Sorry about everything. I really do wish you'd come back.

  Maybe the world was finally ending; maybe it’d all be over soon. That was how Calliope felt as her thumb hovered over the "Send" key of her phone, while her heart held together hope and apprehension as if her completion of the circuit would sling a warhead skywards out of every silo sprinkled across South Dakota, to end it all in MAD confgration. But that was a silly thought, right? She was, after all, still breathing, still feeling, and the Earth spun on. But at minimum, a moon-sized chunk felt like it'd been gouged out, like when Theia had collided with the pnetoid long before DNA-based life rear-reverse-transcripted an ugly head, and it was now orbiting in countless pieces that'd take a million years to coalesce into that stark white Satellite.

  Calliope's heart was the remainder torn away in that lunatic rapture, and her feelings reflected it: they were cratered low, green, maybe even cheesy–but undeniably real. No one could pretend the moon didn't exist for very long, and likewise she had to admit that she'd been hollowed out. She felt empty inside. Something critical was missing.

  She sighed, and pressed down on the screen; a soft "bloop" told her the message had been sent. Her breathing stopped as she awaited reception or reply… but there was neither. No fireworks, no Revetion. Figures; the first dozen times were no different. Her phone went away into her back pocket, and she went away again to the workstation where all of the iced coffee was kept within long bricks of clear pstic affixed with reclosable spigots. She would do damn near anything to reopen that eldritch flow into her brain, darker than any of them… but it was unlikely for her shift to be eroded by anything otherworldly today–or ever again–when that faucet had been shut with such finality.

  Finding the contact beled "Esther Kadigan" in her phone gave her some hope. Callie didn't recognize the number, nor the full name, nor did she understand in what way it might lead back to Ettie, but it was all she had to go on. So in true Calliope fashion, she'd texted It almost every hour, whenever she got a break from 'work' (also known as 'Stel') long enough to use her phone for more than a few seconds. There was never a reply, but she kept trying; it only had to work once, after all.

  Unlike her: she had to work, work, work, probably until she'd well surpassed Stel in age… and with no Esther to make the monotony flip by, twenty-odd years seemed beyond her lifetime. Calliope numbed herself, steeled herself for it, let slip how many coffees she swirled with the flick of a wrist. Maybe if she disassociated hard enough, she could dropout of reality the way she had from school, and Esther would be there waiting for her, in the gap of all gap years? Calling for her… Callie! Callie! Oh, no… that was just somebody much more mundane. Crap.

  "Callie! Jesus H. Christ, I've been calling you for five minutes!"

  She blinked; Stel's eyes smoldered at her, like a binary system of blue giant stars, uneasily revolving towards the twilight of life.

  "Mmwhat? Sorry, Stel, I'm–"

  "I-don't-want-to-hear it. Go and clean the bathroom, I need to empty all the coffee liners."

  "Wait! No, Stel, I'll do that–and I'll wipe down the other stations; just don't make me clean the bathroom! Anything else. Please. C'mon."

  Stel closed her eyes and exhaled through her nose, hard; she looked like a bull about to charge. Calliope cowered up against the counter. At least her apron wasn't red, but a minty green… which nontheless to effect any cooling Stel was anything but calm; those stars were building to an apoplectic supernova.

  "No, Callie, you're doing the bathroom. Unless you want me to strain my back, too? I'm no spring chicken."

  Arguing with Stel reminded her too much of her mom… it was probably best not to address that, and acquiesce without a fight.

  "Sure. Whatever. Sorry. Geez."

  With much chagrin she trundled the fluorescent yellow mop bucket into the restroom lurking in the store's back corner. The light was off when she entered, and took a second to flicker on via motion activation. For that brief moment while the mirror on the far wall was cloaked in darkness, she had hope again: weren't there two pinpricks of light glowing in it where her reflection's eyes should be?

  No, there weren't. It really was just her imagination now. There was nothing and no-one in the mirror except for hers truly, no lies of any color. That it was ever otherwise seemed a distant fantasy. Maybe she'd imagined everything all along? It'd be easier that way, she thought, staring down into the murky mop bucket water. Maybe the st time she'd been in this position, she'd fallen and hit her head, and that–coupled with the scrambling she'd given her brain at the party–had been enough to cause her to hallucinate Esther, the Necronomicon, and everything else. It would be October again when she left the bathroom, and she'd feel even more lost and stupid than she already did. She thrust the gorgon's mophead into the bucket angrily and set to carrying out the task.

  But it was still December when her shift finished, when she untied her apron in the backroom, when she gave Stel a disgruntled "goodbye", and when she set off homewards into the night. The snow on the ground dashed her non-delusions into powder; the sodium streetlights gave the stuff a sepia hue that made it look rusty–or bloody–in certain rger drifts. Callie wrapped her coat and arms tighter about herself and sped up. She knew the route home too well for it to occupy her mind: her thoughts couldn't help but wander off the beaten path.

  "Break-in at New Engnd Aquarium, One–" the headline read–the lead of it that she saw before hurriedly scrolling past earlier that morning. She didn't want to think about what happened to the security guard she'd left amidst the snow in the night's chaos. Had he expired… or turned into something else entirely? She hadn't gone into hiding, or to the police, the two options that seemed most logical after that outcome, but nobody had questioned or arrested her. There were two possible expnations for that: either the camera footage was kaput as Ettie cimed, and there were no hairs tying her to a potential murder. Or: the guard made a full recovery, and the crime was being picked over with a much broader-toothed comb, unlikely to discover that she'd been the louse. She hoped it was the tter. What would she say otherwise? "Actually, I didn't kill him–a monster living in my brain did?" Psssht. That would make her only defense at trial one of pleading for insanity.

  She chuffed hot air out through her nose while pausing at the crosswalk. The thought of begging to be judged insane was amusing. All her life, she was always dubbed the weird kid, but in court the burden of proof for weirdness would be on her. Ha. "Don't you think that's kind of silly, Et–" she questioned aloud.

  The walk signal turned from orange to white. Oh. Right. Ahead of her there was a doubled void: an uncertain ck of a certain null-haired woman strutting across the street like she owned it–the street, the stripes thereon, the impatient cars and buildings and everything else in the whole wide world. Callie sighed and crossed, alone.

  Some time ter she slogged into the apartment hallway, dusted off her snow-speckled parka, wiped her boots on the cat-themed doormat, and headed straight for the kitchen. The adjacent door which led to Erika's bedroom was closed… so in her depression-bowl she poured herself a pile of marshmallow-y cereal and slumped into a chair. She fully intended to brood there over the peeling wood until she passed out, the rest of the world ended, or she ran out of sugary crunchies to rot her teeth–and with luck, her sorrows, too.

  A creaking on the hallway's scuffed hardwood offered a fourth outcome. Erika emerged and stood there in the doorframe, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. In a bck sleeved fullbody bnket decorated with panda markings, she bore a vague resembnce to Esther… minus being an inch shorter… minus eyes that both enthralled and terrified. A less-pale imitation.

  "Heyy! How was work?" She shuffled over to the counter.

  "Uh–it was okay I guess. Sorry… did I wake you up?"

  "Nahh… yeah. But, it's okay, I gotta study." Erika searched each cabinet in turn, all while (impressively) banced on the balls of her feet. They all turned up empty. "Hey, you mind if I have some? I'll grab more tomorrow."

  "Yeah, I don't care."

  "Cool!" She pulled up the chair Esther usually occupied–it scuffed against the floor–and cmbered in. Maybe Callie made a mistake in avoiding looking at her: after only a dozen seconds, Erika detected something: "Girl, what's got you so down?"

  "What?" Calliope passed her the box without looking up from the bowl. The cardioid of light at the bottom was broken by bits of cereal–a broken heart, not the first today. "Nothing."

  "I'm not fucking stupid. C'mon."

  A curious sensation, possibly imagined: she could feel Erika's eyes focused on her without seeing. Like a weaker version of–she cut herself off. Ettie was gone. "Erika, it's nothing."

  Silence passed between them, broken only by their mutual crunching. Instead of her next scoop, Erika lifted the spoon and pointed it right at her.

  "We have gotta get you seeing someone."

  Callie rolled her eyes. "Oh, fucking hell."

  "I'm sherioush! 'shec…" Erika swallowed. "We're never gonna be this young again! Do you want your life to just be working and parties–that I know you hate, don't start–forever?"

  "No…"

  "So you get out there and meet somebody! It could just be ptonic, hell it could be an imaginary friend from some fandom, and I wouldn't fucking care!" Erika didn't see her eyes widen–spoon and gaze alike were pointed towards the ceiling, calling for inspiration. "Just kinda worried about you, 'cuz you don't really seem happy."

  If it would pluck her from the situation's awkwardness, Calliope would've happily popped the blood vessels in her eyes again herself. "I'm just trying to just like, live I guess. And that's kinda rich coming from you."

  The spoon cttered against the bowl's sides again. "The fuck's that supposed to mean?" Erika asked.

  "You're not seeing anybody."

  "Um, hello? Nursing school?" Erika's arms waved wildly, gesturing to herself. "I'm so fucking busy I'm waking up at eleven at night? I don't have the time to be seeing anybody!"

  "Okay, whatever." She hung her head. "Sorry–that was mean." She liked Erika–as a friend, of course… where had that spike of venom come from? What fangs had It embedded in her pate that were only just beginning to peek out?

  "'s fine. I mean it's not like you have to. Date, I mean. Just trying to help."

  "Mhm."

  She stabbed at her food and continued eating. A speck of pink amid the cereal bits gave her an idea, one she was surprised she hadn't tried before. She hadn't really had the chance, before.

  "So… what if I kinda was, uh, seeing somebody? Maybe. Hypothetically."

  Erika's eyes lit up as a crescent of a smile waxed her moonlike face. "You are?? Shit, girl I wanna hear the teaa!"

  Calliope dropped the spoon and waved her hands, crosswise. "There's no tea! It's just… I mean… I don't even know what we are. She's–"

  "Ohhh, It's a she! Gay era Calliee!"

  "Ohmygod shutthefuckup." She pressed fingers to her temples. Telling Erika was a stupid, stupid idea. But she was in for it, now. No turning back. When next she opened her eyes, Erika was leaning forward over the table, fist-under-chin and curiosity pouring from her almond eyes.

  "Sooo, how'd you two meet?" She asked.

  Callie hissed. "Uhh, I mean… I guess…online?..." That was good an answer as any. Erika nodded. "No no, that's so you. Long distance thing, right?"

  "Er–yeah."

  “What's her name?”

  “Esther. Ettie.” The words felt strange leaving her tongue; it wasn't often she was allowed to say Its name aloud–as in, aloud aloud.

  "Cute! And you're sure she's real? Like, video calls and shit? Don't wanna get catfished."

  Calliope closed her eyes. In the phosphenes that sparked all across the dull red of the background of her eyelids, she sought a pattern, a signal, anything; anything to show that Esther was still resident beyond mind's edge. Any radioactive prickling was long since decayed, and left her feeling heavier, like lead, the ultimate daughter isotope. But maybe… she threw her mind a few half-lives back to when she was ten years old, or tried to, finding an unexpected void. If memory were a boardwalk on which every moment were a foodstall hucking nautical, nostalgic trinkets, she teetered on the lip before an empty ocean. Everything she remembered from that year was gone–just like Esther'd cimed.

  "Callie?" Erika repeated. Her eyes opened to find her roommate's curiosity had only increased.

  "Yeah. She's real. I've seen her." Callie said. It was a judgment–not a lie. She had seen Ettie… the things she’d seen would give anyone a frisson of madness.

  "Oh, good, then… Is she cute?"

  "Yeah." She answered without thinking. 'Cute' wasn't the word she'd choose, but it was nevertheless true, in the manner of a mathematical proof. Lemma by lemma, It insisted on Its irresistible attractiveness as a dark truth of the universe. The logic of it was as menacingly tight as Its grip on her, every curve of Its form graphed out in ways that most excited her, drew her mind in to spiral past those biting eyes, that snatched waist, that damned hourgss's bulb…

  Erika's finger reached across to jab at her, shaking with excitement. "Ah! You're blushing! Aw!"

  "Shit, I am?" She shook her head on instinct, hoping to dispel the blood from her face. Erika continued to beam at her, unfazed.

  "You are! So wait–" her finger dropped. "If you like her and shit, what happened? Something must've–like, you're having a sad-bitch cereal-hour."

  Ugh. Perhaps she gave Ettie too much credit for being able to read her like a book, if Erika could do it with none of Its processing power or direct memory access to her brain. Was she really that transparent, that predictable? Masking her emotions from the world and maintaining an aloof, sarcastic, foolish attitude was essential to her survival in an alien environment. Get it together, Callie.

  "Sorry. It's nothing really. Just–" Erika is my friend–friends listen to each other's problems. "Well… I haven't heard from her in a few days, so I think she might've ghosted me."

  Now Erika was giving her that Look: the one she hated, the pitifying one that cast her spirits down to the abyss. The smile fell from her face; the full moon turned new, or old, and dark; her voice took on an apologetic tone. "Oh, that sucks." She scooped another spoonful of cereal. "No sign of anything wrong before that?"

  "Nah, she's–" She blinked. Ettie might kill her for what she was about to say… but Ettie wasn't watching now. "She's actually really clingy. Not that I mind!" She assured the air. Erika was briefly puzzled… but her smile returned in time, with a devilish curl to boot.

  "'chu knough where she livesh?" She chewed.

  "What? No! I wouldn't–" She literally couldn't. "I wouldn't fucking stalk her!" No, no… it was the other way around. She wondered what It might be doing at that moment with the keepsake of her It retained: the year's worth of experience of being a ten-year-old outcast.

  "If she's that clingy, it doesn't sound like she'd mind. Anyway–" Erika dropped the spoon and cpped her hands together as if in prayer; Calliope squeaked at the sound. "Manifesting that your situationship improves."

  "Ha-ha. Thanks."

  Privately, she doubted whether all the manifesting in the universe would be enough to bring Esther back. It wasn't like summoning a demon by name: even if she dug deep into her brain to unearth that ancient fairy ritual and somehow acquire the vocal organs needed to perform it, she figured there was a fifty-fifty chance that if it worked, Ettie might not recognize her in time to avoid swallowing her along with whatever sacrifice she offered. That (im)material component was tricky, too: of the gods she could name, she cked confidence in the Greco-Roman ones whose irreality even seemed dubious, and she was too conditioned by a lifetime of God-fearing to proffer up the Christian one on a silver ptter. And the altar couldn't just be empty, she'd seen what'd happened to the Pucks: Esther was in essence a predator, which meant she wanted prey. Bloodying her hands with ichor was too gruesome an answer.

  But Erika's words gave her another idea. She could go back to where it all began, or at least return her mind to the right headspace, in hope of a rendezvous.

  The chair screeched back as she stood up; this time it was Erika's turn to squeal. "Sorry." Calliope assured. "You can have the rest."

  "What're you–"

  "Tired!" She called back, leaving the kitchen. "Going to bed!"

  "Bitch, I know you're gonna try texting your girlfriend! Hey, you're welcome!"

  "Thanks." She said under her breath, dipping into the one bathroom they now shared. Her usual ritual of checking her eyes in the mirror and the bathtub behind the curtain went off without a hitch. That was the easy part. The hard one would be persuading herself to swallow the microdot pill she extracted from the inside pocket of her jacket, after she got comfortable and shut the light out of her bedroom. Silence and darkness were necessary; sensory deprivation and psychedelics were the flint and steel required to alight her mind into a totem visible in whatever strange realm Esther inhabited. For once, she hoped she would be seen. She was as ready as she'd ever be.

  She was not, however, above making rookie mistakes. Something about the inky bckness of her room and the pink noise of the desk fan lulled her to sleep, and transmuted "just a few minutes" of lying down in preparation into an unpnned trip to dreamnd. Calliope never took the pill, even as she passed farther into the wilderness of sleep than she had in months, or maybe ever before.

  ﹡﹡﹡

  She knew immediately that she was on the wrong side of the line. The queue of coffee-goers was moving at a decaffeinated pace; the poor café staff past the counter numbered only two, and both were frantic in their efforts to serve the orders of a dozen tired undergraduates. Callie felt sorry for them, knowing what the lunch rush was like… but if she knew that, why had she fallen in line in the first pce? Her next css was… well, it was soon, she knew that much. Wasn't she supposed to be behind the counter, wearing a mint green apron?

  No; theirs were midnight bck, anyway; Cosmic Latte had always worn uniforms to mimic interstelr darkness. Right; that was only logical. She was in line just to buy a bottle of milk from the fridge in the dining room area, and pick a few donuts from whatever paltry selection was left by the time she made it to the forefront. The bottle was already in her hands: it, too, was bck, decorated with a graphic rendering of white milk spilling all around the bel. The Milky Way… Cosmic Latte… they seemed a fitting match. Though, she'd never actually seen the former. Nobody had in days–no, weeks–no, centuries–due to all the light pollution. Actually… scientists were unsure gaxies existed at all, really, after much research. The name came out of some old myth–and myths weren't real. They weren't real.

  She wandered out of line to grab the bottle from the fridge. Those ahead of her were too keen to advance to care, and those behind too engrossed in smartphone screens to notice. But after she returned with the all-bck container in tow, the person preceding her hadn't moved at all. The stillness led her to consider them more closely.

  The woman in front of her in line had the sleekest, bckest hair she'd ever seen, twisting down in a braid to half-back level, past where her still-darker dress split and held its halves together with bck ces. What little skin she could see beneath the crisscrossed lines was pale, and sensitive–the flesh bordering them reddened as if recently cut. She seemed terribly familiar.

  A lightbulb–fluorescent, ultraviolet–popped on. Calliope cleared her throat. "Ahem… er, Ettie? Is that–"

  The woman turned, and as she did, time slowed to a crawl even slower than the queue. A pretty face with hollow cheeks and thin lips and the deepest, darkest eyes she'd ever seen looked back–and down–at her. Oh wow; she was tall. Intimidatingly so.

  But it wasn't Esther. Callie was mistaken, and her heart sank. "S-sorry." She stuttered, half-flustered by the appearance of an unexpected goddess.

  "No need." Her lips smiled, crinkling dimples as they curved.

  She would have said that she was starstruck, if stars were things in the real world and not merely stickers on the ceilings of children's bedrooms, meant for pying make-believe. Rather she was dumbstruck… or simply dumb. When she next spoke, it came out as a babble–that basically proved it. She was dumb, and small, and useless.

  "I–uh–mm–I-I'm Calleeope. I mean! Calliope. Uh. Hi!" She muttered, and tore her eyes away from those bck orbs to look down at her–

  Fingers snapped inches from her face.

  "Hehe, you're cute." The woman said. Her eyes slid upwards once again.

  Fuck, she was beautiful. Those eyes seemed to draw her in, like casting herself into a deep well; she wanted to drown in their stagnant water, even if it meant contracting some parasite unknown to humans. At the bottom, in her peripherals, the woman's rubile mouth was moving. What was it saying?

  "–I'm Marie–hehe. Do you wanna have coffee together?" She giggled.

  "Er…" her jaw hung open–she might've been drooling, even. "Y-yeah, sure." That she held no coffee in her hands completely slipped her mind. That Marie–what an endearing name–didn't either was just as unimportant. The ethereal beauty before her stepped out of line, and Callie followed, imagining herself as part of the divine entourage tasked with keeping the train of her dress from touching the ground–if she was even worthy of a position so low and close.

  "So–tell me about yourself, Ca-lee-oh-pee." Marie crooned, stirring a mug across the little round table. They'd found a space away from the crowd, off in a corner. Somewhere they could be alone.

  "Well… ha-ha. Don't know where to begin, really…" Somehow, she'd forgotten her drink; her hands csped around nothing.

  "Hm, okay… how do you like your coffee?"

  "I don't, really. I guess. Sorry. You?" She looked away from those eyes–those perfect, starless, mesmerizing eyes–into the empty mug between her hands.

  "Oh, bck of course. It matches my, uh, everything, ha."

  "Yeah…" she said, dazed. "Oh! I guess I'm pretty into space, if–"

  "Oh, I don't care about any of that stuff." Marie frowned. "Tell me what you're afraid of!"

  "What I'm… afraid of?"

  "Yeah! You know, your deepest–" the spoon clinked in rhythm with her words, "darkest–fears. You know?"

  Something was off. She dismissed the feeling.

  "I dunno… it's probably pretty fucking me. You wouldn't–"

  The stirring stopped. She looked up, right into Marie's eyes. "Of course I'm interested. Go on~"

  "I mean… I used to be pretty scared of the dark, when I was little."

  "A cssic! But hardly your worst, right?"

  "Ha, I guess not."

  "Sweet girl." Callie's stomach was a kaleidoscope of butterflies. "I need more. Gimme something juicy."

  Calliope's fingers tightened around the mug until the knucklebones showed through. Her thoughts felt like they were on rails: she could perceive the impending disaster just down the line, but could do nothing to prevent or prepare for it. Marie was too compelling a conductor. She was too passive a passenger.

  "I guess I'm afraid that… they're all right. You know?" Marie resumed stirring with earnestness, even as those eyes fixed on her. Their darkness lingered while the face around them morphed–for split successive seconds–into that of her mother. Her father. Anonymous jeering faces from dark corners of the Internet. Then–Marie again. Beautiful Marie again.

  "That who's right, Callie? Tell me."

  "Everyone!" She cried, squeezing the mug so tight it hurt. A tear fell and nded squarely at its bottom. "That I'm a fucking freak, delusional, a gross fucking failure! Is that what you wanna hear?"

  A low buzzing, like approaching locusts, began to permeate the room. At first she thought it might be murmurs of the crowd–but there had never been a crowd. They were alone.

  "Can't believe my son dropped out of school to py at being a woman." Marie's lips spoke with her mother's voice.

  "Wh-what?"

  "This isn't how we raised you, –" Dad's words, distorted. "Wish I'd had another kid."

  "What is this…"

  "God, if I didn't have clinical I'd just move, my roommate's weird as fuck. She's a slob, too; can't even use one of the bathrooms anymore." Erika. "Why, what'd she do to it?" "Don't know, just won't let me go in. Probably shooting up in there." "So she's an addict?" "Yeah. It's sad."

  Callie smmed a fist down onto the table. "She never said that! And we–we only have one bathroom! And I don't, fucking–"

  "Hm?" Marie licked her lips. The stirring stopped; the buzzing followed. "What's wrong, Cal?"

  Her heart was pounding, but the source of the fear was unknown. What'd they been talking about? Her brow furrowed and she eyed the mug again, with its dry and empty bottom.

  "I… you said that–"

  "You look like you could use a break, love." Her heart swelled at the word–that, coupled with its quickened pace, made her feel as if she'd die; such a juxtaposition couldn't be healthy. "Wanna meet me in the gym?"

  "The gym…" she repeated, and before the words had fully left her lips Marie had gone, leaving her truly alone. At that te hour–due midnight, per the arms of the clock whose numbers she could no longer read–the café had long since closed. Why was she still lingering at the little round table? She pushed the chair out and stood, in a daze. The flesh above her left eyebrow was throbbing in pain, but without any familiar rhythm. It hurt to be rifled through like that; it hurt much more than when Ettie did it.

  The gym… she had to get to the gym. MISC's student center did have one, buried deep within its backrooms. It was nothing to write home about, just a little supplementary space she'd visited back when she was attempting to acquire her pirate's license: the unofficial and whimsical certificate awarded to MISC undergrads who completed a slew of on-theme physical education prerequisites. First among them–the only one she had actually completed before dropout–was beginner archery. The rger gym spaces used for Miscelnies' home games were all either preoccupied, or oversized for novices just nocking an arrow for the first time; so the out-of-the-way, worn-down space inside the student center was just perfect. She hit her first target there, months and months ago. Now she felt stretched, thin, like a bowstring herself. If another arrow's-worth of energy was extracted from her like at the table, she'd surely snap and cease to be.

  Calliope made her way past the collection of local restaurant chain outlets and a middling grocery that served supplemental meals to MISCers–during the day, anyway. At midnight, everything was deserted. She couldn't see another soul. Past foyers lit by fluorescence, down winding corridors of linoleum she didn't recall being so maze-like, she arrived at st at her destination. The pain in her head subsided.

  Marie was waiting for her; oh, had she kept her waiting for too long? That wouldn't do. A shock of shame ran through her at the thought, and echoed when she saw what her summoner was wearing: there Marie was, in the center of the basketball court under a spotlight, in a bck dress that looked like tex–both in its shine and in how tightly it hugged every st curve. Calliope's cheeks flushed.

  "Come here, don't be shy!" Marie giggled. A pale finger beckoned her; she stumbled forward in a trance. Some dim, distant, nagging thought told her that she should run away, while she still could. But it was weak. Oh, she was so very weak.

  Soon Callie was so close that if Marie's face had anything approaching a pore and wasn't smooth as gss, she could've seen it. She would have seen every detail down to the smallest dot if not for the unbearable draw of those eyes: hot, bck, smiling down at her, smoldering like hot coals, full of acrid, suffocating smoke.

  "I–sorry. What'd you want me here for again? Mmf!–"

  Her lips were stolen by a kiss. It'd been so very long since she'd kissed anyone, and never had she known the lips of anyone remotely like Marie. The skin of them was impossibly soft and sweet, with a slight tang that reminded her of mint, or bck pepper. She melted into it with a little sigh and closed her eyes. That seemed to make it worse: the pain in her head returned, and her heart started to race again. Why was she so afraid? What could Marie possibly want with her: dumb, autistic, perverted, her? The butterflies the kiss had fluttered in her stomach devolved to worms, and crawled, inched, restlessly; she felt the urge to retch.

  So she pulled away. "Wait, this is–something's wrong. Why are you…"

  On Marie's face, a triptych of expressions: furrowed confusion, a snarl of anger, and then something like assured triumph. She bit her lip, so deeply it bled; rivulets of dark liquid hastened down her chin. "Oh you're just so cute, Callie, I had to. Ugh, you kiss like a boy, too."

  Panic seized her heart. She turned to run, putting the sound of spattering blood on gym vinyl behind her. Two figures seized her arms on either side and lifted her before she could; her legs kicked in the air and took her nowhere.

  "Hey! Fucking–put me down!" She yelled up, to the one on her right. The arm that grabbed her was thick with muscle, like the body it was connected to, and the face of the man above that was ft with shallow, ill-defined features, as if they hadn't been fully extruded from the cy that he'd crawled out of. But he had those same bck eyes. Both of them did, they both had Marie's eyes–or she had both of theirs. Without a word they turned her round while dread mounted in her heart.

  Marie turned monstrous, now. Any pleasant skin she'd worn had already begun to shed, and the skintight dress melted down her body like crude oil–except it could not possibly be oil, because it smelled too much like rotting flesh. Where the ichor from her lip pooled on the floor, her legs fused: first at the stiletto heels and then upwards, at her knees, then her hips, which retained their width and supple curvature. As the nightmare lost bipedal footing and knelt, that lower half colpsed to lengthen on the floor and sprouted legs in pairs: bckened, thin, long wedges, like triangur knives–the kind whose wounds would never close. The clicking of those legs against the floor as It scuttled closer was the most unpleasant sound she'd ever heard.

  But as she squirmed, helpless, in her henchmen's grip, Marie had worse words in store for her. The mouth that had been bleeding opened; the canines within had grown impossibly long and sharp. There was no way they would fit inside her jaw, but a vision fshed in Callie's mind of them embedded in her neck, or eyes, or anywhere her skin was soft and thin and weak. Marie hissed through those wicked teeth, and the cloud of fell air carried that same smell of death into her nose.

  "It's always the ones that hate yourselves that come apart so easily…" Marie hissed. A hand–no longer human, with its fingers stretched into bck talons–curled around her shoulder. Calliope recoiled.

  "What are you?" She gasped, still squirming.

  Marie drew back–mercy, maybe.

  "I would say I'm your worst nightmare, but we both know: I'm worse. You aren't that creative, Cal." Maybe not. "Pin her down," she ordered.

  The faceless hulks obeyed, and were not gentle. She was forced down onto the gym floor in a compromising position, with her cheek pressed to the floor by the palm of a monstrous hand rger than her face. She could smell blood. Something reached for the hem of her jeans.

  "Please! You can't–why are you doing this?!" She cried.

  Above her, Marie was circling, just out of sight. The tinkling of a hundredfold legs shifted, so that her voice came from behind.

  "First, I think I'll remind you what you are, and what you aren't; what you'll never be. Roughly; slowly…" Before, Marie's voice was sweet, even saccharine. Now it was den with bitterness, steaming like a cauldron of some brew that'd just had a particurly wicked ingredient thrown in. Callie had a realization: every evil that it spoke or undertook, It found exciting, even pleasurable… she'd been captured by a sadist. But Marie cked the true inhuman darkness her eyes became adjusted to after months of Esther's occupation. No; there was something familiar, domestic, even intimate, about her… unlike Ettie, Marie had known humans before. Marie had un-known humans before.

  "That dingbat monster can't save you anymore." Marie's voice was at her ear; she tried to jump, but could barely move. A cw caressed her neck; she shuddered. "There's only me, now. And you, of course–ha!" She ughed–a cruel, cold, mirthless sound. "But not for long. You feel it, don't you, Callie? —--?"

  A distortion. Something wriggled in her ear, into her brain… but was repelled.

  Interesting. I do love tearing down boundaries. I'll enjoy disintegrating you~

  No. Nononono. "Get OUT of my head!" She screamed into the dust. Both her hands balled into fists so tight the muscles should have snapped–and then somehow she was running: madly, drunkenly, teardrops flinging from her eyes, across the floor.

  Marie's ugh rumbled like thunder behind her, filling the entire room. "Where are you going, Callie? This is your home! There's nowhere I can't follow–"

  She smmed the door to the gym shut and continued running down the hall. Her sobbing became winded gasps of breath as the pain in her chest grew with every step. She went left, then right, then left, right, and on and on, but it didn't seem to end. The aimless path under fluorescent lights confirmed what she'd started to suspect:

  None of it was real. She was in a dream, her first in a long while, but any authorship of it she'd had was wrenched away from her. Pinches on her arm and sps against her face couldn't wake her from a dream so deep. The Nightmarie that trapped her aimed to torture her until she was reduced to a screaming, wispy shadow of herself. She wasn't strong enough to survive it; the evisceration of her soul would take far less than six hours, or however long she'd be asleep before It ended her. Her best hope was for a literal bump in the night loud enough to drag her up from hell–but the odds of that were astronomical, and she'd already been struck by a star once.

  Callie colpsed against a strange, ornate bck door somewhere in the byrinth. It seemed as good a pce as any to await her impending death–at least it was unique. Even as she caught her breath and curled into a ball, she could see a glittering trail on the wind leading back the way she'd come, streaming from her heart, still in its mad gallop.

  She can smell my fear; I'm so fucked.

  Ettie, please come back. I fucking need you.

  She kept her thoughts small and hushed. Somewhere far away, deranged ughter echoed off the walls. It wouldn't be long before It sniffed her out anyway.

  Still seated, she examined the door. At first she thought it was made of a charred wood, inid with detailed carvings, but that was only been the pareidolia of a mind trying to make sense of things while on the run. It wasn't wood… but it was still organic, or had been, once. The surface of it was warm to the touch like leather, and the markings crisscrossed it in long scars just like the surface of–

  Europa… something from her memory. The waking world seemed an infinity away, but Marie had said this was her home, and she was dreaming… and dreams were but a reflection of the mind. That meant that somewhere, underneath the ice: her memories remained, for the time being. Marie hadn't yet had the chance to crack her open and whisk the yolk away. So she was still herself–but she was alone on the ice floe, and her shivering would draw It closer, no matter what she did.

  But if she was adrift at sea, then among the familiar isnds of recall must be another pce, a silvery cay where things too horrible for image and just terrible enough for word were recollected, in pce of where once had been her memories of the fourth grade.

  If this was truly the inside of her mind, then there must be a copy of the Necronomicon somewhere.

  She pressed her forehead to the long-dead skin of its cover… and this time, plucked the forbidden apple from the tree of her own will. Somewhere in that ghastly tome, maybe there was an answer, or something–anything–to buy her a little more time.

  ﹡﹡﹡

  Of all the earthly egregores humanity has nursed to eminence, none can be more frightening than the Egl?che–because the Mother of Nightmares is the heiress to the fear that haunts all things that dare to wake above the cosmic silence. She has spun her raiment out of it, weaved terror in such severity as to rend reason from thought or spirit from flesh. As long as life has lived, life has been afraid, and that most raw and primal fear which the Egl?che's shade foremostly wields is birthed concomitant with life's exit from the womb: before all else, we fear the darkness, and afterwards fear separation from it and from the first monster thereof: the mother.

  It is unsurprising then that in accounts of those few who have survived her nocturnal courting, the Egl?che often pys a matron, but does not nurture, rather tortures–in perverse fulfillment of that ancient fear that sits within us: that we might be unmade by that which made us. That we might be devoured by that which ought to nurse us, as if Rhea had swallowed the Olympians. She who is older and fouler than demons knows the strength of symbols: Sekhmet, the succubus, the night-mare, monstrous Grendel her offspring–in all these forms she has snared a mortal mind disturbed by stress, sleeplessness or substance, never to reawaken. She seeks through fear to strip us of that which we hold dearest: our selves, our memories of life, in all of its potential. The screams of pain of those so fyed serve as her meat.

  But as the centuries march on and mortalkind's civilization waxes, those ridden into ruin by the Night-mare wane in number. Perhaps our modern feares grow too urbane. As waking life bleeds into dreams, its Whir may keep a wayling soul from the Egl?che's more primeval whispering. The oneiroi among which she is marginally numbered figure less and less in dreams of disbelievers. Still, She remains; in times of crisis, our facade of being civilized colpses, and then we are once more like wailing babes abandoned in the woods, the preferred prey to the Heiress of Fear.

  The Egl?che is not the greatest of those to whom souls may be relinquished–but she may be the greediest. She does not yield her prey to any force lesser than herself, and her purpose with those victims reduced by her to nigh-identical nigh-empty shades remains unknown. But fear should be avoided–especially near the moment of death–lest one draw her by its scent and be punctured by her proboscis that desiccates all being. Even to know of such a fate's occurrence is to court it–and for divulging such knowledge I am sorry. To document is not always to comfort.

  gremnoire