“The queen…I wouldn’t be like her you know.”

  We had been talking for a couple of hours. Little of the orange glow of the sun remained, but what was left lit the water under the bridge we walked over. It flickered with silver and green in the ripples of the soft wind. My eyes had been lost in those waves as I let our conversation wash over me, but her words broke through my detachment. We had been having a slow talk about the events of the past couple months. Despite how heavy a subject it was, we approached it lightly, but we were being slightly more open about the subjects we would skirt over before, still we were more inclined towards the broad scale of the country than our own circumstances making the overall talk feel impersonal. For my part I felt as if I was reciting a synopsis, but I’m sure from a perspective less twisted than my own my words felt in line with normal conversation. So, her comment about herself and the queen, it felt as if it came completely out of the ether.

  I was confused at first. I assumed she must be referring to the infidelity. The neglect and abuse, well that would be as if you were discussing a murder with someone and they suddenly claimed they would never kill anyone. It’s assumed for anything that extreme, but in this context, I didn’t feel it should be much different for cheating either.

  Was she just trying to assure a doubt she thought the situation might have given me or was this an actual a manifestation of guilt? I didn’t feel anything towards these two possibilities, I only considered them and that’s what made her next words cut so deep that my heart sunk to the floor.

  “But you don’t actually believe that do you?”

  It all collapsed at once. The fragile surface I had built beneath myself after Bennie’s death. Just how long had I expected to go on like this? I couldn’t answer that question.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just…your eyes. They look just like my father’s always did.”

  No, I begged internally, don’t put this mirror up to me. Please don’t reflect my filth inside those eyes of emerald. But I had to look. I had to fix my gaze on hers and indeed I was met with the reflection of a hollow smile.

  Why didn’t it collapse? Why didn’t I say anything?

  I knew why. I was exposed. I was mentally cornered. The only words I had to say couldn’t exist outside the shattered illusion.

  “Your father…he must have been…”

  Just say it, Douglass, I asked myself, it’s already been spelled out. But I couldn’t. I was choking on my silence as the self loathing I had been repressing through our entire relationship erupted within me. I didn’t want to hear it and that was my greatest sin of all.

  “My mother, my real mother, she wasn’t faithful you see. When she left, my father was never the same. He became paranoid and irrational. He would get angry at me and my sister on a whim. Claimed we were keeping secrets from him.”

  I felt like I could see it play out before me. No that’s wrong, I already felt it play out, didn’t I? She would use the ether ways before work to speak to her sister. A weak tonic for a short nap, not the sort we used as scrubbers. Of course. I saw it all in the beginning and ever after resented her just for smiling. Just for daring to smile amongst the filth.

  “He would hit us. In a blind rage he would strike us. Paula broke quickly, but I was the older sister. I had to do something so I did the only thing I could think of. I smiled. I tried to assuage his paranoia with sincerity. I was too young to understand that a show of sincerity would only fuel his paranoia. Eventually I would learn better. Eventually we left him behind thanks to our stepmother, but by then my heart was frozen and so was my face.”

  How could I lament that she opened up like this? Outside of my head I had treated her with nothing but sincerity. Outside of my head it was obvious she smiled at odd times, and it probably looked like I had already accepted that about her. Because outside of my head I was a good person. Outside I was…acting like Bennie.

  I acknowledged it at last, but the truth granted me no freedom.

  “I’m sorry for pouring all this on you. I just couldn’t keep it in anymore. I know you’re not him, but I can’t help but see the same shadow when you look at me sometimes. You don’t deserve that. Not after everything you’ve been through. Just tell me this. The way I am, does it make me hard to trust?”

  No, your eyes are not lying to you, I lamented. The man I had been pretending to be would have shook his head. He would have assured her he felt no such thing. He would have perhaps even repeated one of the first things he had heard from her, that he would put a real smile on her face. But I wasn’t that man. I was cold. I was ashamed. And even then, even once I had the context of the full story, I had still felt a slight discomfort that she had told the whole thing with the same light smile on her face.

  But it had never been about the smile. No, I had never really even looked at her. I had only wrestled with my own demons. Even if I had looked beyond that smile, I would have only been looking beyond my own issues, not at her.

  “Douglass? Are you okay?”

  It hadn’t just been since Bennie’s death either. The weight of humanity had been crushing me for years until something as simple as a smile was enough to horrify me. All that weight was bearing on me at once and I could no longer push it back down. Something deep inside me tried to scream out. It said to look further, past my disgust. It implored me to see that my interest had been real, that everything hadn’t been a lie, it was just so coated by that weight I was carrying that it had been hard for me to look at. It begged me to just put it down. It told me that it was alright, the sin had only ever been in my head, but my ears were deaf to that voice.

  “Douglass, snap out of it. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you that. You’re not…”

  What was it that I wasn’t? A liar? If I had continued to act the part maybe. Her emerald eyes were so clean. As clean as the ways without filth. It was only my reflection that polluted them.

  I was unable to stand it any longer and I did the worst thing a man could do in that situation. What was only in my head was finally made manifest as I ran from her dusk haloed face and into the haunted night. I may have muttered I’m sorry beneath my breath as I did so, but to this day I’m not sure.

  It was as if I was back in that night running through the woods, cold, confused, and as reluctant to reach my destination as I was to return. Only there wouldn’t be a destination for me in the meandering abyss of my mind. I felt as if the lines clung to me like leaches as I remembered the overflow of filth when it all blended together. Exhaustion clouded my mind as I meaninglessly spent my energy and a certainty that those horrific visions were the world itself filled my every thought. They were always there and I just couldn’t normally see them, but I was drowning in them. But that was wrong, I wasn’t drowning, because I had never been separate to begin with.

  The city was like a maze to me, and I was lost in its corridors, but I knew where it would take me. The city, the world, would swallow me and reduce me to a splotch within a river of filth. I was so sure that was where I was headed so I didn’t understand why when a serene calm had snuck into my mind. I thought perhaps I had been running for too long and reached some kind of high. I also considered that finally surrendering to the ocean of filth might have erased any disgust or anxiety I felt.

  But it was far more than I was imagining. The world had been transformed in some manner when I had melted into the night. Somewhere along the line, one of these maze like corridors had taken me to a strange realm that only resembled the world I knew. I wondered if it was some plane like the ether ways, a new dream plane that copied our world. I was so certain of this, but I didn’t know where that certainty came from. When did heads stop turning whenever I ran by them? When had I stopped seeing anyone at all? The air had become soft as if it was malleable in some fashion. I felt as if it might easily shift the way it would in dreams, yet it still retained the tangible form of reality. It made me question whether the world was always such volatile thing. Could it be that its pieces were always meant to be picked apart and rearranged like a puzzle with uniform edges.

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  How long had I been talking to him? It may be that it had been hours, or it may be that he had started mid sentence, but we spoke as old friends. He stood before me and wherever he stood would be the epicenter of the spell of unreality. He was cloaked in an almost full body cloth made from a sleek alien material that twisted and parted like the appendages of legendary creatures of the deep. The black clad arms and legs that did show through the streams of fabric melting into the shadows gave far more structure than the more sack like appearance of a hermit would. It was altogether more imperious and more unsettling than the feathery bodies of the demons. Under the hood of the cloak was not a face but a large round ivory mask that gleamed like the bones of starlight. Where the eyes should be were instead the shape of tear drops pointed in opposite directions. One was white with a black dot in the middle of the most circular portion and the other was black with a white dot instead. Below was the image of a large, crooked smile that nearly split the mask in half, and I felt the expression was the figures answer to both me and the world. Underneath that mask, I felt a gaze that carried every moment in my life I had felt the world change, every time I had grown, every time the scenery had shifted, for both good and ill.

  A very small rational part of my mind wondered if I had once again run into a demon possessed after foolhardily charging unprepared into the dark. It wasn’t impossible that the cloak and mask had been to hide some horrifying malady or injury he had been dying from, and I felt that there was some undeniable factor shared by him and the scholar even if the flavor of it was different,

  “Me and the so called demon possessed that haunts you? I can see where you might see a connection. We are both, as I have explained to you several times, lost in our own grand plans that will probably do more harm than good. The difference is he’s gone mad in his pursuit while I chase my own purpose to retain my sanity. But I wouldn’t be overly concerned with that scholar. In what’s to come he is only a very small issue.”

  After he answered my thoughts perfectly, I became afraid that he was able to pry into my mind with the ease a librarian sorting through a catalogue, but he laughed at my uncertainty.

  “Mind reading is an interesting subject where I’m concerned. As nearly omnipotent as we might be, at least with respect to yourself, we can in fact not read minds on a base level. Even as the creators of dimensions, since we ourselves are conscious entities, we cannot have a perfect grasp on the intricacies or secrets of consciousness. Keep in mind I said base level for a reason, we could, for instance, create a dimension where the denizens’ thoughts are capable of being read to easily solve that issue. So yes, even if I can’t read your mind, I could, right now, change that. The truth, however, is a lot simpler. You’ve just been speaking out loud.”

  It made a lot more sense to me once he explained it since I had no reason to be hiding anything from him in the first place. I had already told him the entire story of my life as well as every detail I could think of sharing to describe the world I lived in. He rushed me past most of the points I brought up, said they were too common and there was no need to go into them. It was odd. Certainly, he must have already understood the world better than I ever could.

  “Yes, I can work out most of everything the dimension has to offer with a short inspection, though I would like to clarify that I had no part in building this one in particular. I can see the details of the framework, but only in their current state. As far as the reason they are in that state, I still need to do a bit of guess work even if it is very educated guesswork. But that isn’t why I’m speaking with you. What I need isn’t so much information as it is perspective, and speaking of perspective…”

  He snapped his finger and a line of filth appeared above his hand. He twirled it around his finger then tossed it into the air and began juggling a few strands. He increased the load and allowed for a portion to drift away until a collage of radiant colors floated in the sky above.

  “Why is it that you are disgusted by such a beautiful thing? As far as I’m concerned, this filth and that tunnel are the most outstanding aspects of this dimension. Everything else is dull and ordinary. Granted, I am a bit biased in this regard. Despite my monochrome face, I’m quite fond of bright and vibrant patterns.”

  I was surprised he would ask such an obvious thing. It wasn’t the filth itself; it was the harrowing visions inside. It was the disease it brought. Why would we consider something so dangerous and uncomfortable beautiful?

  “Well, I understand that much obviously, even though you are misunderstanding it a bit. The filth doesn’t just contain the visions you speak of, it’s just that everything else is white noise to you. The disease on the other hand is a very real issue. I can’t decide whether the creators made it intentionally or it was just an unfortunate side effect. Afterall, erasure/convergence is a fundamental aspect of any universe, so a little decay is to be expected. To understand it we have to focus a bit on what the buildup of filth actually is.”

  White noise? What the filth actually is? The revelation hit me like a stampeding cart. I couldn’t believe he knew these things and would share them so openly. Then my focus on the on the dregs of the filth…it really was…

  “Slow down, we’ll get there, but it’s good to see you at least understand that much. Anyway, the buildup is essentially the formation of a new consciousness. This much was certainly intentional but was the disease that follows intentional as well? It drains the outside world around it as it grows, but I can’t tell if the degree is being exacerbated by any influence. It’s likely its starvation causes it to pull more vitality than it should, but since it’s a being almost entirely formed of consciousness, I have difficulty seeing the finer details when it’s already in motion.”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. Was my entire life meaningless? I interpreted his words to mean the disease was caused by the cleaning in the first place, but he scoffed at my nativity.

  “That’s ridiculous. The disease will form if you do nothing regardless of its origins and nothing you or that silly little scholar does will change that fact. But never mind that, I want to focus on something more interesting. You never answered my question. Why do you find this material so repugnant? I’m certain it must have been designed this way on purpose. It was meant to be beautiful and meant to be found beautiful, but the creators can’t perfectly fine tune how you will interact with the world. I understand your reasoning, but there are far more hedonistic dimensions out there where the denizens won’t even bat an eye lash at wonton desecration you couldn’t even imagine. So why did denizens who were predisposed to see beauty in these waves become so easily repulsed by them? After all, you don’t see anything you didn’t already know existed, do you? Murder, rape, guilt, pain, and of course death. You should have already been aware of their existence out in the world before you ever looked into their glowing light so why did feeling the truth through the filth warp your world view by such an extreme degree?”

  He made it seem so simple, but it wasn’t just knowing, it was experiencing. It was being pulled into the vision and feeling whatever it imparted no matter what your own conscious dictated.

  “I see, then it is just a matter of perspective and a loss of autonomy for that matter. Then everything is simple after all. You’ve helped me today, Douglass. You’ve helped me make a decision, so I will help you in turn, although you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to personal relations. Afterall, out of the only three people in the multiverse I can say I’m truly close to, two of them are trying to kill me. That was a joke so feel free to laugh at it.”

  He said he was going to help me and help me with my relationships at that. I had a hard time believing this otherworldly being was speaking about something as mundane as my relationship with Karen, but I did tell him everything about myself earlier. But I couldn’t see what he would have to say about such a hollow topic. One I had already run from.

  “Let me tell you a story. There is a god that travels from dimension to dimension, altering each one as he goes along. He does have his purpose in doing so, but it’s also true that he makes the change with a sense of superiority and bitterness towards what he decides to alter. This god is clearly a fool. Those dimensions had existed as they were for eons, they did not need to be changed, not on any fundamental level he operated on. It was he himself that needed to change them and since the need always came from himself, he would always see a reason to change them as long as he looked for it. You, Douglass, are the same as this god. You are an ordinary and somewhat pitifully confused person. You can only see corruption in beauty because corruption is what you’re looking for. It’s certainly there so of course you will find it, but that isn’t the issue, there is no need to look past the corruption. The issue is that you are so laser focused you can’t see anything else. Let me ask you.”

  He clapped his hands and the filth in the sky danced. It weaved together in patterns that folded into new patterns like a giant quilt of rainbow lightning. I stood in awe at the sight, entranced not by visions, but from the fantastical vision of the filth itself. As amazing as it was, I asked myself, were the lights that weaved through that emerald tunnel any less majestic?

  “Are you not moved? Do you wish to gaze upon the wonders of this world as they are? Then the answer is the same as the same as the complication. You must look. Look not at what you want to see, but at everything. See it all as information and then it can all coexist. You can feel the horror of experience and also see the beauty of the lights. And be sure to look well Douglass. You will only remember this experience as a fragmented dream. I have no idea what will and won’t imprint, but if nothing else remember to look well, because I have already come to my decision and tomorrow your whole world will change.

  I do not know if we continued to talk. I only recalled the full outline of events years later, but even now I have no idea if I awoke from bed that morning or if my day began with me already standing in the plaza before the gallows.