Your eyes, refleg twilight

  Celeste was in the back seat, leaning towards Cooper in a way that made Philip throw a look in the rear-view mirror. Despite hilip might think, it wasn’t out of any affe. She rofessional. She just couldn’t stand being close to the windht now. At any moment, she expected to hear the loud g thump of a round striking the gss, and this car wasn’t even armored.

  Though it seemed like it had been hours since she had scampered over Cooper into the back seat as the PKM rounds ripped through the windshield, the fear lingered behind her ears like an iion.

  As she had been balled up on the floorboard with Cooper, for some reason, on top of her, she had felt the vibration of the mae gun fire through the car-frame and heard the rounds crag right above her head as they shredded the seat. If she had been able to move she would have thrown the door open and run ht there. Maybe it was the shame that kept the fear around.

  The new car smell of the s sedan seemed to float over a st of gunpowder and shilip had kept his rifle in his p as they drove away from the lot but had since broken it dout the parts in a shoulder bag Celeste had handed him from the backseat. Just doing that had taken a lot of effort, and she looked out the windshield as he took it so he wouldn’t see the exhaustion in her eyes. They already thought she was so God damned pampered.

  The car stopped in a lot behind some craft brewery where a white hail-damaged hatchback arked alone. Sirens rang out faintly from all around and the police helicopters chugged without pause somewhere overhead.

  “Good Luck,” Philip said as he got out, ae wondered whie of them the most.

  As he beeped the locks with his phohe sound had such a f nostalgie, reminding her of getting into her car after work or at the end of a shopping trip, that she felt a sudden urge to run after him and take the car for herself.

  “Sit up here, Ash,” Michael said, and brought her Spirit out of her Self’s nostalgia. She gave Cooper a loving gnce as she stepped out, but he looked at her like he had e home and found her rifling through his shit, then id down on the full length of the backseat before she had the door closed.

  As she opehe passenger side door, she sensed rifles aiming at her from hidden pces all dowreet, and a shiver rolled over her bare skin. She looked back just in case, and smiled. They were in the middle of a disused industrial zorified into café workspaces, yoga studios, and resale shops. She pictured a gunman taking aim from behind the Tes supercharger or the gravel-bedded yuccas. What a way to go.

  As she got in Michael was givihe old “I am ed about you, my little fragile siren,” look. She adjusted her fake gsses and knit cap in the mirror and spoke without looking at him.

  “Don’t look at me like that Boss, I’m fine. Could use a drink but—”

  “Boss?” Cooper said from his seat. Celeste froze.

  “You’re in good hands, Cooper,” Michael said, as at ease as ever. “Just rex and stay down,” He pulled smoothly into the street.

  “This is starting to feel like a fug arrest,” Cooper said. Celeste looked back at him.

  “I’m joking,” he said. “ we get some music?”

  Celeste thumbed the radio knob and Semi Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind floated through the speakers. Celeste sighed, and Michael started humming. A few seds ter, Cooper was ughing hysterically. Celeste took out her phone, switched her low-profile earbuds for the full-size models disguised as air pods and queued up o sounds, expeg Michael or EP to give her shit about tactical awareness. They didn’t, whiehow frustrated her even more.

  Sometime before the final chorus, Cooper drifted off, and saw himself being taken by masked men and driven down the highway. One opehe door and dangled him out over rushing crete the same texture and motion as a high-speed sander.

  “Where is the fug ?!” The horizon flew by, ied, skyscrapers and overpasses floating over a sea of sky.

  He tried to tell them they had the wrong Cooper, that he was really the other one, but his voice wouldn’t work. He knew, somehow, with that dream knowledge, that if he could just find the Cooper they were after, they would let him, the real Co.

  Something exploded, like an RPG had hit the car and vaporized his attackers, and he was left to float outwards like a leftover birthday balloon. He knew suddenly that if he could only get the world right side up again, he could go back to his real Life. But his struggle tht himself was wasted. He could only fil around and try uselessly to swim in the air as the ground drifted further away. The horizo askew, halfway betweeical and horizontal, then stopped.

  He reached in his pockets for the , ready to give it to anyone if they could save him from drifting into the sky forever, alone. But all he found was his phone.

  An idea, salvation. He called his mom. She could drive down the highway and Jared could throw a cable or something up and catch him.

  “Hello?”

  Her voice brought it all back. The Real Cooper. Not a thief, not a drug addict, at least not a meth addict, but still…

  He watched porn and did weed in various forms stantly. He had lived with his mom and stepdad for two years now, after college, and was no closer to any kind of real employment beyond a shitty part-time retail job he skipped stantly and the occasional delivery driver work. He owed every friend he had money, at least the ones he hadn’t paid back with dispensary weed he had gotten from his aunt, who was vinced he to not bee another oremist.

  So, in a way, he was a thief in that world too, stealing from himself every sed of the day, robbing his life of minutes, hours, days, and leaving in their empty spaces something that he hoped might have the same weight as a life, maybe trick the scales, but he knew would dissolve under any kind of scrutiny.

  So, he floated, turned, faced the sun, which he knew would burn him to—

  The car came to a stop ae nudged his khe strange dreams dissolved, the other him not even remembered, aried not to ugh at the only fragment he could catch, a phone call to his mom that had actually been answered.

  He gnced out the window.

  The sky had turned an evening e and the sun was hiding pyfully just behind the trees, setting random surfaces alight in fshing patches of gold.

  It was a small house on a big lot, the way they used to build them. Someone had added a big sheet metal awning to the driveway, but the rest of it remained un-modernized. He knew without looking there was an alley out back that ran down the ter of the block. He’d grown up on a street like this, walked the back alleys till the furrows were worn from his feet as much as any tires, and used them as escape routes, in and out.

  Somehow, even in all the haze of uy, caught in the choppy tesseltion and non-personhood of the Hardworlds, he was sure of this. The memories of the Real shone bright and proud like a high sudden sun, brought back from the dark murk of the dreams by this sudden wave of nostalgia. Looking back, from ten years into adulthood, it seemed his childhood had been one long golden evening.

  The other him, the half-recovered meth addict, the full-blown thief, whose childhood had been nearly as golden but broken off much sooner, stood aside, trying to get a look at this other, more put-together him, and quickly found the creases in the fa?ade, the shared , and scoffed.

  Celeste pced a hand on his bad the big guy led the way, unlog the door and holding it open for the two of them like they were all about to catch up over dinner. Ihe house was furnished like an Airbnb that catered to bachelors who’d seen Scarfaany times.

  “Have a seat. I’ll get you some drinks,” the big guy in the grey overcoat said.

  Cooper sat down on the bck leather coud wondered for about the fifth time sihe shootout if the guy had a learning disability or something. Singing along goofily to ‘90s radio ro the ride over, eating fug gummy worms like he didn’t just drive through gunfire, and now trotting off to the kit like his mom had a PB&J waiting for him or some shit.

  Cooper stared at the wood panel ets through the doorway and imagined him ing back to the living room with big cartoonish ice cream floats in both hands; soda gsses, hot rod cherries, red and white spiral straws.

  Celeste leaned against him on the coud he reflexively reached in his pocket for his phohe absence of it spooked him for a sed, and he remembered the uy with the widow's peak had thrown it out the window on the ride to the parking lot.

  “That’s ok bitch. You stop pretending to be my girlfriend now. I’m ready to talk turkey if the jolly grey giant get me the fuck out of here.”

  She stayed right where she was and batted her big bck eyes at him and smiled.

  “Maybe I fell in love with you in the car. You were so brave throwing yourself over me like that.”

  Cooper thought about throwing himself over her again, but not in any way that would get him ended for his bravery. She squeezed his arm and leaned her soft cheek on his shoulder. He didn’t know what her game was, if she really expected the flirting to have any effect other thaing him horny and stupid, but she gave off the distinct aura of someone who kly what they were doing and had everything under trol. Another Cooper, now done gring at the rest of him, screamed out for her in a way that made him bat away memories like flies ing t him into the stage of deposition.

  “Scotd Soda.”

  The big guy came back with two highballs the same color as the sky outside ahem down on the coffee table. No straws. Lemon wedge garnish. Bubbly as hell. Cooper took a drink and his opinion of the big guy skyrocketed.

  “So, Cooper. I want the . I’m sure there’s something you want. How we help each other?”

  “I want to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Out of where?” The Big guy studied him.

  “Out of this Hardworld!” Cooper hissed.

  “I arrange—”

  “And I don’t want to drop out into a sifter et locked up in fug Nightmare forever.”

  Michael smiled. “They wouldn’t keep you there forever. It’s not like a room you just close. Someone has to keep your cell together while you’re in there.”

  Cooper thought about the bck box. How they had screamed, and the fear the guy had tried to hide under all his arrogahere had been no one around w that thing. He didn’t buy that old adage about the Otherworld being “ultimately harmless.” Not anymore.

  “So just a short stint then, huh? Something I could do standing on my head.”

  Michael’s smile was smoothed by pity. “It wouldn’t feel short.” Cooper's stomach turned aried to smother it with more scotd soda. It worked. He got the idea that the big guy had somehow made it magid his mind pyed with the thought obsessively.

  “I give up the and you keep me out of Nightmare. That the deal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “By leaving you here.”

  Cooper hadn’t expected that and looked at the words from every arying to find the catch. It was like a chess move from a se of the board he had been ing. He was about to crify what “here” meant, when Michael cut his eyes to the kit ae stood up straight like they had both heard some invisible whistle.

  Sometimes the best way to trap a Spirit is in a better life. Who would want to escape? But other Spirits are better kept in a life gone wrong, where hope is seen as delusion. Which method do you think would work on you? ime, someone made a mistake, and some men don't know the meaning of the word "recoil". episode, 10mm.