Miranda was gone, Gunner was gone, and my human flesh had returned to the scaled mess that I had grown comfort in.

  I was in an empty domed chamber; sterile and metallic. It was silent outside of the sounds of my clawed feet scraping against the metal. I sat in a chair in the center of the room with a projector screen hanging across from me. There were restraints on the armrests and near my ankles but they were unused.

  Whatever I had just seen was not real; it couldn't have been.

  With that conclusion now strong in my mind, I rubbed my eyes and stood up from the chair. My eyes darted around, but there was no obvious exit.

  I would just need to make my own.

  I stepped up to part of the wall and hit it as hard as I could. A tortuous ringing sound made me wince and clutch my ears in my hands. It felt like my head was in a church bell and someone hit it with dynamite on a stick.

  “So impatient to leave,” a voice danced around in my head.

  I looked up to see Miranda wearing nothing but one of my old t-shirts. The hem stopped at the upper-thigh, leaving most things hidden. It was almost an alien Miranda. She was not any of the versions that I had just seen; older, wearier. It was her at her most beautiful. It was her when she was her healthiest.

  I remember it exactly when it happened. She had cleared from rehab the first time. Her first words upon exiting that place were.

  “You’ll never see me back there again.”

  The Miranda in the room perfectly parroted the words directly from my mind. That was exactly as she said it too; a mixture of disgust towards the place combined with an internal pride that she had finally mastered her situation. She turned the corner that we all hoped that she would and I wanted to reward her.

  We went on the first date they we had gone on in months. We drove down to Savannah to watch a movie and have a nice Italian dinner. It was Olive Garden but who cares?

  This is what she looked like the next morning as she waltzed out of my bedroom. She looked refreshed, like it was the first sleep she had in weeks.

  “I love you,” this fake Miranda said.

  For once, I had allowed myself to feel optimistic. I thought that things were settled. Miranda and Kenny could both survive if I managed to stretch myself just thin enough. If I endured for long enough for Kenny to graduate college, it would all work itself out.

  “How did you feel when it didn’t?”

  I felt myself boil from the inside. The Miranda in front of me didn’t change, but I could see how terrible she looked. Her friend tried to explain that it was just going to be some party drugs at a music festival. Things were going to be chill.

  But, it wasn’t chill.

  She went to that concert weeks before this and decided to hide the fact that she fell off the wagon because of her dumb bitch friends had never gotten out of the high school mindset. But they could be immature and functional, Miranda couldn’t. We all knew that, but they still brought her along. I tried to be reasonable. I tried not to be controlling over who she associated with because doing otherwise would be the heights of hypocrisy.

  What did that earn me?

  “I wanted to beat you to death for being so fucking stupid,” I answered candidly. “I should have killed them. I should have killed all of them. When they were brought in as witnesses at my trial, when they cried over how terrified of me that they always were, I realized that there was no benefit to not killing them. If I was going to get the noose either way, I should have wrung their necks and heard them scream out their apologies; a symphony of too late. There should have been a mass grave in the forest with everyone that ever betrayed her piled in it.”

  My revenge was incomplete and it always will be.

  I paused. My revenge. My revenge. Even if that Miranda was fake, she was right. I didn’t do any of that shit for her.

  “I felt hopeless,” I finally said. “I felt like caring about you was a mistake. That you were determined to kill yourself and that I was not equipped to save you. I already lacked control in my life and you were meant to be my stability and I believed that you failed me. I still believe that you failed me.”

  “Do you regret it?” She asked. “Do you ever wonder if you’ll still be alive if you had chosen someone else?”

  Miranda morphed into Jaime wearing my t-shirt. A burning cigarette hung between her fingers. She blew me a kiss with her other hand. The dome started to smell like tobacco and stale pizza.

  The older woman was a distraction when Miranda was first refusing to go to rehab. It was a decision made by convenience. I was in Florida for work and she happened to be my partner for it.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  One should never underestimate wisdom. She could feel there was a storm brewing inside me despite my best intentions to keep it hidden. I didn’t realize that what I was feeling was the mark of a young man who could be swayed into making impulsive decisions. It was her wheelhouse as a prowler of bars after midnight. And, with how she normally presented herself, a couple drinks and a pull of the shirt was all the argument that she had to make.

  I wasn’t an unwilling participant. The alcohol hadn’t clouded my vision enough that I’d be unable to say no. I wanted to know what it was like without Miranda. I wanted to know if it was only sexual attachment that tethered me to her. What freedom I would feel in that moment if it wasn’t.

  So, I found myself in a rental room behind a grimy casino with a woman that wanted so desperately to please. I think Terry’s comments had gotten to her. She wasn’t ready to be considered as an older model and was going to use every move in her arsenal to create a compelling argument.

  It never clicked the way that I hoped. I felt good in the way that all those encounters ultimately make me feel, but I did not feel convinced that I could suddenly love Jaime. All it did was open up a bizarre contract where I would be the eye candy that would make Jaime feel like she did in 1998 and I would inflict all of my frustrations on her in a way best left to the imagination.

  Jaime felt my silent rejection and formed into other women. I made it into a habit of mine to constantly test my feelings whenever things got too difficult with Miranda. I never got the feeling I wanted, just a rush of chemicals signifying a biological completion. A transaction.

  I don’t know if she ever realized that sometimes work wasn’t work. She never asked, never mentioned it when I slipped into bed at five in the morning. Maybe the fact that I came home at all was enough. I never bothered to talk about it, never bothered to understand her on a deeper level. I was drawn to her and provided everything that I could, I had held it my end of the bargain. If anything, she was the one letting both of us down. I figured that her drug use bothered me in the same way that this would bother her, a karmic balance of sorts.

  “You’re the only one that made me feel that way,” I answered.

  “Liar.”

  The women turned to a form that I did not know personally, but I recognized immediately. Her skin wasn’t red, there were no hands covering her body, but there was only one woman that it could be.

  Yoshitsune.

  What did I feel that time that I didn’t feel with any of those other would-be replacements? Had it just been so long? Prison combined with those early stages of Hell meant that it had been quite some time I had been with someone else. Had the immensity of that release triggered an incorrect response in my brain?

  Was it because there were no other intriguing options? Many were mutated far beyond my interest. Vendetta was too obsessed with Armaros for my liking. Outside of her, there was that snake woman, but that was magic. There is Mutya, would that be worth an experiment?

  “How can I explain it when I don’t understand it myself?”

  “How would you feel if you saw me with someone else?” Miranda’s voice echoed.

  I tried to picture it, Miranda with another man, but I could not evoke a strong enough image. What kind of guy would that be? Who would want to be with such a person in a situation like that? I know about bastards that hang around drug recovery groups to pick up desperate women, but I couldn’t imagine Miranda choosing one of them over me. I couldn’t imagine one of them even trying.

  Even if they did, as soon as I found out, they wouldn’t be of this world any longer and the problem would sort itself out. I had no right to complain because I had done far worse.

  “And what about me?” Yoshitsune’s voice took over.

  That question were nails on a chalkboard to my psyche. I instantly didn’t like that. These reasons were far less obscured than the reasons why I liked her in the first place. I could much more easily and much more vividly image her with someone else. I could imagine each word she would say to rebuke me and cut me down to size. Fighting would only push her further away, I would not be equipped to reverse the situation. Even though I thought her goals were foolish and unnecessary, there were few people fighting as hard as her to achieve it.

  She could do so much better and I wondered if she had figured it out.

  “Gorgeous,” a compliment wriggled into my ear.

  “Have you had your fun, Ecstasy?”

  “Yes, very much so,” Ecstasy admitted. “I was worried that I wouldn’t have the time to see all of this myself. But, you did so well for me. Not even half as much time as I expected. So I thank you for being so forthright with your thoughts. Not every breakdown is made equal and not nearly enough are still so fresh and relevant.”

  “Was that real?”

  “The barrier between here and there is not as impenetrable as you may believe. You were fortunate, most people have no one left alive to talk to. They must simply accept the actions as they have transpired without any hope at changing them. Oh, how they despair, there is nothing better to hit a high demon with the knowledge of what happened after they died. Many journeys ended in this room looking at that screen. My personal favorites is when they watch their kid die because of them. Mmm. Failed revenge, the best flavor.”

  “They quit here?”

  “Of course they do,” Ecstasy cackled. “They fear an illusion and ruin their final chance to talk to anyone. Many people are evil but they aren’t heartless. They still love. They want to be the only victim of damnation once they experience it themselves. I know you would scowl at the thought of your son being here. But what of his mother? Do you think that Miranda will be a better person now?”

  “What’s got all you Follies falling all over themselves?” I asked in deflection. I hated how much of my inner thoughts Ecstasy had seen.

  “I’m not here to talk about me, I’m here to talk about you. Where is your adorable little lover, Ishmael?” Ecstasy asked with a teasing voice. “It sounds like you’re in danger of being replaced.”

  “You know the answer.”

  “But you don’t. Maybe I could give you a way to track her down. That is, if you’re willing to be a good boy and help me out.”

  I looked away from Ecstasy wearing Yoshitsune’s flesh and looked upwards at the ceiling. I knew that she was smiling at me. She already knew what I was going to say. The bitch, I wanted to walk away and spite her. I wanted to show that I did not need their help.

  “It depends,” I answered. “Tell me what you need first.”

  “I want you to eat someone. I’ll send you the details soon. I think that you’re needed elsewhere right now.”

  The dome split down the middle and showered me in cold light.

  “How was it?”

  I blinked my eyes several times to see the same horizon I looked at before I left. It hadn’t changed in any way at all. I looked to my side to see the demon planted on the ground, watching the horizon endlessly.

  “What was it like in there?” The rock demon asked.

  I saw that I had gotten a notification that Herzblatt had made it to the stronghold. It was time to make a move.

  “Go fuck yourself,” I replied.