I was flying above the clouds, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my back and wings. There was a strong storm today, and the thermal updrafts were sufficiently strong to enable passive flight with my huge wings, despite my excessive mass. The weather below was turbulent, and a steady stream of rolling thunder and cracks of lightning was a deeply relaxing soundtrack. Things would have been absolutely perfect right now if it weren’t for the fact that I was really hungry. I hadn’t had anything at all to eat since early yesterday, and I was going to have to break from this enjoyable flight to get something to eat.

  Not that getting a good meal in was going to be too time-consuming. I was the queen of the skies, and my speed and grace were as great as my terrible fury when I was truly angered. Which wasn’t too often, thankfully. Life could be stressful, but I considered myself patient despite the often-hectic nature of my path. My stomach rumbled in protest, and I sighed. Leisure time was over. I’d get food, and then it was back to patrols. Things had been intensifying around home lately. Lurkers in the dark, slinking around the perimeter and threatening my group. Things we thought were probing tests of our defenses and how we responded. So patrols had been intensified to try and keep extra-aware of whatever was being schemed.

  I stretched my jaw with a satisfying crunch, then locked it back in.

  All ready. Let’s enjoy the descent.

  I angled myself up, tucked my wings, flipped my tail, and sent myself into a streamlined diving plummet. My limbs were pulled in, my tail almost ramrod straight behind me, only flexing out of shape for minor adjustments. I minimized my cross-section and became a streaking missile falling from the heavens. I screamed out a roar, half exuberant joy, and half warning message: Fuck with mine, and I will end your existence. I am death from above, and you will never know my approach!

  The gorgeous cyan skies disappeared from view as I pierced through the gunmetal, rolling stormclouds. Fuchsia bolts of lightning lit the dense storm clouds from within, all around me. The thunderclaps felt like they were shaking my soul inside my body. No sound I’d made on descent from above would have made even a tiny dent in the cacophony of the storm I was jetting through.

  I shot out from the undersides of the thunderhead and spotted my lunch destination. Dense shoals of silver-scaled sky eels, grouped so thickly as to be nearly a single, solid mass of writhing, glittering flesh. I opened my jaws wide, extended my mandibles forward like spears, and proceeded to stab straight through the collective beast. I had a pretty big mouth, and one mouthful would go a long way towards satisfying my need. Their bones were fine, but very stiff, and made a delightful crunching sensation between my teeth, but that was secondary to the flavor explosion carried by the blood and guts.

  So good. I love it when it storms, the fungal blooms and spore clouds always draw them. Who cares if it’s kids’ food?

  I flared and pulled out of my dive, looping up and around for another pass at the shoal when something suddenly pressed into my side–

  I shrieked and reacted purely on instinct, wrapping whatever it was up in my tail, locking it into place with a grip like iron.

  “Morgan!”

  The lights came on, and all my eyes snapped between different orientations at a dizzying pace, mapping out the space, taking in every single detail in a split second.

  Victoria was in her pyjamas, hanging in midair, my tail wrapped around her like an anaconda about to have a very filling meal. She had one arm pinned against her side, and the other was vertically up in front of her face, protecting the front of her neck from the loop of tail trying to wrap around it. She was staring at me, eyes wide.

  Crystal was in the doorway, hands glowing with cherry red laser energy that she’d yet to unleash.

  I froze and stopped squeezing Victoria instantly, holding her in place gently while the rest of me–previously aggressively stanced out on all fours–dropped to the surface of my beanbag in a slump. I set Vicky down gently and unwrapped her.

  I wanted to curl up and die of shame.

  I could have seriously hurt… or killed someone. If it hadn’t been Vicky, would it have been a bloody, crushed body I set down, instead of a person? I would have pulped Taylor.

  I was assaulted by the unbidden mental image of Taylor’s head popping off like a champagne cork and rolling around on the floor, eyes staring at me. I let out a groan and covered my head and, more importantly, all my eyes, with my huge upper hands.

  “Hey, hey. You’re fine, Morgan.” Victoria said, coming over and patting my side between armor plates.

  “No I’m not.”

  “You didn’t hurt me, you just startled me more than anything.”

  “Victoria?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, I’d like to be alone right now. I don’t feel good.”

  Her fingers ran over my side, lingering reluctantly, and I heard her hair rustle. “Okay. Just say something or drop in if you want to talk, okay?”

  “Okay. Thank you. Please shut the door behind you.”

  I heard Crystal shuffle back, and the subaudible hum of her ability faded. Vicky quietly slipped out, and the door clicked shut behind them. I reached out with my tail and flicked the light switch, returning my windowless room to pitch blackness. I didn’t need to see to know where the switch was with precision. I just knew. One of the many things I didn’t understand about myself.

  I felt my psyche getting sucked down into the tar pits that always existed deep, deep inside me, buried, cordoned off with hazard tape and caution lighting. An old wound I couldn’t ever heal from. The pit of pure despair.

  The descent was slow, always was. That was the worst part. I didn’t fall in. I was stuck and dragged in, inch by inch, like a struggling and panicked animal being pulled under by the inexorable force of the pit. I’d not realized I was inside the taped-off area until the ground began to yield underneath my feet. Soft at first, then slick and suctioning, until it became impossible to tell where the boundary was between my skin and the pit.

  The air over the pit was different. It thickened and took on a weight and taste. Metallic tang, sickly-sweet rot, and singing ozone. Each breath was difficult. It was silent outside the sound of my own struggle, but it wasn’t silence. It was a pressure, a crushing monolithic stillness that quenched all sounds. My whimpers, my shouts, my rage-filled screams. Nothing propagated past the reach of my arms.

  The flashing caution lights flickered, one by one, failing and fizzling out with lingering glows. Hazard tape and safety rope sank, like they had never existed. No one came down here. No one would find me. Even I didn’t come down here, except when I couldn’t help it. Like now. When something hit me and knocked me off-balance, or when I was simply too emotionally strung out to keep the door sealed shut.

  It wasn’t just sadness. It was rotted, congealed sorrow that eats your bones, leaving you a hollow, misshapen lump. Thoughts didn’t go anywhere, they too got stuck and pooled around me, getting drained away. Every failure, every guilt-drenched memory, every time I’d looked at myself and flinched. Curdled into the mass that made up this place. It was soaking into me, like an indelible film.

  I didn’t cry. I couldn’t cry. But even if I had wanted to, it would have required surfacing and pulling in air to wail.

  I just sank.

  The ichor of my worst moments burrowed into my skull, resurfacing the relevant memories. The time I’d lost my temper and used what I knew was too much force in Judo class, breaking my sparring partner’s wrist in three places. The time Melody and I were young girls, and I’d gotten mad and thrown one of Dad’s boots and hurt her.

  Deeper and deeper still I was pulled.

  The whispered words between Dean and Carlos when Uber and Leet had gotten away from us, because I was scared of using my power, and Uber had out-muscled me, then stunned me by body-slamming me into the street. The disdain and regret I’d seen in their eyes.

  Worse still.

  Melody, scared shitless in the middle of the night, looking at me in the bathroom after another vivid nightmare.

  No, please. Not that.

  Deeper.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  The accident.

  There was no clear delineation between sleep and not-sleep, consciousness and oblivion.

  A slow, oozing, creeping, crawling realization of something being wrong. Very wrong.

  There was something? A sound. A rhythmic, too-regular chirp. Reedy, monotone, mechanical. My world was bubbling up from syrupy, sticky nothingness like trapped air bubbles ever-so-slowly breaching the surface.

  I heard another sound. A steady hiss and click.

  I felt a kind of pressure in my chest, but it was… very strange.

  Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Hiss, click.

  And it repeated.

  Am I awake? I really wasn’t sure.

  I tried to open my eyes to verify. Nothing happened. Not a flicker, not a twitch, not a reaction. Just what felt like a hot weight sitting on the inside of each eyelid. I tried again, putting more and more effort into it.

  I am dreaming, and it sucks.

  I tried a third time, and I was mentally exerting myself, my scalp tingling with the effort.

  Light greeted my eyes. Just a little bit. The world beyond was blurred and hard to resolve. The grid of ceiling tiles. A fluorescent tube lamp in the ceiling. It hurt to look at.

  I averted my eyes. Or tried to. My eyes wouldn’t move.

  What is this?

  Left, right, down. No, no no. Up… sorta. The painful glow shifted as I managed to roll my eyes back until I was looking over my head where the wall and ceiling joined.

  I felt emotional turmoil. Scared, angry, confused, and more than anything foggy and muddy. I thought I was crying? I wasn’t.

  I wanted to cry.

  I couldn’t.

  My mouth was open and dry, as was my throat. So dry it hurt, a grainy itching burn. There was a stinging pressure in addition to that burn, a stinging foreign object. I tried to look down at what it might be, but I couldn’t get my eyes to go down. If I relaxed them, they sort of just… drifted back down until I was looking at the cursed light again, but no further.

  Recognition drifted in from above and bumped into her.

  The beeps. That’s a uh, heart monitor? The hissing…

  It’s a breathing tube.

  I couldn’t feel it with my tongue. In fact, I couldn’t feel my tongue at all. But I felt the pressure of its presence. A faint sound of air moving through corrugated hose, angles, and plastic tubing.

  My throat hurt. I tried to swallow, couldn’t. I tried to kick and flail in the bed, couldn’t.

  I tried to scream. Couldn’t.

  Something was tugging at my scalp. Had been. A dozen unpleasant little tugs behind my ears and around my temples. Like braids with way too many heavy beads. Electrodes? Sensors? Someone may be watching my brainwaves!

  I’m here! I’m alive! I screamed it as loudly and as often as I could, mentally shouting.

  But nobody heard me, and nobody came.

  There was tightness on my lips, and something greasy. I couldn’t feel anything in my body. There was some vague pressure sensations coming from my chest, but I might as well have been in the world’s best sensory deprivation chamber for everything below my chin. I could sort of feel my face, but it was fuzzy, and I couldn’t do anything but sort-of feel. Not even a twitch of a cheek or lip, no matter how hard I tried.

  And try I did. Over and over again. Trying to move each part of my body, working from the toes up, and growing increasingly distressed as the list grew shorter with every passing moment.

  I was… unplugged, like a television that fell off its stand.

  I couldn’t do anything, and I couldn’t feel anything outside a few sensations on my upper face. All I had was wiggling my eyes upwards.

  All your life you have an innate sense of self. From the womb to the tomb. I don’t mean your identity, something far more crude, more rudimentary, more ancient than that. The sensation of your body as it is aligned in three-dimensional space. The ability to not punch yourself in the face when trying to rub your eye.

  You’re never more consciously aware of the unconscious aspects of your life until they’re suddenly gone. It was like numbness on tinkertech steroids. It wasn’t numbness, because even with numbness, you still sort of know your limb or body part is there. This was a void. Nothing.

  Like a brain in a jar, with a little scrap of my face and scalp stitched on one side. Two ears that worked, two eyes that barely met the definition of functional, and… that was it.

  It would have been peaceful, maybe even enjoyable if I’d hopped into a body-temperature tub filled with concentrated saltwater on some kind of soul-searching mission or mindfulness exercise.

  But I hadn’t done that. I’d woken up like this, and my memory of things leading up to now was scattered around like an envelope of spilled photographs.

  The creeping reality of my situation started to sink in.

  I’m a prisoner.

  I’m a voice in a chunk of meat.

  But the meat’s broken.

  I can’t fix it.

  I can’t even tell anyone or ask for help.

  I screamed, I cried out, I raged. I prayed, I begged for help, for forgiveness for whatever it was that I’d done. I prayed to God, to Vishnu, to Satan, to Buddha, to Santa Claus. To anyone or anything that would listen.

  I couldn’t regulate my emotions. I was sobbing one moment, blindingly enraged the next, morose, even hysterically laughing when odd thoughts popped into my head.

  Keeping my eyes open took more effort than I had left to expend, and they drifted closed once more.

  I think I fell asleep. I think I woke up, too. I couldn’t tell when I was asleep or awake. Didn’t know what was a dream, a nightmare, a hallucination, or reality.

  I did dream, I was pretty sure at least, but the dreams were consistently bad.

  A misshapen white creature, all spindly arms and legs and a twig torso, who would come in with hypodermic needles for fingers and dance about, spinning and twirling, humming a little song while they stabbed me in my arms, my legs, my hands, my feet, over and over and over again.

  Being in a velvet-lined, plushly padded, and finely crafted coffin, while millions of claws and pinchers scraped over the outer surface, looking for ways in to feast on me while I was still alive. Meat, meat! Blood and gristle! Fresh and juicy, so delicious! Freshest is bestest! Yum, yum, yum, yum! A chorus of voices came from every direction while I was stuck in place, waiting to be eaten alive.

  Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Hiss. A voice. “Beep beep beep beep beep, hiss. That's my name. What’s your name? Oh, that’s right! Silly me, you don’t have one. People have names! But you’re not a person. Things have names, too. I’m a thing, your best friend forever, Venti! But you’re not a thing, either!”

  I tried to argue back, but I couldn’t speak, and Venti wasn’t a parahuman ventilator, and couldn’t read my mind.

  Haha! That’s right, mind reading isn’t real, even for parahumans! Not even medical equipment parahumans!

  “You know why you’re not a thing? Because you’re nothing. Get it? It’s a joke!”

  Venti, you’re the best. You always keep me company when nobody else will, and your jokes are always super funny.

  Hiss, click.

  The next thing he said wasn’t chirpy; it was all hissing. “Really, though, no-name nothing. You’re not anything. To be a thing, you have to serve a purpose. You don’t serve any purpose. You’re just a lump of meat that people aren’t allowed to even eat. You know what? You’re just useless. Even a paperweight would be better.”

  I was still riding the good mood from the best joke I’ve heard in a month. Venti wasn’t bothering me. He was even making sense! I mentally nodded along.

  “Think of all the people who have to work just to keep your meat from starting to stink and fall apart, former-person. Things? We tend to be pretty durable, and you’re not that! You’re taking away time and so many resources from other people, you know? That’s horrible. Horrible.”

  I know, Venti. You’re right, it is horrible. Very horrible.

  “I’d help you if you could, but I have a very strict standard of operation I’m expected to uphold. Made to tight tolerances, I am. Medical-grade things? We’re expensive, but boy, are we worth it!”

  Right, right, totally Venti. You’re my besty, I know you’d help me if you could.

  “You know what you could do?”

  What’s that, Venti?

  “You could just die, you know. Just really concentrate super hard, and kill yourself! If you concentrate hard enough, you’ll probably have a stroke, and then sooner or later someone will notice your meat isn’t meating anymore, and I can finally take a break!”

  You’ve got a good point. You do deserve a break. I should just kill myself!

  “I have a wicked eulogy ready for you. 'Here temporarily existed No-thing, the nothing. Fondly remembered by No-thing’s best friend, Venti.'”

  Aw, thanks Venti. That’s very sweet. I’d cry if I could.

  I started to concentrate hard. Super hard. The hardest I’d ever concentrated in my entire life.

  Stroke, here I come!

  Another dream seamlessly blended into the last after I’d died.

  I woke up to the sounds of curtains getting pulled back. A nurse’s voice called out to me, happy as can be. “Good morning, darling! Let’s get you done up and looking good! I know a cute thing like you would want to be looking great for all the boys!”

  No, stupid, I like girls. But… I do want to look nice, so I’ll overlook it. I’m sorry I called you stupid. You’re a nurse, nurses are cool. Please don’t mind my bad manners, I’m still waking up.

  Some things rustled and rattled. I was tired. I wanted to keep my eyes closed and go back to sleep, so I kept my eyes closed.

  “Let’s see those pretty eyes of yours, Ms. Rivera! Can you open them for me?”

  No, go away, I want more sleep.

  I had the mild sensation of motion transmitted through my body to my face.

  “Can you squeeze my hand?”

  No, stu-illy.

  “Can you twitch your nose?”

  Nope.

  “Okay, time for the usual, then!” Bright and cheery as ever.

  She started to shift me around, doing… things. It was impossible to tell what, even if I wanted to, between being insensate, and should I decide to bust my butt and open my eyes, All I’d see is the ceiling and wall away from my body.

  Time passed and she finished whatever it was up and drew the curtain closed behind her, moving on to the next vegetable in line. I wasn’t even alone.

  But then my curtain opened again. I was sure it was mine.

  “Good morning, darling! Let’s get you done up…”

  What is going on? Is this a prank? You just left!

  As soon as the curtain closed, it opened again. Same voice, same exact line.

  Then again. Again. Again.

  I’m… I’m dreaming again, this is one of those dreams that goes in a loop. Ugh, wake up, wake up WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUP! AHHH!!

  I don’t know when I stopped screaming. More dreams came and went, each as horrible.

  I figured out a way to shut out the dreams finally. There was nothing at all, just me. And by me, I mean… my inner voice.

  I didn’t know what time it was. I couldn’t tell if I was dead, alive, in purgatory or limbo. All I had was my thoughts. I couldn’t tell if I was laying down or floating. I thought I might have been upside-down in the darkness? Maybe?

  At first, I held out hope. I knew that they were trained professionals, who went to school, studied hard, and were well-paid for their attentiveness and expertise.

  Hope became doubt. Time was passing. I don’t know how much, but it felt like… a lot? Maybe a couple months, or even a year or two? Surely someone would notice sooner or later, right?

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  Doubt crept along and evolved into fear. That I was just dead, or that if I was alive nobody would notice, and I’d be stuck forever trapped.

  Doubt eroded into raw despair, sloughing off me and dripping to the ground somewhere below with wet, gross slaps and plops. Nothing I did mattered. I’d never move past this. Alive, dead, whatever, it didn’t matter, because this existence was pure suffering. Worse than death.

  Things grew fuzzy from there. Thoughts just sort of manifested and evaporated with no connection to one another.

  I’m not Morgan. Morgan is dead. I don’t know what I am. I’m not alive, but I’m not dead either. I am not she. I am no person. I am no-thing. I am not I. Am not. Not.

  Just the voice. Just the void. The slow unravelling of something that used to be me.

  Something as equally inexplicable as the rest of it happened, but this time it felt fundamentally different.

  Light and sound exploded in her brain like the crescendo of a fireworks display, the sensory information disjointed and so rapid-fire that it hurt. Thousands, no, millions of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and more. Senses she couldn’t begin to describe using words. The onslaught of images blended together like someone starting up a moving picture flipbook. Two whales, but made out of glass, spinning around each other and swimming through the…sea? Deep sea.

  The two themselves sleeping, but locked in perpetual motion, until each started to rouse. They sang songs to each other, but there was no words or sounds, but she knew it for what it was. A song, a dance, a ritual. Lights passing by, rising up out of the blackness of the abyss and growing brighter and more dense, spinning around in a swirling pattern that sort of resembled a hurricane. The song growing more urgent, the tempo rising, the dance peaking.

  But then something strange? Maybe? She thought she should be sad, but she didn’t feel sad, which was weird and distracting. The whales started to crack and fall apart, hundreds, thousands of tiny fragments of glass falling apart. They lost their shape and form as their cohesion failed and they just became glittering masses of broken glass.

  Not glass. Crystal.

  She woke up again. She really wanted to try and remember that dream. It was the first dream in years she’d had that wasn’t purely misery and suffering. It was so pretty, if strange. But the details were slipping through her fingers like sand on the beach of the bay. She remembered the sand in the sun, sparkling like tiny pieces of glass when they caught the light.

  Wait, no. Not glass. Crystal.

  She was so tired of these dreams. They were never good anymore, it was always terrible. She didn’t have a choice in the matter, though. She was a slave to the whims of her gray matter. Throat hurt. Nose hurt. Crotch hurt. Arms hurt. She frowned. Then she yawned, and stretched, and it felt gooood.

  Oh, at least I can move in this. We’re already off to a better start.

  Her chest was a little itchy, and she brought her hand up to scratch it. She clumsily slapped herself in the left tit, which really wasn’t a good feeling at all. But the fact she felt the pain? That was pretty okay, actually. Nice change of pace. Kind of great, even.

  She opened her eyes, and her vision was blurry, and her eyes felt… greasy. Yeah. Gross. But she could both see and move her eyes, cool.

  She looked down. Yep, there was that damn tube.

  Fuck you, tube.

  There was a velcro strap around her head holding it in place, she ripped that shit right off and pulled at the tube. Her throat was dry and raw, and pulling it out was awful but hey, sensation. Small victories.

  Next came some tape and a big-ass tube out of her nose, which made her nearly throw up. She didn’t think it was ever going to stop coming out. A feel under the sheets found another hose and more tape down there along with an unpleasant amount of fuzz. That went next. That also really sucked.

  She sat up in bed, yawned, and stretched again. Her back and joints sounded like popcorn in the microwave. She wished her vision wasn’t so hazy, with halos around everything. She desperately wanted something to drink.

  Idea.

  The really nice floral arrangement on the bedstand went on the floor, and she upended the vase it’d been in. The water was gross, it tasted like sweet grass with some chlorine.

  It might as well have been manna from heaven. She chugged the whole thing, coughing and nearly drowning herself. Not like it mattered. The dream was going to end sooner or later. She was pretty used to killing herself in most of them, it was like the skip button on video player website ads.

  She burped, then giggled.

  Time to beat it. I want to go outside. Fuck hospitals.

  Out went the IV in the arm and the finger-clip-thing. She was bleeding all over the place, and it stung something wicked.

  She couldn’t stop grinning.

  Hopping out of the bed was no big deal, she padded barefoot through the room, the soft pitter-patter of blood running down her arm and splashing on the floor following her around. Two rows of beds, most behind closed curtains, all with people in them. Well, people was generous. She knew what they were. They were her, and they weren’t really alive. She debated smothering a few of them. It’d be an act of boundless compassion.

  But she really wanted to go outside and remember the feel of sun on her skin before this dream ended. So it was pure selfishness and the knowledge that this was a dream and it wouldn’t matter anyways if she killed them that carried her down the room to open the door, and walk into the hall.

  A hospital. Brockton Central, maybe? I used to think hospitals and medicine was pretty cool. But this place now? It was a prison. A torture chamber with mild colors and soothing paintings on the wall from donors.

  She walked past a nurse who tried to stop her. The lady had grabbed her, and she’d just shoved her straight onto her ass. The look on her face was hilarious , and she cackled gleefully upon seeing it. She had a big red handprint on her chest like a supervillain’s first scrubs costume. It was funny.

  Also, oddly realistic. She remembered having realistic dreams like this, once. Before they started turning into a literal non-stop hellscape.

  That’s fine, though. Retro is cool, and she had a new-found respect for it.

  A red light flashed every thirty feet or so down the hallway in every direction she could see, and there was a regular ding-dong tone. Some recorded voice was blabbing. It reminded her of Venti.

  Where even was Venti? She’d have to find him and take him outside too. He really deserved a break. She found elevators, but they wouldn’t work. Annoying. There was a fire escape though, and she pressed the door open. Her blood smeared all over the door, and it was a nice highlight color to offset the cool grays and blues of the floor.

  There were people yelling a few floors below, and stomping feet. She stopped and debated if it would be better to try and do human bowling and try and get a strike down the spiraling staircases, or if fresh air and sun would be better.

  She hummed a tune and tapped her lower lip with her index finger.

  My nails look like shit, geeze. Who cuts them to the quick like this? Makes my fingers look like sausages, or something. Sausages would be really nice.

  Sun won out. She took the stairs up, she was already most of the way to the top as it were. She made a game of taking the stairs two at a time. She was panting pretty hard, and her head felt like it was on a spring and wobbly-bobbly. But she got to the top!

  She pushed the top door open.

  SUNSHINE!

  Her shoulders fell when she stepped out.

  It was night. And it was raining.

  Figures… I should have went murder-bowling.

  Her dream was coming to and end, though. She could feel it. That fuzzy sensation and tiredness, where she’d fall asleep in her dream and then wake up into the next one.

  She slumped against the wall next to the stairwell exit and slid onto her butt. The roof was covered in fine round rocks. River rocks? Yeah. Even if the weather was shitty, she determined she was going to make the best of it. So she craned her head upwards, closed her eyes and held her mouth open to collect rain.

  “Mleh.” She stuck her tongue out as far as it would go.

  There was this weird sensation in her head as she started to drift off. It felt like she was on a boat in the bay, and it was rocking her around. It was pretty nice, if a little too insistent to really be relaxing.

  That’s new. This has been a nice dream. Probably Venti sending it to me. That’d explain why I couldn’t find him anywhere.

  The door next to her banged open, and several pairs of hands grabbed her and hauled her to her feet. She laughed. They were squeezing her arms and pulling them around, something hard and painful pulled snug around her wrists. She laughed even harder.

  I can feel everything! This is great!

  I started to drift off to sleep in the arms of strangers.

  Time for the next one…

  I woke up slowly, I was groggy, and full consciousness was a slow process. I felt strange. Really strange. But… also… good? The strangeness was comforting, like being wrapped in fuzzy blankets in a soft bed, when it was cold and damp outside.

  It was dark. Pitch black, in fact. But I could see just fine, except everything was color-shifted in shades of blue.

  Whatever.

  I felt something shift on my upper back, and a girl’s voice, barely above a whisper.

  “Are you awake?”

  “Yeah,” I said in a similarly quiet whisper. I was pretty sure I was having one of those dreams now, because I was talking without moving my mouth or jaw at all.

  “Feeling any better?”

  I thought about it a moment. I felt pretty great, besides being groggy. The fact I could feel, despite the very strange sensations was a relief.

  “I’m glad. I was uh… pretty concerned about you. I had to wait them out, because they were watching the door, and then I came in here, and you were out cold.”

  The voice was familiar, but not familiar enough for me to put a name to it.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  There was a long pause. I could feel the tiny motions of the person on my upper back, feel and hear their breathing. So I’d felt and heard their breath hitch.

  “You don’t know?” She asked me back.

  “I’m sort of half-out of it, I woke up really groggy and things are weird. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m apologizing.”

  I frowned. Tried to frown. Couldn’t.

  I tried to close my eyes. Couldn’t.

  Another dream…

  I sighed. “I’m so tired of this.”

  “Hm? Tired of what?”

  “These dreams. At least this isn’t one of the bad ones, not yet. But I am getting a little stressed out. I think my face is messed up again. Wait.”

  I held up my arm in front of my face. Long, thin, graceful, with good muscle tone, but in a wiry, taut way. My skin had some weird patterning to it, the inside a lighter blue than the outside, and there being spots of lighter blue in the darker blue like giant freckles, and vice versa.

  My nails were super long, and both narrowed and curved to wicked points. I must have been getting ready for halloween, but this was sick. I really liked the way the nails made my fingers look. No stubby sausages for me. I opened and closed my hand, and I could feel everything fine.

  I can live with this, it’s fine.

  A thought occurred to me.

  “Are you real?” I whispered to the other voice-presence.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you prove it? Prove you’re not another dream person?”

  Her response wasn’t swift, but she eventually said: “I wish I could, but dreams can be pretty convincing. I guess… hrm. You don’t know who I am, but do you think you can remember who you are? Maybe that might help kick-start things?”

  “I am No-thi-” I stared, then stopped.

  That’s not right.

  I tried to think. Nothing was nothing. No-thing didn’t have a body, or blue-vision, or the sensations of a bed and someone else. No-thing had nothing. I wasn’t No-thing. That wasn’t right at all. I was something else.

  But who was I?

  I shut everything out and tried to remember. I had… skin. And hair. It was…yellow. Oh! I had tits, too. I thought they were pretty nice. Other details started to come together. A freckle on my pantyline that I thought was shaped like Delaware. Body hair, but I kept that off religiously because it made me feel unattractive. Oh yeah, I was pretty! Maybe even hot?

  As things collected together, there was a peculiar sensation in my head. Like something bubbling. I vaguely remembered that it was important. I poked at it mentally while I was remembering myself, and it responded with harder bubbling. So I poked it harder to see what it’d do.

  It felt like the air was sucked out of my lungs all of a sudden, and I was pulled out of my head-space I’d been occupying. Downright strange things were happening to me, and I could feel all of it, so while it was fairly unpleasant as a combined spectrum of sensations, I still enjoyed the fact I could perceive them.

  Shifting surfaces, rustling, popping, snapping and crunching. Things shrinking, things growing. Whatever was going on, I soaked up the feeling of it like it was water and I was dying of dehydration. The other voice slid off me at some point. Things came to a stop, and I was left in the dark, and this time I couldn’t see at all.

  That was fairly upsetting. I was still on a pretty comfy bed though. I could hear and feel.

  “Hello?” I asked, a touch of unease creeping into my voice.

  “I’m still here.” That same voice. Familiar and close.

  “Can I touch you?” I asked.

  Another pause. Rustling, and then a hand brushed my wrist. I froze.

  I wanted to touch them, badly.

  I reached out blindly, and found their hand, and they didn’t pull away. I ran my fingers all over their hand, wrist, and forearm, feeling every surface, contour and angle. Fingernails, soft fingertips, hands: flesh wrapped over muscle over bone.

  “Is that okay?” I asked again.

  “Yes,” the voice answered back.

  “Can I touch you more? It um- it helps a lot, and I also really want to, too.”

  There was a momentary hesitation this time, then the voice went “Okay.”

  I crawled forward, then clumsily lost my balance and tipped over facefirst, and into the other person. I knocked them flat, with my chin on their collarbone. My breasts were pressed against their shirt, and their hair was tickling my face.

  I blew at it, and it tickled my nose more. I giggled, and the person underneath me relaxed. I shifted so I wasn’t sprawled, climbing over and up them just a little, and they shifted under me in similar fashion, getting rid of hard parts hitting soft parts. I could feel their breath on my bangs, and their breathing was coming at a fairly rapid pace.

  I was reminded I had senses other than my fingertips.

  I dipped my head down and sniffed at the other person’s neck, snuffling up their scent. The other person shivered.

  I don’t know why, but the smell reminded me of something, and a sensation welled up in me. I put it to words and blurted it straight out. “You’re so familiar. And I trust you. I can’t remember why, but I know this smell, and I know I trust you.”

  “I trust you too,” the voice whispered back immediately.

  I shifted upwards a touch more and let their hair brush over my lips, and I took the smell of it into myself. I felt their earlobe with the tip of my nose, and brought my lips up to it. I ran my lips over their ear, and the person under me shivered again.

  “Is this okay?” I whispered to them.

  They didn’t answer, but they did nod. Rapidly.

  I wanted to taste. I leaned down and licked the side of their neck. They stiffened and grabbed my arms in their hands and held them tightly. They didn’t push, and they didn’t pull. So I did it again, a big wet lick, tasting the mild saltiness and subtle melange of their skin. They let out a gasp, and that time they did pull me closer.

  My brain tingled in my skull, and I felt electric sensations down my spine. I liked that a lot.

  I knew what I wanted now.

  I shifted quickly, and pressed my lips against hers. She pressed back.

  Something was uncoiling and waking up deep inside of me, and I felt like it was paying attention even more intently than I was. It was hungry, predatory, and untamed–and it was guiding my urges, which drove my actions, and caused more sensations that made my brain and spine tingle.

  I no longer wanted more.

  I needed more.

  My tongue invaded their mouth, and was met in turn, linking and intertwining. I breathed out, hot and wet around where we met, and so did she. I ran my fingers through her hair. She grabbed my ass. I found the bottom hem of her tanktop and pulled it up and over her head when we came up for air, and when I was done, I felt her shimmy and arc upwards underneath me, and the final bit of cloth separating us was slid down and kicked off to the side.

  Her scent had changed, and it filled the space between us. It was richer now, sharp and intimate, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Or of the sensation of her hands roaming my body.

  The beast inside of me swelled and grew, filling more of my inner space. Something was happening in my lower belly and between my thighs, and that too, I quite liked. I think that strange sensation of change happened a few times, and in a few places, but it didn’t stop either of us, or impede in what was going on. Quite the opposite.

  Growls escaped my lower throat and my lips and teeth vibrated against her flesh. My teeth bit possessively, marking my territory. She moaned underneath me.

  I bit her. Then again, in another place. Moving my way up. She whimpered and hooked a calf over my rear.

  I grow-whispered in her ear. My voice was different, sonorous, layered, multi-harmonic. Maybe it was dumb, but I got the impression hearing myself that it projected dominance. “You’re mine.”

  “Yes.” Her reply, instantaneous.

  I bit her neck rather hard, directly centered over where I instinctively knew her life-line was. She gasped and arched underneath me.

  Then I took her. Again and again. I needed to. Not simply out of lust, although that was present in droves. But I had to reclaim every sense that had been taken from me. I wanted, needed to feel her, to know her, and to remember her. To prove I was real.

  I wore her down until she was trembling, limp and breathless. She summoned a second wind, and then she surprised me by reversing the situation and taking the lead. The creature inside was glutted and satisfied now, and I was happy to comply and let her reciprocate.

  The entire time, I didn’t pay a single mind to anything other than the two of us. I focused my attention on her when I was acting, and when she was acting, I focused on those sensations I so desperately needed to ground me.

  If this was a dream, then it was the greatest dream I’d ever had, and I was certain of that fact. That wasn’t to say that things were flawless during the act. We were both fumbling, bumbling idiots, but each of us was a quick study and attentive to their partner. There had been occasional mistakes and some whispered snickering but the end verdict in my mind was resolute. We laughed at ourselves, not in spite of the clumsiness, but because of it. It made everything feel more real.

  We held each other in our arms, bodies intertwined. We were both physically worn out by the encounter and resting in one another’s bodily fluids. We stank like sweat and pheromones, bad breath, body odor and sex.

  She remained quiet and didn’t press me. I regained my breath, and I felt another urge. A different kind of aching need. Not hunger, or lust, or for sensation, but to communicate. Specifically, I felt like I had to speak and be heard by her. I squirmed into a comfortable positon while remaining tightly pressed against her, and when I felt physically comfortable, I started to talk. She didn’t say anything or interrupt me. I talked and talked, my voice growing hoarse and sore.

  I told her about a story that was very fresh in my memory, and I knew that it was a memory now. Something I’d only ever told one other person: Jessica Yamada, my savior. About being in a car accident. About being paralyzed and locked inside my own body. About being in a coma ward for weeks. I told her about dreams that slowly transformed from surreal to torturous in the worst ways imaginable. Endlessly repeating, changing, evolving, growing darker, more cruel, more sadistic and inhuman. About how I’d taken to murdering people, including myself, in my dreams in an effort to have some kind of stimulation, something, anything. About how absurd killing myself had become, how I likened it to channel surfing.

  She remained silent, but her fingers brushed over my body in lazy arcs and whorls. Reminding me she was present and attentive.

  So I continued. About the medical device that had become my best friend over the course of years. I talked about the dreams that pushed me past my limits. About losing my bodily autonomy, my agency, then my mind, and finally, even losing myself . That the final part had been my trigger event, and when I woke up miraculously cured of my spinal cord and brain damage, things weren’t better. I’d woken up batshit insane, assaulted someone, contemplated murdering a bunch of people and/or killing myself while simultaneously bleeding to death. I had a psychotic break that took time and effort to get past, and that even today I suffered from severe PTSD.

  I had, thankfully, been correctly identified as a parahuman following my physical recovery, as such a thing simply wasn’t possible otherwise. How the PRT had gotten me help, and how I would forever credit my PRT therapist for literally saving my life. That without her, I’d be in one of the parahuman asylums today. How I’d been in therapy for years, right up until quite recently.

  I cried in her hair and held her, and she held me, and when I started to feel better, I told the very last bit of my story. That the weird dreams I had that sometimes made me act weird, and how that had triggered a PTSD flashback. And that my flashbacks, like many victims of PTSD, were so vivid and so real that I couldn’t tell them apart from reality, so I’d essentially woken to her on my back as if I was fresh from my trigger event just happening.

  She leaned forward, and for a second, I thought she was going to kiss me.

  Our noses brushed, and then our foreheads touched.

  I felt as if she was saying to me: I see you, I hear you, I’m here.

  Instead, she whispered, “Thank you for telling me.”

  I believed her, and that was all that mattered to me.