Location Unknown

XYLER DASCHUND

Blue blood sprayed onto Molly's face. The two ladies screamed and ineffectually clasped their hands over the entry wound.

I turned around to Ilse. She and her umbrella firearm faded away into thin air. My libido lowered from the four slimy chins underneath her creased mouth. I ran over to Jennifer who had been laid down to the earth by her friend.

She had been laid down on a shrub, the resplendent greenery inked with the deep blue gushing from her torso and our human contact. There were shards of glass scattered around her.

I had brought this upon her, I thought. My mind has killed this girl. It has taken Valery's legs as well. Whose suffering will it cause next?

Molly cried, "Jennifer - Jennifer stay with us." I crouched down to put pressure on the chest as well. I could offer no further solace than to hold onto her as she died. As the colour drained out of her eyes. As her bodily systems worked overtime to save it, knowing full well that they were preparing it for cremation or an autopsy or a burial. She twitched and shook uncoordinatedly with the words her vocal cords produced.

"I'm...

not...

Jenni..."

Her mouth did not jive with what she was saying. It failed her because it was shutting down from the major loss of blood, as was her entire body.

Soon, there was no more movement to be made. The chest had been punctured of air and our fingers and hands had been too loose in keeping oxygen within the lungs. Even if there was oxygen, the flow of it would be affected by the blood flow which was nil at that point.

I stood up, wiping my blue hands on my pants which I had ripped off at the lower section to be shorts.

"What does she," I said, "mean by that?" Molly looked up at me with her runny nose and shiny cheeks and red eyes.

"What?" she blubbered. "I don't know. Maybe... maybe it's not her real name."

"Then what is? You seemed to be close to her."

"I don't know! She's dead!"

"What did she say to you on that boat?" I asked.

"Stop!" she yelled. "I don't know... ummmm..."

She pushed the unkempt hair out of her face. "She had suspicions that we were not safe with you."

"Why?"

"Because you've trapped us in your mind." I stared at the small alcove to one of the huts. It was vibrating as if it had the mass of a feather and the wind was blowing gently against it.

"She was trying to turn you against me," I said.

"They were realistic accusations," she said. I stepped towards her and looked her in the eyes.

"No, no, no - what if this person on the ground isn't Jennifer at all? What if she's another figment of my imagination?"

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Yes, it does. She must have been replaced by my memory of what she looked like, how she spoke, her mannerisms from the small time that I did spend with her. All to put doubts towards me. My mind is trying to attack me by turning you against me. A physical threat. Because it knows it can't hurt me mentally."

Molly took her time to comprehend and understand. I looked at the hut with the small alcove again. In it, a table had been set with a sumptuous banquet of meals. The food was still warm. The steam coming off it was whisked into the stuffy air outside. As if the residents of the hut had been ousted out of their dwelling.

Molly admitted, when she turned around, "This is just weird."

"I know," I said. "It's my brain."

"Then why is her blood blue? You have a really crazy imagination if you think Jennifer's blood is blue."

"I don't know about that. I've never thought of blue blood before."

"I have seen this type of blood before... back in the water world. It was the blood of Floaters. I mean, w-when was she even replaced?"

"Most likely as soon as we entered. Because someone was always with her. She can't have been replaced any other time."

"So the real Jennifer..."

"Hmmm... It's a bit hard to say where she is. Maybe she's free, or still roaming around in this place. Alone. Or dead."

"Then we have to go and find her."

"But where do we even start? Backwards - what if she's already passed us? This place is upside down, we don't even know if we've been heading upstream or downstream."

I crouched down to fake Jennifer's body and searched it.

"If this is a figment of my imagination, there shouldn't be a phone on her..." I fished into her pocket and felt something solid. There was a mobile device. "Wait, let's not jump to conclusions."

I turned it on and went to recent outgoing calls. There was a number that had been called three days ago.

But like fake Jennifer had said, there was no connection out here. Or in here. I waved the phone in my hand.

"This doesn't mean anything," I said. "It just means I remembered she had a phone on her, and the doppelganger told us that it had been three days since we entered the bubble wall. Now, that might have been a lie because this phone is useless, but I don't know why I would have my zany mind think it was three days. Maybe to me, it just felt like three days, where in reality, it hasn't been a day yet."

Molly studied the sky.

"It's night now, so we should probably camp here. Confound it, what should we do - "

Something flew into her ear. It was fast and made the sound of passing through the air immediate. I looked over at the hut with the alcove where a short aggressive black skinned old man squatted in the doorway while reloading a blowpipe.

He had an oval face, small nose, puffy lips with vivid pink eyes that were also puffy under bushy eyebrows. He had a military cut, dyed gold in the front and azure where the party was, and stubble to fit across his jaw.

His shoulders slanted, giving the impression of long arms. He had a wiry torso with a well-defined waist, angular hips and spindly legs.

He had reloaded his blowpipe with a lit match, in which he blew from the blowpipe with smoke trailing from the exit. It directly hit Molly's auricle, setting her entire ear on fire in the darkness...