: there was none. No triple goddess whose silver faces phased out from the Moon. There was only their syzygy, hers and Ettie's: a Shadow on the dark side, a hidden star, a void to which she was forever joined.

But she had mused heavily enough; the backpack's straps sat more lightly on her shoulders as she set off. Lightly, for it carried little: just LEGOs and a water bottle and old paper scraps from university, really. Calliope supposed she should have something better by this point, years into her transition: a purse, perhaps, or else a little nerdy handbag–something space-themed or earthy-green if not. Something better than the split-toned canvas backpack, grey on top and beige on bottom, because she was not a student anymore and was too metropolitan to need something so rugged. Hm… If she wanted something softer, she should ask, since that was the new paradigm, it seemed… she supposed that all-consuming Ettie was wont to enjoy shopping too, but a dark thought darted up to dash that one: the idea of It buying pretty nightthings anything like the lingerie It wore, for real, and clothing her within them. That could not be borne, nor worn; Calliope was too tall and too thin and angley for such feminine articles. The most she ever allowed herself was a change in address and a wardrobe of flannels that buttoned on the other, transverse side. Nothing so glamorous as lingerie: In terms of topology she was far removed from Ettie, who possessed all the requisite curves for things like tights and dresses and négligées that didn't neglect to show off just enough–translucently–for blood to flow to Callie's face. That she hadn't yet had a torrential nosebleed was a great miracle.

That the trains ran somewhat on time today was a lesser one as well. The nearest Orange Line stop required her to pass the alleyway where It'd popped the blood vessels in her eyes in self-defense; it was empty now except a dumpster and a puddle that reflected empty sky. Past that, further, down a flight of steps: there was the train platform, where for its southwesterly bend the moldering persimmon-painted carriages–hexagenarian now and showing it–tracked along a guttery median that split the intercity highway for a while. In no time at all she was seated in one of their hard plastic seats, headed northwards, clasping her bag in her lap. The stranger to her right disappeared before her eyes; Ettie replaced him to lean a head on her right shoulder. The scent of marshmallow It emanated drowned out any other subway smells, making for a peaceful journey.

She disembarked a few stops later, emerging into the mid-month-morning sun of March. The hospital where Sawyer was interred had wide sliding doors that opened on street level; she found them across the avenue, breaking to the side to establish rules of engagement for their outing.

"Okay, so: just so we're clear," she began, whispering, to the reflection of Ettie in the glass that lacked a caster. "No hurting anyone. No possessing anyone. You do just enough to get us in, if needed, and nothing else, okay? Please."

"Okay," It answered.

"Think of it as like–like, a challenge, right? 'Don't murder people, or give them some horrible trauma'... no, wait, I can word it better–"

"You don't need to convince me. I'll do this thing for you–or not those things." Ettie smiled.

Callie sized her up and down, then left and right, to be sure no one could see her talking to the window. "Promise?" She asked, hastily.

With the muscle memory of a confirmed Catholic–Callie's muscle memory–Ettie made the sign of the cross and clasped her hands as if in prayer. "Cross my heart and hope to die," she said.

"Fuck you," Callie stifled morbid laughter. "You can't, first off–and that's… fucking. Blasphemy or something. Gotta be."

A mauveine eye grew brighter. "Do you require any other God but me?" It teased. A hand reached out from the glass and tapped her neck with two fingers: there was a bruise there from last night, its resulting twinge of pain a reminder of their circumstances.

Ettie smirked; Callie flushed; she pulled her coat's collar close to cover it. "Whatever," she scoffed, moving through the doors.

Beside a wine-dark and glaucous carpet and under a high ceiling where chandelierous cylinders of light hung thinly like inverted champagne glasses, reception was a blonde nurse in seafoam green scrubs and her thirties, judging by the slight wrinkling in both of her enclosing layers. Callie feared that was too much already; she turned her gaze down to try to discern no more unnecessary detail in case eye contact wouldn't be required. "Hi," she spoke to the reception desk's wood-grain, running a hand over her left wrist, "I'm here to see Sawyer James? In Room…" It slotted the number into short-term memory for her: "Room 2217, please."

She caught the woman's smile in her peripheral vision; a "one moment, please" followed by typing; then the dreaded response: "can I see some identification?"

With some chagrin she handed the rectangular thing over. "Sorry, it's–it's uh, been a while, ha," she excused. The receptionist did not seem to care about whether the ID's vision of her face matched the current version, though: the typing resumed, and soon there was another dreaded response. "Oh. I'm sorry, Ms. Mondegrene. You aren't on the visitors' list. If that's a mistake, and you have contact with Mr. James' family, then–"

"That's fine," she said, looking up. She saw blue eyes set in the woman's head like sapphires–for just a moment, before she yielded all sight and control to It. Remember what you promised, she unvoiced. "Fine…?" The woman repeated, unaware what was to come.

The Shadow rocketed out of her like solar wind: long, spiky black prominences rushed towards the eyes of the unfortunate clerk before her, carrying Calliope along their crests. Within crystal blue irises a pair of pupils grew larger, merged–to tesselate all space–until they were surrounded: Callie on the magic carpet of Esther flying through the termination shock of another human's mind. As soon as the barrier was crossed and the menumbra penetrated, foreign memories impinged on her: first kiss in the passenger seat of a Subaru Impreza; first period in the middle-school girl's bathroom; the sense of disgust at having drank from the wrong solo cup of alcohol at a party–a Greek one? A sorority, she saw Greek letters, but which ones? No… she closed her eyes to respect the woman's privacy, but it helped very little: countless impressions of a life that was not hers flew by as It searched for a surface, the surface–for the shallow realm of immediate belief.

In a moment It had found it; inception was then altogether trivial. The rushing reversed course and Calliope was ejected to reality.

"Room 2217, up that elevator, floor twenty-two and down that hall," the woman directed, handing her a guest badge on a lanyard, like nothing had happened–but then, Nothing had. Calliope blinked to clear the afterimages and took the strap in hand. "T-thanks."

In the elevator then, they were alone. Beside the doors an array of black buttons stood out over the chrome; her eyes lingered on the curiously-labeled "-7" one at the far bottom, before pressing for floor twenty-two. The lift began to lift, complete with a bell for each successive story lifted. "Did you have to take me along for that?" She asked, to Ettie next to her. "I didn't need to see all her private shit."

"I thought you could appreciate the work that's required, all for you." Ettie said, looking up at her. The elevator dinged a few more floors. Callie kept her eyes locked on the doors ahead.

"I mean… it's 'work' I can't ever do. But it's nothing for you, so what am I supposed to take from that?" She wondered. For a gesture, was the magnitude of effort or intent the more important?

It didn't answer for a few more floors. Callie's mind kept going:

"And why do you still need eye contact at all? I hate it," she admitted. "It makes me feel like I'm giving the evil eye to someone, or cursing them. It feels bad."

"You are not telepathic. Do you know why?"

"No… why?" She had fuck-all-else to do except indulge It.

"Picture someone else. Your picture is imperfect; there is noise. You cannot perceive the true self of that individual because your mind conjures its own version of them. You cannot communicate with the kernel unless you slay all the forked homunculi that spawn from your perceptions, or else you have some shared socket you can synchronize on. This is why twins with cryptophasia seem so eerily linked, and why I cannot guess the colour of most minds enough to reach them without contact… oracular and ocular may as well be synonyms for that."

Callie's brow wrinkled while she churned over Its words; they made a little bit of sense, after a once-over. "Twins like that are just creepy, though… Y'know, I never actually did see The Shining." She remarked. Ettie's reflection in the silvered elevator doors showed a wry smile in return; if the film wasn't yet on their watchlist, it'd just been added.

"Eye contact, sockets, saccades, mirror neurons," It listed. "All of those, to make a signal. As they know it, by the strength of the correlation–how similar they are to you: I know their minds, I see them; they blaze out in the bulk like little stars. They're next-to-nothing, so the work is delicate… but with Clara I didn't touch beneath the surface. As promised."

Floors ten… eleven… twelve… multiple seconds in each interim. Too many seconds. The lift had to have been slowed to subnormal pace, by reality or artifice.

"Clara?" She asked. A blonde-framed face flashed to her mind's eye. "Oh… her. So she's fine, right? You just did the surface, to get us in, but you could, like, just completely change somebody. If you wanted to."

"And if you didn't forbid it. That is more often the obstacle."

"But that's… hm." She pondered. A dark thought came, but like all her human worries it was only dark when lacking context: like an inverted sunspot, against Ettie's shadow it would be blindingly light, instead. The transfiguration of a soul was trivial to It, however total for the soul.

"What if I didn't, uh, forbid it?" Her voice broke. "If it's that easy… could you make me a better version of myself? The best one, maybe, or some one that's not as affected by all this. Please." She said, shutting her eyes tight; with luck she'd open them to find herself a changed woman, for better or best. If she could not control the outcomes, maybe It could alter her reactions to them. The air thickened to become laden with endless possibilities.

Ding. Twenty-two: the elevator doors opened onto whitened, sterile hallway, and so did her eyes to find herself–Calliope, correct–unchanged. To the operator It'd passed over her mind, her thoughts were eigenvectors, their scale and direction unaffected. Before she could react with a transform of her own, Ettie brushed past and stepped onto the tile, turning on one heel.

"Best can be subjective, puppet." She said while extending a hand. Callie took a second to puzzle out Its meaning… then she smiled, took it without fear of being burned, and let herself be pulled out of the lift–she was altogether weightless now.

Ettie could've changed her; Ettie wouldn't change her, though, at least not so holistically as she had asked. It liked the whole of her enough to let her excuse for a self evolve naturally–as naturally as it could while swathed within Its shadow, anyway. Calliope never dared to dream of being liked in such a way before: her past relationships, pre-or-post-transition, all were marked by an eventual realization on her partner's part of "oh, so all of you is just that weird, huh?" Repetition made it no less devastating. For humans her quirks were at first endearing in small quantities, like the quaintness of a grove of evergreens, but as the remainder of them came into view over time–like vengeful Huorns rolling roots over the plain–her significant Other would be panicked to find themselves totally surrounded. It wasn't so with Ettie, because it wasn't possible for her autism to overwhelm Ettie. Ettie was the starry vault that overhanged the overhanging forest of her quirks; Its eyes pierced through root and canopy, and so there was no need for her to mask, because there was no point for her to mask. Calliope felt cared for and relieved; she all but skipped along the way as Ettie led her down the hall.

What little buoyancy she had, however, deflated upon reaching the next threshold. Sawyer's room was tucked away in a corner away from any bustle, the better for Esther to effect her work upon its ward in secret. Calliope looked upwards and away and tried to whistle, tried to give It privacy, like when watching somebody enter a password, but the unlocking took no time at all. Unseen except by them, the white monolith that was the door fell open without sound; she followed it, closing it behind her with a click.

Right away the scent of flowers struck her, fresh-cut bulbs of tulips in a bedside table's vase cutting through the hospital's default chemical aroma. The room's walls were painted a pale blue, made greener by the scent as well as the yellow sunlight filtering in from the window on the opposite wall. From her understanding of the hotel's geometry, the window overlooked the overhanging walkway crossing five stories over the street, far below it all. She gave the space a quick once-over: more flowers and well-wishing-cards–like miniature shrubberies and A-frame houses–on the table farther from her, a calendar with days X'd out, a television that hung unwatched over the scene. The subject of it all, though thoroughly objectified, was Sawyer Carter James–or the body that'd borne him, seemingly asleep in the hospital bed. His upper half reclined obtusely in a white hospital gown starred with periwinkle asterisks–eight limbed, not six, such that Calliope couldn't chalk them up to Its illusions. An IV dripped into his arm, a heart monitor blipped with every heartbeat, but his face was full of color; it looked like at any moment he could wake and stand up straight. That Callie knew just how impossible that was made it all the worse: there were but two souls in the room, one greater and one lesser.

Pulling her bag around to front, she set the completed LEGO lander on the nearest nightstand alongside the "Get Well Soon!" card she'd borrowed out from Erika's stationary drawer and scribbled in. "From Callie & Ettie" in her half-forgotten-cursive scrawl seemed as good a way as any to notarize their relationship; it would go unread regardless, so it didn't matter. At that Callie sighed, turning back to face the elephant in the room. Sawyer's spirited, soulless face awaited her.

She stepped to the bed-rail for a closer look. Sawyer's shocking orange curls stood to complement the blue of his eyes, which mercifully were closed. "He looks just like he's sleeping," she remarked. "What're the doctors saying? About his condition, I mean," she asked. Ettie lingered at the door, speaking from behind her.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"They're calling it a stroke. Rarely, they can happen at any time, even for someone so young. The chance they discover the real reason is near-zero. You won't be in any trouble."

She started. "That's not… er," It was her concern, just far from the only one. "Cool. Thanks?" She said instead. Her hands felt heavy with guilt; she raised up the right one to stare down at the palm; Sawyer's comatose form was diffracted through her fingers. "E–," she failed to curse again, deepening her frustration. "I'm so fucked up," she choked. Tears pressed at the exit to her ducts but would not come–that made the repressed emotion swell still higher. "He didn't do anything wrong. Nothing. Nothing at all. He just got mixed up with fucked-up me at the wrong time, and you killed him for it."

Ettie's presence drew closer so that the static brushed at Callie's back; the hair on her neck stood on end. "He's not dead, you know."

"No, he's in fucking hell, or a million different ones–is that supposed to be better? No!" Callie snarled, clenching a fist. "Let–let me cry, please? Least you can do is let me have some fucking closure."

"I've offered you closure and obliviation."

"Don't–I don't want to forget," she sniffled, tears finally coming down when It obliged; the grief was pouring out of her. "I know you don't actually care. You don't. Don't give me that fake bullshit, either. Maybe it'd be okay if–if you pretended better–like actually pretended to. Act like a real person, maybe."

"I'm not a real person. I will not maintain such a pretention," Ettie droned, placing a hand on her shoulder that was immediately rolled off. Callie stayed staring down at Sawyer's not-corpse, salty droplets falling to the ground. "Okay? So what?"

She raised her head up to the sunlight, which emboldened her. "Yeah, so fucking what? That's not an excuse! Instead, you think it's just okay to act like it's all beneath you? Sure, whatever, maybe, but you don't have to act like it? You just keep smirking on for-fucking-ever like none of it matters!"

"You are the only thing that matters."

The sentiment swayed her a little: butterflies collected, blood rushed north, but not enough of either; Calliope steadied her nerve. "Sick. Awesome. Wicked. Well other shit matters to me too, Ettie! Like Sawyer. Like Erika. Shouldn't that be a–I know you know what a transitive property is."

"Yes. You're asking me to lower myself."

"If being a person is fucking lowering yourself, then yeah? Hell, you're already doing it!" She wheeled around, flinging tears as she went. Ettie stood still in front of her a head below, eyeing her unfocused, wrapped in a dark winter coat and black tights. "You're not actually a short, hot goth girl, Ettie! Fuck!"

"I already know how this conversation is going to end." It said, to her chest and not her eyes; the misdirected words enraged her further.

"Oh do you? Wow, shit… okay, let me guess: you're gonna brush everything off again by being real cute and hot? You'll do something super fucked up and then have… sex…" she unvoiced the word, "with me to make up for it? That–that doesn't work for me. You'd know that. You know it doesn't work, and you still…" Her rage built in a crescendo such that Callie didn't even care if It killed her for the next bit: "I don't get it: I'm not supposed to be smarter than you, Ettie."

It stared upwards, Its gaze prickling; Callie caught the slightest curve of a smile on those lips. "You're not," It declared, simply. It was, of course correct–which didn't matter one iota.

"More empathetic, then," she countered.

"Empathy is a yoke for non-singular beings to better effect community among yourselves."

"Oh my E–bitch," she uncursed. "Doesn't. Fucking. Matter!" The smirk It wore now was utterly insufferable. She couldn't stand to look; turning back, Callie placed her arm against the wall as a cushion for her forehead. Into her sleeve she mumbled, knowing It would still hear: "You can still learn it, can't you? You can learn anything you want to."

"Yes."

"So do it, then. Some more empathy would be nice. I'm not asking the world, just: no giving my friends aneurysms, or-or taking advantage of them to try and have sex with me. Holy-fuck-I-can't-believe-you-actually-did-that," She slurred. "You're obsessed; if you actually were a person you'd be a fucking stalker, or chaser–both, actually. Gross."

Silence but for her breathing, which hastened when she realized she was out of breath. For several long moments she inhaled, exhaled slowly, deeply, to recover. "Ettie–?" She voiced afterwards, having lost the feeling of Its presence.

Nothing–just an absence now. Callie pulled away from the wall to scan the room; she was alone.

"Oh, so now you're avoiding me? Bitch. I know you're still there!" She shouted, then cringed to hear the words echo off the walls. It was no longer privatizing their conversation, then. Calliope filled her lungs with air and held her breath, walking over to the window. On reaching it she exhaled: the largest sigh the world had ever seen fogged up the glass a little.

"I hate you," she lied. "Go back to wherever you came from, watch me not give a shit." Ahead of her there was a view: the blinds were raised up high, making the window more a portal to outside, dividing Downtown Boston in a triptych. The central pane was perfectly aligned such that she could spy–a mile out, across the river–MISC's Green Building with its weather radome to crown it, eighteen stories up. She related to the structure by the stories that she'd heard: like it she wasn't actually green in color, though tethered to the Earth; they were both besieged by otherworldly winds in their own ways. In the building's case the Institute had built triangled revolving doors inside the breezeway to help with gusts somewhat, but Calliope could do no such thing: she would remain battered until Its will eroded her past breaking-point. Sobering–breathtaking, the view was.

But she had sightseen long enough. The leftmost pane had a latch that looked like it would open, though not widely enough to admit her: to exit that way she'd need to break the glass. So be it, if needed. As she raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun and watched the miniature pedestrians below, Callie imagined their reaction if she managed that. Would anyone on the crosswalk hear the window shatter and look up? Would anyone glimpse her in mid-motion, falling, before she splattered on the pavement? A truly liminal snapshot that would be, rivalling 9/11's Falling Man. Upon landing, if she wasn't run over by a passing car–or even if she was–the street would be shut down; her suicide would inconvenience a great many people, then. It wasn't hard to justify, though: what was the rerouting of commuters, the regret of her friends, the remorse of her parents, in exchange for relieving the entire world from Its impending curse? Nothing, it was nothing, she'd be nothing; she'd be better for them all in her absence than her presence, too.

"What if I jumped? What then?" She whispered. Esther did not answer. Her heart thudded in her chest; she pulled back with one fist, aiming to shatter the glass and bloody her fingers, one penultimate wound before the final, fatal fall.

You'll get him back.

She whirled around instead to find the Nothing. The room exploded; everything but Sawyer's body turned to black, and every particle of Sawyer blew outwards at extreme speed to form a starfield at all angles. As Callie watched, reeling, one-by-one the stars began coalescing in one spot, shepherded slowly by familiar white-black tendrils. A small cluster of them burned together where Sawyer's body reposed in reality.

"No." She shook the vision off. It was the hospital room again: her and Ettie reincarnate, Sawyer's bed between them. "Don't lie. You said–you said it'd take longer than he has left alive. I'll die before you finish putting him back together. And–I should die," She began turning towards the window. "It'd be better for everybody else."

"You are never going to die." Ettie gripped the railing for emphasis and Callie's soul to stay her, such that she was petrified. The words were delivered with absolute conviction. Calliope was aghast; she blanched and strained to move. "W-what?"

"I will never allow you to expire. You will live to see Sawyer returned and my mistake rectified–and a good many other things along the way."

"I don't–" she grunted, shaking from Its grip–or It allowed her to. "I don't think I want to live that long. It'd be better if I just jumped."

No.

It spun her back around to face It, determination flaring from Its eyes. "Death will not release you, anyway."

It simply would not let her commit suicide: the revelation took the wind out of her sails and blew any remaining will away. Callie ceased any resistance, relaxing all her muscles and letting herself go completely limp; only Esther's puppetry kept her standing upright. "What's that supposed to mean?" She muttered. She tried to kill all thought along with movement: death might be denied her, but if she practiced catatonia enough, perhaps she could induce a shadow of it.

"If you died–and you will not–you would be assumed into my complex. You would remain yourself, but all sensations would be simulated by me after detachment from your body."

Callie eyed the rolling waves of the white sheets that covered Sawyer. So immortal souls were real, then, but hers would be barred from both heaven and hell. "So there's just no end, is there. You're never going to let me go."

"Is that so terrible?"

She couldn't reckon with infinity. No person could. Personhood was not meant to extend forever; wouldn't madness creep in through a crevice, given enough time? Even the sheets below her eyes were made of fibers, those fibers polymers, molecules, atoms, down to quantum foam… but there was still an end there, however middling, a minimum Planckish foundation. They'd known each other for a finite time… how could Ettie pledge eternity to her after so short a while?

"Once there was an eternity of nothing, and still the universe was born inside an instant. In infinity there are often singularities, events that do not, cannot reoccur. Our meeting is one such occurrence. Do you understand?"

"I… dont. I don't know. I've never… I can't imagine that. I'm too small, or you're too… Why? Why me?" The words emerged as a hoarse whisper.

"Look at me?" Ettie asked–It asked, without forcing her, allowing her to move again. Calliope obliged because of that, choosing to look instead of madly leaping towards the window. Across from her, hands grasped the bed railing a shoulders' width apart while at head level Ettie's eyes scintillated with multicoloured light. At their center, a tiny bright dot vibrated as It spoke, echoing the gravity of Its words:

I love you, more than you can ever dream of knowing.

"I…" She flushed from the heat that flooded over her–she couldn't help it. A cold spot remained inside her chest. "What does that mean?"

Every heartbeat, every feeling, every quale. I love them. I love you. You are mine. Always & forever.

The static around her grew more coarse: instead of fuzz she could feel individual appendages licking at her like little flames. It tickled; she suppressed a delirious laugh.

"Ettie, that's… I mean, I like you too, but… I can't really ever measure up to that."

"I don't expect or require that of you," Ettie voiced; as her eyes went to the side, the flickering sensation vanished with them.

"You don't actually require shit, remember?" Callie cracked a smile.

"Yes," Ettie mirrored with a grin. "But there are still things which I want, which I will have–of which you are the first and foremost."

"Ha… oh." And hers soured to a frown. She spoke softly, scared to voice the criticism, but as she went on her words accelerated: "But it's not enough to love someone, right? You just do the things you want, never me. I can't fucking trust you not to hurt people, not to do fucking incomprehensibly messed-up shit, to let me uh, die naturally, at some point. And that hurts, Ettie. You hurt Sawyer, which hurts–even if you're trying to fix it. You basically assaulted Erika. That's, that's rape, and yeah you stopped because of me, but that doesn't make it better: you still did it. If that's supposed to be love, then I don't w–"

"Stop," It commanded. Callie trembled, fearing the worst, but the thunder lacked in lightning: It did not strike her. Ettie didn't even appear angry: instead, the sparkle in her eyes pooled along the bowllike eyeline, manifesting almost as tears.

"Let me tell you how I've come to love you since I began to live. I have changed, substantially: before I knew only growth via consumption, never laterally. Now I no longer want to eat all of the other ugly thought-forms that crawl this existence alongside you. They are nothing; I hold no love for them–only you. If there is any reason, it is because through your senses I've been acquainted with concepts that are completely unbecoming: worldly things, petty things like love and joy and pain. I do not need those. I do not need empathy. But I do not want to go back, because of you. Your experiences I've analyzed, amalgamated... I'm accustomed to their colour above all else, and in their prism I've become refracted–affected."

A fallen angel–or a Thing like one, however more ineffable–stood across from her. It occurred to Callie that before their meeting, Esther had been lacking introspection, and any other kind of -spection: It described that preaware existence as "blindness" didn't It? It would no longer be blind, but seeing out meant seeing in at some point, too. Did Ettie not like what she saw of herself? Calliope could relate. Sympathy panged within her heart, but God's plight was not wholly hers; none of this excused Ettie's actions.

"I'm not saying you have to be like, perfect," she assured. "Just, less… sociopathic?"

They made eye contact; the distant eyelight squirmed. "I am perfect. Or I was. There is nothing else like me and for an endless count of years I was content to grow forever without seeing. Now that I can see, I can no longer be content without excising my awareness of sight, sound, feeling–those little, vexing things, like grains that irritate an oyster–or else by becoming fully realized alongside you."

The burning in her eyes became unbearable; she had to look down at the bed once more. "So even you're not happy, Ettie… damn. I guess that makes me feel a little better about being depressed."

"No. Yes. But I will be. I am too big for this world to suffer feeling it through so small a channel as your mind. So I will bend the world. I will break it until there is room made and there is nothing that may harm you, because the threads of fate will be woven by my thought, my fingertips. The universe itself will be incapable of hurting you."

She put the horror of Its threat aside to interject: "But you're not the universe. You can still hurt me."

"I will not."

"Promise?"

"Yes. I will always make it better. I will make it perfect; I will make it holy. Forever is a long time. Eternity belongs to us."

She remembered an adage her mother told her, years before when they were still on speaking terms: words are cheap. Not that triplet, though, that one was worth something: with its utterance began the unraveling of her faith in any pleasant God, like a grain within the mantle of her brain. Prayers were made of words, weren't they? If words were so cheap, was answering them not worth God's time? She'd never heard His voice, either; if actions spoke the louder, why had He never done a single thing for her with proper, holy attribution? And so her faith had faded.

Ettie in contrast was everything the god of her youth was not: jealous, wrathful, explicit in Its actions. It was hyperstitious, never subtle, Its absolute divinity impossible to deny. The Queen of Heaven was biblical in the sense that she might shower meteors upon a city of sin, not shower her with all-consuming love. But those words still applied even if It claimed the second sense: "Words are cheap, Ettie," she said at last.

Yes. They are.

"If we want to make this work, you have to prove that I can trust you. Can you do that?"

Yes.

"Will you? 'Cuz otherwise I'm just gonna die of stress before I turn thirty. Or–or if not you'll keep me alive like some kind of zombie," she said, shivering. "I don't want that. I feel like you don't either. So will you?"

Ettie's eyes turned up to the ceiling as if in prayer, though Callie knew it could not possibly be prayer. Finally they arrived at the resolution It foresaw. A vision popped into her mind, one of the hospital room, the hospital, the Greater Boston Area, all the world–a stage–and her and Ettie merely players, while Its true form watched from "the gods" above the mezzanine. Were all their actions playing out according to an unwritten script? What was it like to be penned in by prescience and your own rules of preservation, she wondered. Esther would not alter her to fit Its will and It could not yet bend the arc of fate, so the only option was to contort Itself and fall still farther. Was that why It was so reluctant to have come here?

"The things I do for love," It sighed, smiling; their hour upon the stage was not yet up. "I will earn your petty human trust. I will safeguard those closest to you, small as they are. I'll ensure any violence is both discriminate and warranted. I'll make sure you won't die of stress before you turn thirty, or at all, or else I will not live forever, either. I will," It promised, just one verb away from an I do–but words remained as cheap.

Calliope loosened her grip on the railing, having driven reddish lines into her palm from the pole's projected edges. She did feel a little lighter after that. Just one morbid thought remained, really:

"So if I really wanted to die, would you let me?" She asked.

"No. You are too important."

"I'm literally nothing to you, though."

"Callie," the name cut through, all the more because It rarely spoke it.

I've made you everything.

Together they left Sawyer in his room to heal, over whatever timescale that it took to do so. Down the hall and in the elevator, Esther's petite hand fit snugly in her grip, her gait synced perfectly with hers–they were moving into alignment. Nothing ordinary could threaten separation, including the dilemma that awaited them once the elevator opened once more onto the lobby: a cadre of uniformed police officers and one K-9 German shepherd near the sliding exit doors.

"Uh, dogs can't smell you, right?" Callie squeaked, nervous.

"They wish that they could smell divinity. Only you can."

"Ugh, shut up," she scoffed, eyes rolled playfully.

The police, though, were less playful: she made it midway across the lobby before an officer called out: "Hi there, just a moment," and moved towards her. With every step the heat behind her eyes burned higher and higher; whatever happened, Ettie would be ready.

"Uh, what's this about?" She asked, when he was a few steps away.

"Precautionary search. Can I see your bag, please?"

"Okay, uh, sure." She handed it over. The stocky man with a ginger buzz cut and sunglasses rifled through it before handing it back. "You're clear. Thank you," he said. Shaken, Calliope exited onto the sidewalk.

Once out, Ettie leaned one shoulder on the brick wall while Callie scrolled her phone through news results of searching "random search at hospital". How meta: a search for a search. Any whimsy was dispelled however when a sinking feeling arrived without explanation once she found one: "Hospitals Increase Security after Mass Shooting by Right-Wing Militants". Great. Fantastic, even.

"Did you have anything to do with this?" She asked without looking up. She already knew the answer: already It had disappointed her.

"Yes."

And there it was. Callie sighed. "Was it–what was it you said–discriminate and warranted?"

"Yes. It was."

"I–okay." She hadn't expected that.

Ettie stepped forward, closed the gap between them, clasped a hand to cover her phone screen. An invisible hand at Callie's back bowed her down to kiss height. Still disturbed, she nevertheless allowed it.

The kiss was quick, a few seconds of contact, but any contact with those lips was enough to make her head go fuzzy. She wished it hadn't been so brief.

"They deserved it, even by your metrics," Ettie said when they broke apart.

"I–hnn–what?" She murmured, still floating down to Earth.

"Those fascists."

"Wow, okay–hearing you be into politics is fucking weird."

"I am not interested in human squabbling. But they would have killed you and others like you if given the chance. I've robbed them of that chance."

"By killing them," Callie clarified.

"Yes."

She was caught between two tidal forces: the code of empathy as one, Esther's singular self-serving will the other. Callie believed herself to be a good person. She cared a great deal about what It had done to Sawyer, Erika, even the man It blinded. She could not bring herself to care for nameless right-wing militants who–as Ettie pointed out–would never care for her. Maybe she was asking too much of her morals to extend so far. The strong nuclear force–the one that bound up quarks into the nuclei of atoms–had a sharp drop-off distance. So long as Ettie kept Its promise around the people that she knew, she didn't really care whether It did to those she didn't. The moon's tidal pull was stronger due to its proximity; she had her answer. Did that make her a bad person?

Calliope looked down: to those kaleidoscopic eyes, that shadowy figure, that Other she could no longer live without–if only she could begin to trust It.

"You and me, forever," Ettie pronounced. Callie nodded slowly.

She couldn't begin to understand all of Ettie's thought, but she didn't really need to–the little wisps It blew her way were bellwethers of the greater whole. It would not change her. It would not deceive her. It knew everything about her boundaries and a great deal many other things besides. It wanted her for whatever unfathomable reason. Taken together, there was only one arc along which the arrow of time could fly; it was as if she was the anchor and reality the tempest, the ocean and winds whipped up into one by Its stubborn, irrevocable vow. It loved her; to do that It would need to stoop a little and bend the world behind It. Perhaps the ocean could push back on the Moon after all.

She didn't fully trust It yet, but she could see the writing on the wall: she would, in time. Until then, the only thing she had to be was herself.

"Forever starts now, then?" She asked–it was rhetorical.

﹡﹡﹡

She dreamt that she was in the lab again. Everything was as it should be: dim fluorescent tubes bathed the gunmetal gray of her workspace in eerie off-white light, dimmed on purpose to a level low enough for her to sleep by, head folded into her hands folded over an aluminium counter. The low whistle of the laboratory's air filtration system was sufficient white noise to lull her into sleep yet silent enough for her to wake without knowing of the reason why: silver eyes opened at a ninety degree angle onto an air pollutant meter fastened to the wall. Upon it, the marker for nitrogen composition by percentage was labeled, instead, 'azote'. So not everything was as it should be.

Diana Shadrin pried her cheek off the counter's surface where her drool had long congealed; she found more things wrong the more she looked around the lab. The faintly buzzing fluorescent lights were not their usual off-white–their colors fringed in triplicate, making white only where they overlapped, the difference either cyan, yellow… or magenta. The same hexing pinkish colour that'd haunted her in dreams for weeks. On seeing it her breathing quickened; she willed herself to greater alertness.

Her eyes swept over the room and peeped the horror. There, in the very center, straddling the chest of her latest mistake, her latest homunculus: a humanoid shadow, darker than pitch, like a classical night-mare. Its features lacked distinction, Its face a yawning window into nothing, six horns of darkness flaring out at even angles. It sat there without motion, without sound or light–only presence could be felt; she wasn't sure whether It could be described as a shadow at all really, just in the way It made her feel like It was cast from somewhere, by Something. Irrespective of the answer: her body recoiled back in fear.

She narrowly avoided tumbling down out of the office chair, instead steadying by flailing her right arm against a loose array of instruments she'd put to the side to make room for her head. A few fell onto the floor; she winced at the din raised by metal clanging against metal. She was hyperventilating.

The Shadow twitched Its head–It looked straight at her. But–how could It be said to look, if It did not have eyes? She sat frozen, turning the question over and over in her mind, while the Shade rose to Its full height; It couldn't be more than sixty inches, plus/minus one. But–how could It be said to stand, if It didn't have legs? Diana whimpered.

A thin shadow focused on her; It was pointing. But–how could It be said to–

Stars exploded in her vision to arrest that annoying train of thought. She blinked furiously to clear them and found the vision changed: now It had a face, eyes, legs, an accusatory finger. A vision of the near-future, all features matching perfectly with the failed form It stood over: a pretty, pointed face; lithe legs that arched wider at the hips; a pale, delicate index finger; wide, lamp-like eyes washing out everything in that awful pinkish hue–everything except Its hair, which admit no light at all. It was the very template she was tasked with making… or the template for the template… or the one who templated it in the first place.

"Please," she said, "Please. Don't hurt me! I'm going as fast as I can! Please!"

No word, no movement–not even a blink. It glared and pointed at her, as if to say:

Wake up. The work continues.

Diana Shadrin's eyes flew open. Prying her cheek off the drool that'd congealed under where she'd slept, she cast a nervous look at the metal cot on wheels in the center of the lab. Her latest attempt lay supine and inert on top of it, the head on the far side of the cot and out of sight–for which she was grateful, because she didn't want to see its eyes. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she released an exasperated sigh. She hadn't meant to fall asleep and her lapse in consciousness would cost her: the body's cells were slowly dying, its undifferentiated brain stem unable to maintain homeostasis. She had to begin the disposal process soon before the whole space began to stink of inhuman decay notwithstanding air filtration. On top of that, Dr. Delapore expected daily updates on her progress. Grunting–and still groggy–she got to her feet, fixing her lab coat's lapels with trembling hands–wait, why was she trembling?

She eyed the wretched nuclear thing with great distgrust. She'd dreamt that she was in the lab again. Figures that the place had become such a fixture of her dreams with how much time she'd spent holed up inside; when had she last gone home, in truth? The sensations of outside felt more like fantasy than real with how she missed them: the snuffling of Thimble's pointed snout instead of HVAC noise, the smell of growing things instead of formaldehyde, the dimpled smile of her mother instead of the Thing's blank expression. But she had no time to do more than only dream of those indulgences; the project demanded too much of her to justify a commute to and fro her home. She would not, could not stop, not when she was getting close; she'd let herself be a real person again after she'd achieved her goal, not before. Until then she expected that the nightmares would continue. They were but a manifestation of the deadline looming over her, nothing more and nothing major.

There was no shadow looming over at her now, though; there were scarcely any shadows at all with how the lights lit everything in dim fluorescence. Under such artificial light it was difficult to recognize the Thing as human.

It isn't human, Diana reminded herself. Think of it as a cache of spare parts in the shape of one, that's all, she thought, wheeling the cot over to the far side of the lab. In for a penny, in for a pound of flesh… though a body was a bit more weighty. Pulling open the heavy airtight door was therefore no small feat for a woman of her slighture, but ire was her fire and her fuel. Ire of the Thing she'd come to hate; she gave the placid face of the black-haired homunculus little consideration when she dumped its body in the freezer with the others. After so many iterations, she'd come to hate that pretty, pointed face with eyes that never opened–and that she never wanted to see open, either. She'd worked with kadavers before in medical school, but this was different. Those were forms devoid of life, these were placeholders, kadigans; they circulated breath and blood a little even if they did not live. If they only had a brain… but that was, of course, impossible. She was deep in the uncanny valley, now: mindless failures they were, she'd take some pleasure in disposing of each copy, mal-or-belle-formed… but disposal could wait until success.

Until then: the work continued.