Star crossed double cross

  She was dang as if uer. Her sheer mutli-yered skirt bloomed out and whipped bad forth with each thrust of her hips, shook and vibrated like colored liquid as she belly danced, flew up off her ass as she got down on her heels and bounced. Her hair, waist length and deep gold, flowed around her and water dappled light moved in lines across her skin, like lightning that had been caught aed.

  The guy she was dang with was as green as they e. Smiling at her like no one would ever find out about any of this when he woke up, wearing a tuxedo top and boxer shorts. How did they allow this? Where was the god damned Principality for this shit? Shouldn’t all newborns have to get funneled into some kind of orientatiohought about going over and yelling at them, maybe telling the guy to try and wake up right now, something, but before he could do anything, she looked at him.

  Her eyes were bck this time, reminding him, with the rest of her get-up, of some celebrity he couldn’t put a o. But they were still Rory. He tried to pce the woman in front of him over his image of the boung girl that had found him on the rooftop and the dark, solemure she had bee time they spoke, and find the overp, or the fusion, like gss disks id on top of each other revealing another color.

  Then she was gone. Like an idiot, he got up and flew toward the st pce he had seen her. Nothing. He stopped and sed around. He k was useless. One of the many subtle entments of the Allclub was that you could somewhat trol who saw you. As he sed the crowd of almost faceless silhouettes, he realized she could be any of them.

  But he tried anyway, for a while. Long enough for his ao get up over his longing and look down on it. Then he summoned a door out, but another o in its way.

  It was all white Lowes paint and bronze colored knob, like every door in his new built house growing up. There were faded and peeling sea flower stickers on it, and a do not disturb sign hanging off the knob was flipped around to say “e on in!”

  It felt like her in a way none of the other hers had. Before he could think of anything else he was already through it.

  It was a teen girl’s bedroom circa 2004. His heart jumped, thinking he might have finally found his way into her realm, until the faux sun of the Allworld rolled by outside, and a handful of crafts flew over it.

  She was sitting on the bed, one arm crossed over her stomach, cradliits on her forearm, the other folded away from her, wrist thrown back, holding a cigarette. Her thin skirt was rolled up on her waist and her crossed legs threw her hips out at either side of her like smooth half-moons. He tried to think of something to say, and discarded the first things that came to mind, not wanting to give her the fug satisfa.

  “So, this is what your happy pce looks like?”

  She smiled at him, even chuckled, as if they were old friends.

  “He’s big into aughts nostalgia. It’s retarded. He was born in fug y-nine.”

  Luke was immediately fused, and his face showed it. She was fiding in him, sharing a moment, like they were both in on the game.

  “What?” She bli him.

  “Nothing. Just w how you insult your food like that.” His words came out acid, though he had tried to color them like a joke.

  She gred at him.

  “Are you fug serious with this judgmental bullshit right now? You shoot guys like him in the fug head all day. At least with me they get to cum.”

  Despite himself, he flihe jealousy squeezing whatever stood in for his heart in this pce like a slipknot. She se, and joined in.

  “Why don’t you be ho. Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

  His mi in two dires. On the one hand, a part of it was reag explosively to her insinuation that the guys he killed were anything like the wet behind the ears wide eyed poor bastards she got in her web, and after the initial revulsion and dismissal of that possibility, he came to the siing realization that for all he khey could be the exact same mother fuckers.

  But the rest of his mind was ed with her; memories, a burning longing, and trying to snare an ao her question. Why had he e here? Why gh that door?

  He had to admit, finally, to himself, that it hadn’t felt like a choice. But he had no iion of admitting that to her.

  “Guess I just wao see if you at least got anything out of ruining my life. But it looks like you’re about where—"

  “Ruin your life? I couldn’t ruin your life if I tried. No one , not in this pce. Don’t you get it yet? This pce is fug empty. It’s nothing.”

  “You sure gh a lot of leg work just to steal a piece of nothing.”

  He felt a moment of pride at his wit, in refreshing trast to the massive embarrassment over his childish groan about her ruining his life, but she just ughed, shaking her head and looking up to the textured ceiling.

  “Steal! Oh my god grow up. What did I take from you? Your memories? You still remember them don’t you? It’s not like some bullshit doctors office dream mae make you fet. Or, what, you want mem, is that it? What would you even buy?”

  “More Bliss, probably,” he s her, getting close. She just kept ughing, though her smile swelled with pity.

  “Is that so bad? You really think it’s like some hard drug, just cause they sell it in those cheesy Disney world opium dens? They do that on purpose! You’re not addicted, you’re just bored!”

  It was a hot kind of ahe kind with embarrassment and inadequa the face of a former lover as fuel, and he reached out and grabbed her despite himself.

  He shook her, and she just kept smiling.

  “You. ’t. Hurt. Me. Here. This pce isn’t real, isn’t touchable. Nothing hurt you. Don’t you fug get it?”

  “No, I don’t get that, bitch! I’ve felt bullets in my lungs! I’ve seen heaven dangled in front of me! I loved you and watched you fly away and whore out with a smile on your stupid fug face! This pce does fug hurt! And if you were really so God damn above it, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to leave it!”

  He had been told, in one of his frantic searches for her, that what she really wanted, what she was saving all that money for, was a ticket to so-called Paradise. Though up there Luke was sure it had actually been Dr. O who had told him that, the extractor left it open-ended.

  He hadn’t believed it, not pletely, until that moment, when he saw the hurt on her face as she realized he knew.

  “You know about that, and you still hate me? God damn dude, wouldn’t you do everything to get there. Fuck yes you would! You already shoot ahey tell you to just for a ce to run at that light again! You think it's gonna wake you up don’t you!”

  “I fug hope so!”

  “So do I! So does everyone here! That’s all anyone wants! A fug fantasy nd and we’d all kill each other to get baething real!”

  I wouldn’t kill you, Luke thought, but only said,

  “Then why doesn’t everyone buy a ticket? Why isn’t paradise full and this pce empty? You think you’re the richest bit here?”

  “Because they still have hope. They still think there’s something under some rock or through some fug door that’s gonna make them happy. Or they found a way to have power over someohat’s really it. Iher pce, in the real heaven, no one has power over anyone.”

  “If it’s the real heaven, why do you have to pay to get in? Isn’t that—”

  “It’s a symbol of your sacrifice! To have enough moo buy anything here, and throw it away! You gotta prove that you give up this ppletely! That you know it’s not real!”

  He just stared at her, and it was better than anything he could have said. She heard her own words bounce back at her, and hated them. They didn’t have the power or the sehey held in her head, and she couldn’t bring herself to believe them.

  She groaned and growled and ched her fists and sat down hard on the bed. When she looked back up at him she had tears in her eyes.

  “Ok, so now you’ve proved to yourself that I’m just as miserable as you! Now go back to your phony-ass hitman game and gloat!”

  Looking at her scowl, her anger burning eyes, a question Luke had held in his heart since she left him broke out like an air bubble rising to the surface. It breached his lips before he realized what was happening, and after he had said it, he k was what had driven him through her door.

  “How did you smile at me like that, that first day? And the rest of them. How did you seem so happy?”

  It was his turn to get all teary-eyed, and it softened her a bit. She sighed and spoke to the carpet, half smiling.

  “Same way I always do. I thought about the best day of my life, and how if I keep moving forward, if I make it through those gates, I get to live it all ain. That’s what keeps me going.”

  For the first time, Luke thought about her other life, her real life, which he could never be a part of no matter how high he climbed up those fug boards, a his chest g ihought about every smile she had ever given him, and wondered what she had really been smiling at. He wao ask her more than he wanted anything. He wao know what she loved or who she loved and what about it all he didn’t have. He wao wake up, for real, and find her o him, and the vision of that moment bloomed in his mind like a sed Sun and he couldn’t evehe.

  “You think I’m a piece of shit, don’t you?” she said, softly, wetly, still to the floor.

  He opened his mouth to say, no, but, really, he had to admit he did, but he admitted it only through silence. He could give her that much.

  He wao tell her that he iece of shit too, that her awfulness was only a wele outlio the swelling form of her goodness, of everything he loved about her, but when he reached out for what her goodness was, he found only memories of a smile not meant for him.

  Looking back, down there Luke khrough his own painful extra, that he had known she was faking it the whole time, but vinced himself it was the world that felt false, out of longing to stay with her just a bit longer, in the hope that he would one day wake up out of the dream into a world where the truth was reversed, and she really was smiling for him.

  He had accepted the Otherworld for what it was almost instantly, because he truly didn’t care. It was just another world, just another s c something deeper that he could never uand. He had fallen in love with what he had hoped was beh her fa?ade, or with what he had imagined might lie there. He had loved, he realized, only his own mind. A phantasm, with about as much retion to the sad girl in front of him as his dreams had to the real world.

  He left her there, staring at the ground, a out the door. Just before he shut it behind him, the desire became too much, and he looked back, hoping to see her looking up at him with longing.

  But the door was gone, and his hand held nothing but air.

  A few moments ter, he was ba the Bliss den.

  the Otherworld ever really hurt you, or is all the damage just self inflicted? ime, Luke finds himself at the interse of square one and ro, and there's only one way out. episode, Friends in Low Pces.