Judith swims away from the Laughter Houses. What she's begun calling the underwater city wasteland. Since those specific letters were the only words on the only legible sign within her vicinity of exploration, Laughter Houses remains in her mind. There're no other street signs or business signs or marketplace symbols of intrusion causing distraction within her internal yammering. Not a single piece of alphabet outside this one phrase has ever revealed itself to her in this locality. Well...there's a slight exception that wanders within Judith's memory and pays for thoughts with tokens of contradiction. The name Terra Coal was carved into a tombstone that disintegrated and woke the army of churchyard revenants. Otherwise, only Laughter Houses has been legible since she left the megalodonic crenellation serration mouth. Judith knows in this place that objects and the material world aren't what they seem. No longer takes the topography literally. No longer duped by the epistemology of epistemology. This whole world and all its experiences are a Möbius strip. A hidden exit in plain sight which leads to many other Möbius strips. Knows that the only sign she's witnessed in this place doesn't mean what it seems to mean.

Judith gurgles to herself.

"Laughter Houses?"

Was this entire city laughing in their abodes? Was their extinction a humorous comedy of screams left unsaid? And by laughing, perhaps the prophecy on the wall means drowning. Maybe everyone had their sanity breath the waters of death all the way to the slaughter house. Because only a butcher would've done this to an entire city.

"Bone saw motherfucker. I recollect you. The tasty treats are a witness to your malevolence. This whole world's been crushed by your tools and terrible thoughts and poison snake oil. I'm certain your fingerprints will be found on every single piece of this city's demise."

Judith no longer views the world as a wayward distraction or an addicts quest for the organs her tastebuds desire. She's done hunting revenants for now, though she'll gladly take a nibble if the opportunity arises. Otherwise, she's leaving. She's leaving to find the proof of herself. Means searching for evidence. Hopefully the existence of her "bad ass" sister and her sister's "bad ass" best friend.

The graveyard girl gurgles to herself again. Floats above the conurbation.

"All of the interactive visions have placed a gift under a tree for me. Whoever's been watching knows I've been a good girl this year. I've grown much stronger and faster from eating tasty treats. I'm not who I thought I was. But I'm certainly still who I am. Regardless of a few new memories changing my outlook on my internal. I still enjoy scaring motherfuckers. I still kinda miss my shadow. And for certain, I love my loins. Pubes. Nub. Flaps and all. Maybe there's a lot more to me behind another curtain that's behind many other curtains. Perhaps I'm the brick wall behind the last drape."

The graveyard girl uses her knees and ankles and elbows along side her arms and legs to propel herself with the technique of the breast stroke. Ascends above the city like an overman. As if she's flying between giant sway bent buildings. The cement and steel of the tall structures look like they've been gutted and are keeling over in pain. Innards of each rotting sepulchre are dark and empty of anything resembling what all of it once was. There's nothing much left to remember in this place. Not even shadows.

Judith's flying at the speed of a giant extinction event. Has no time for entering places she knows aren't really there anymore.

As Judith exits the downtown area of the city and all of its vacant doom, begins to feel faint currents from a short distance away. The weak motion is like a river tugging her toward the bottom. An undertow of whatever someone might categorize this body of water as. A sea below the concrete ground of the dark forest. And so Judith decides that this is her world to name, since she killed a revenant megalodonic and a hundred cemetery Terras. In this way she feels like a conqueror.

"I'm naming this place the Hearse Sea. The molecules of "what was" float down here like the whole place's carrying their chunks into the oblivion of prophecy. But maybe I should just name it The Giant Motherfucking Lake. I guess it could have two names. The Hearse Sea or The Giant Motherfucking Lake. Sounds like a book I'd like to write if writing were my speciality. Would have mermaids with legs hunting the chasm of adventure and the pounding tools of baby makers. It would have a megalodonic, too."

The city and outskirts become a distant memory at the bottom of whatever Judith claims the underworld to be. Witnesses the vast nothing before her. Water desert landscape. Feels the current gain strength. A blemish in the distance catches the gravity of her eyes. Current's like falling. Swims above a spiral pit. Thousands of white, misshapen stones protrude from the black muck of the spiral ledges.

Long way down into the depths of the round cavity is black hole. Judith feels the pull of its gravity. A maelstrom. Underwater aperture. Judith surmises that one day this underwater world will be a dried out cavernous leviathan carcass. The underwater seems to be leaking.

Judith lets the current capture her body. Slowly drags her toward the centre. She's directly above the drown soda hole. Falls toward the pit's eye to somewhere else. Notices the white stones buried into the spun sides of the pit are actually bits and pieces of skeletons. Thousands of white fragments, especially skulls. One cracked vertex in particular stands out from the rest, since it has a megalodonic tooth embedded in it's osteal countenance. Spines and the curl of ribs lay atop one another like fossils made of fossils. From the distance, they have the aesthetic of stone. From a closer view, they're probably the population of the Laughter Houses.

This pit is like a bad land of  layers exposing millions of years of sediment. Every bit of it has a body part creeping out from the timeless muck of its deep, unmoving tornado.

Judith descends faster and faster toward the pupil, the bones become mostly hands. Sharp fingerly hands which remind Judith of the dangerous silk of spider webs. Judith's no fly to be captured and no bug to be made into liquid from any furry, thousand eye vomit. The graveyard girl is the one who does the gorging around here.

The current extends itself and pulls her even faster. Bow moving like a crashing sparrow toward a bottomless window. Watches her reflection come into focus beneath, closer and closer, face first, eyes first. Judith's pupil meets the pupil of the pit. Wonders if this place, this sunken underworld, is a reflection of herself. Mermaid. And then, with a thousand dead pointy fingers feeling every inch of her body, including her inner workings, she penetrates the centre of the pit's pupil. Toes exit to enter. Gravity reverses. Acceleration crashes into a soft slow body of water. Momentum slows.

Judith ascends again. Watches below her feet at the pupil of the underwater realm. The eyelid closes. Judith looks toward the surface of whatever this new place might be.

Water feels different. Stagnant. Gray. Liquid tastes awful in Judith's lungs. Continues momentum up, which a moment ago was down. Can't get the gravity out of her mind. Motions a butterfly kick as hard as she can. Points her hands far above her head.

Fingers penetrate surface. Forearms and elbows and biceps. Face breaches. Breaths in. Coughs. Vomits. Water sprays from her lungs. Heaves and heaves. Throws up while treading water. Eventually catches air through her lungs. She's once again a land creature.

Judith looks around. Spins degrees to find a decent account of her whereabouts. Focuses. Recognizes the world she's entered. The mire. The dark wind. Winged buzzing insects whisper anxieties like little opinions into Judith's ears. The graveyard girl immediately blocks them out like they were never there. Swims, front crawl, to the shore. Climbs out like stretching. Notices this is the exact spot where Jane crawled out or will crawl out of the stagnant water. She's in Jane's world. The world of the vision witnessed after eating the succulent brain and heart of the first cemetery Terra revenant.

Judith realizes the visions of Jane weren't interactive. They were like watching something happening without actually being there. The visions of Terra and the bone saw man and a lot of the other experiences she's had from the tasty treats were extremely interactive, like she was a participant, existing as other people within the confines of herself. Especially the vision where she was shot in the back. That seemed much too real.

The graveyard girl stops thinking for a moment. Exists in the present, if that's what her situation might actually be. Soft warm wind feels nice on her bare skin. Sits in the grass. Feels her thighs and calves. Grabs both her nipples. Squeezes until she shudders. Smiles into herself. Feels at peace in the moment. Decides to lay down so she can watch the starry light of what doesn't exist anymore. The stars are ghosts in the sky, lighting the way to nowhere.

The new mire girl thinks about her younger sister, Terra. Teenage years which Judith's mind has memorized from the tasty treats. Not all memory is present. Childhood is beyond her knowledge, as is adulthood. Recollections that have shown themselves are of the years Judith, Terra and Rist wandered the corridors and territories within the training facility called The Factory.

Judith falls into her mind. Wanders through her past. Relives the days and nights. Listens to the experiences of who she might have been.

The Factory was a massive cavernous structure with upper levels built into the side of a large hill. From the street, directly across from the hundreds of slightly straight argent cement stairs, one could witness the black double doors of the front entrance lobby like they were ominous iron gates. The visible exterior of the building looked like the head of an ornate sledgehammer built to break a mountain in half. Symbols of founders and factions carved into the weight of walls and stone hills. Backyard of the upper building was exposed to the bleaching sun and the endless suburban city streets.

The Factory itself had three stories above ground for apartments and a few meeting halls. One of the upper rooms was a large control facility full of chair mount virtual reality computers and hologram walls. Everyone knew this wasn't the real control room. It was a ruse because trust in the government was almost extinct. Judith didn't know much about the authentic control room other than it was off limits to everyone who wasn't a high ranking member of The Factory. That place was buried deep underground like a coffin below a tomb.

The Factory had everything. A fifty meter, eight lane swimming pool. A deep dive tank. Crazy tunnel water slides. Three hot tubs. Warm, hot and scalding. The three girls always went into the scalding category. Judith and Terra would stay in the water for ten or fifteen minutes before they jumped back into the pool. Went from super hot to freezing cold in less than a second. Judith loved the rush it gave her. Rist would soak the days away. Boiled herself. Loved heat.

Then there was the Crater. It was the hole at the bottom. The main hub of all the serious training. Judith remembers the Crater being about 360,000 square feet from end to end. Ceiling was at least ten stories above the floor. Could look up at the webbed steel rafters and the bounce of wire rope suspension bridges. Witnessed tiny people head to wherever their mornings or evenings would lead them.

There was a twenty lane, burgundy track for running and biking. Circled the outskirts of the gym. Every lane was separated by white paint, which glowed at night in case anyone wanted a lights out run. Morning jogs were required by the laws of the leaders. No exceptions for the healthy.

A corner of the large track passed by an enormous room carved into the rock face. It had every type of weight lifting device imaginable. Bench presses, leg presses, squat machines, light weights, pulleys for biceps and triceps and shoulders and pectorals. This place always buzzed with grunts and yelps and laughter. Bodily sounds of vomiting. Coughing. Heavy breathing. People would sometimes become extreme while working out. Brightly lit muscle room existed for the mandatory daily weight training of every soldier within the facility. There wasn't one person within The Factory who didn't have ripped abs. The hard and physical body was taken extremely seriously.

Another section of the track passed a yoga environment full of large suffocating tents. Heated. Everyone had to experience Bikram yoga a few times a week. Everyone had to sweat and feel their mind and body burn.

And there was the fighting cage. An important area for the settlement of disputes. Rist's favourite place. She knew how to fight like a wrestler and a pugilist. Her and Terra banged it out numerous times so Terra could learn how to destroy opponents. Rist taught her a lot about hand to hand combat but she never went full throttle on Terra. Didn't have it in her to beat the shit out of her best friend. Eventually, Terra became a great fighter and Rist learned all about climbing walls and jumping off as per Terra's lessons. They made each other better. Two friends took turns being a whetstone and a sword.

The climbing walls at The Factory were magnificent. Walls were checked for safety daily and the equipment wasn't made by the lowest bidder. Some of the walls were a few stories high with artificial rainbow rocks fastened in places. These were for the beginners and the stragglers. The walls that Terra loved to climb were the authentic rock walls. She'd climb the jagged pockets of stone like she was running. Terra was by far the best climber in The Factory. When she made it to the top faster than anyone else by at least thirty seconds, she would run and jump, flinging herself toward the dangling climbing ropes that were positioned ten feet away from the rock face. Swing from them. Wrap the ropes around herself to spin horizontally all the way to the bottom. This would usually bring cheers and applause. She enjoyed putting on a show.

Everyone looked up to Terra when it came to all things physical. But she wasn't just a body. As physically inclined as she was, she was far more of a thinking creature. Always had some kind of philosophy book with her. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Cioran, Agamben. Terra also took extra courses the leaders of the Factory persuaded her to take. Critical thinking, biopolitics, war strategy, game theory, psychology, logistics. She was being groomed for leadership.

Terra was the total package. No wonder a young instructor who'd been very hard on her for the first year of their residence noticed her. Slowly respected her. Warmed up to her. Terra initially hated him. Called him vulgarities daily. But as he began to pay attention, so did she. Garret was also similar to Terra. Tough and intelligent. A kind of celebrity at The Factory. He made a habit of touching her to teach her more fighting stances and exotic yoga poses. She enjoyed his hands on approach. Probably just enjoyed the feel of his hands. Judith caught them kissing in the dark corridors and on the long high suspension bridges many times.

Judith also noticed Rist keeping her distance from Terra when Garret came into the picture. Judith remembers taking a photograph with an old camera of the three of them. Garret was holding Terra, smelling her long, blonde hair. Terra was grinning from ear to ear and looking directly at Judith. Rist was beside her, looking away from them and the camera. She was sullen in her countenance. She wasn't Terra's shadow anymore. The two friends were still close. But it seemed Garret was wedged between them. Rist seemed a bit jealous of having to share the Wonder Woman.

Judith had her own group of friends away from the two celebrities. A hang out squad that worked hard and partied a lot. Her best friend was Patricia who didn't really like Rist and thought Terra wasn't as perfect as everyone seemed to think. Judith liked Patricia because Pat had no problem with sarcasm and satire and swearing and boys. Judith could forgive her for many red flags because they had the best times together. Especially in the underground city area of The Factory. Night clubs and restaurants and conurbation parties. Judith enjoyed vodka because of the low calories and how it made her feel around boys. Pat was more of a "what's available" and "anything goes" type of guiding spirit toward the spirits.

One house party in particular turned Judith's life into the chaos that perhaps it became. Was in the drunken conversations and laughter at the forefront of standing in a kitchen along side bottles and bottles of alcohol that Judith met a boy with long black hair and bright green eyes. His first words to her were unforgettable, yet she forgot them in order to remember them again. Thrilling confidence and a casual compliment turned Judith on like a light switch.

"I like your hair style. Copper on the greenish gray has a romantic revolutionary tragedy aesthetic like an ancient blood bath upon an extinct landscape. My fuck your are beautiful."

Judith raised her eyebrows. Witnessed his eyes. He could grow a moustache and look like a top hat aristocratic from another lifetime. Judith smiled at him and shuddered a small laugh because he didn't need to know exactly what she was thinking. She returned a compliment.

"And your hair is like a whispering shadow taking over the world. Like darkness growing from your mind to hide your face."

"So you approve of my dashing fashion?"

"Well, who wouldn't? And because you've decided to talk to me, I'll assume you approve of what you're watching? Am I prey? Or something more than a meal to you?"

"If you were my meal, I'm sure that you would be the tastiest of treats. I love your style and countenance and use of language too much to consider you merely a succulent dish. No, I think I need to get to know you."

"What you're about to get into may make your stunning style far more rough around the edges. I'm Judith."

"Oh, I'm looking forward to my edges being roughed up, gorgeous girl with no bra under your tank top. Your black jeans contour every crevice. I hope you like books about books, Judith. I hope you like realities made of other realities."

The boy took a drink from his ornate chalice. Judith noticed blue rings adorned each finger and a tattoo of a flying raven was carved on his hand. She smiled again and wondered what his hands might feel like when they hold her fleshy bits upon the crowded living room furniture in the next room. She would let him have a dangerous taste, just to see how far he would go into the world of embarrassment. Could he focus on her in that situation? Judith was a bit of a voyeur when drinking and had the fantasy groaning up and down in her mind for a moment.

The boy with the long, black hair touched Judith's chin. She looked up into his eyes. "I want to get to know all of you, Judith. And I'd like you to understand me. My name is Michael. Michael Leonard."