The bear trap in the familiar shape of Sophie's room snapped shut under me. In an attempt to become small and unnoticeable, I crammed myself in the narrow space between the wall and the sofa. I would've preferred to crawl under Sophie's bed instead, but it was way too low.

Speaking of problems, Cherry was holding onto me like I was a life float. She buried her head deep in my chest and was sobbing violently, her body spasming with each wet whimper. Even if she did partially cover me against Clara, it was still hard to breathe through the sickly sweet perfume; a deadly addition to the crippling nausea and muddiness of thoughts that always accompanied the Incubus' presence.

My hair clumped around my sweaty face, covering most of my vision. However, I could still clearly see Elm and Clara under the ceiling light, which gave them the appearance of actors of a low-budget play with hints of surrealism.

Elm pressed himself against the wall, nervously wrapping his body in a blue bathrobe that barely reached his knees. There was hardly any resemblance of Johan left, save for a few clumps of blonde hair hanging down from the blackened mess of a scalp.

His body was so thin and lanky that Clara looked more like a small, ugly dog barking at a streetlight.

What they talked about completely fell out of the scope of reason: Clara pleaded and demanded that Elm make love to Sophie and Elm irritably complained that he was feeling ill, disgusted and didn't even know how it's done. Clara then raised her hands and cursed fate for bringing her a useless virgin of an Incubus.

A stupid, fake and unsightly tragicomedy; more proof that I have completely lost it. It's not that bad if you think about it. I mean, it is awful to realise that everything that happened in the last day is bitter truth, but since it is just my personal lunacy then nobody but my own head got hurt.

It's one thing to suspect that you're going insane, and it's much more terrifying when you want to in order to escape the nightmarish reality. But the feeling... that feeling when you no longer have any doubt about your lack of sanity is on a completely different level. You just accept the fact as a fact, as Elm said. Not exactly like that, but close.

I wanted to just wake up like Alice in Wonderland, but it's a different situation here. In a way, dreaming is not that different from insi... insas... insanity, as in both cases you're just cooking in your own hallucinations. The only differences are that during sleep, your motor functions are disabled and it can be interrupted and I could just be running around the loony bin, shouting and scratching at the walls. Maybe it isn't even me; I could be an overweight middle-aged man imagining himself as a schoolgirl tormented by demons. Or not even running around, just sitting in a corner awaiting the next mind game.

Quite convincing, if I do say so myself. Although, the axe shining a few steps away from the couch also appeared quite convincing, not to mention tempting and reliable. Clara threw it aside once she realised she no longer needed it, but it was still hard to reach it without being seen. It was dangerous but I would've put my bet on it if it wasn't for Cherry. The only thing left to do was sit and watch.

Everything is coming together! The periods of calm existence were probably brought on when the kind nurses gave me my medicine. And now was clearly a period of invigoration! I hope the nurses will come back soon as it is definitely unusual for a mentally ill person to realise that their hallucinations are way too hallucinatey to be called that... I wonder, could a birth of my own brain kill me?

And if you think about it, who even is Clara? And Elm? And everyone else? Oh, I remember! Archetypes! That's it! They are the universal basic psys... psychi... psychological archeolo... archetypes. Elm was probably representing my repressed sexual urges, while Clara embodied a not-so-repressed urge to destroy everything, myself included. But what archetype was Cherry? Femininity? Then I'd have to admit that it irritates me to my core; Cherry completely soaked me In tears and snot and left scratches all over with her long nails.

Everything is making sense! One look at Elm is enough. I, or more accurately my brain hasn't generated it for a while and now look at it! He's supposed to be a copy of Johan... Johan's archetype also didn't turn out to be very pleasant, what is up with my luck when it comes to them? Why are they all so retarded? So, where is the copy? Where is Johan? Nowhere! One archetype completely replaced another, and it's definitely a sign.

Signs, symbols, they are everywhere, you just have to think about them sometimes. It's good when corpses are symbols and not real things. And the chewed-off finger, too, only the pain feels real. Oh, to wake up in a ward right now and thank the kind doctors for recovery...

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, but nothing changed. Clara's moaning continued to pierce my ears while Elm slowly began to slide down the wall before being loudly slapped.

"What do you mean you cannot?"

The sound of another slap made me wince. Interesting, what was the point of archetypes fighting? There was no point hoping for them to kill each other; Clara was dominating, greatly over-exaggerating the situation with her loud voice.

"I will ask you again; what do you mean 'I can't', 'It's not working' and 'too soft'? Do you want to die a slow and painful death? I could very well arrange that for you! I cannot take any more of this! Elm, my love, I beg you, please! Do something! You are not even trying to get it up. Do you want me to touch it, kiss it better?"

Elm made the sound like that of a dying swan and weakly waved his hands in the air.

"Well alright, if you do not want me..." Clara turned around, at which point my stomach dropped into my bladder, and headed for us. Her monstrous hand clasped around Cherry's neck, squeezing a weak squeak out of her, but despite that she still held onto me. That only lasted for a few seconds, until Clara literally chucked her into Elm and started to push her head into Elm's crotch. She shouted threats and orders to immediately proceed with arousal but Cherry only shrieked, covering her face with her small hands.

The shrieking ended abruptly, accompanied by the loud cracking of broken vertebrae. Clara then kicked Cherry's lifeless body to the side.

Elm dropped to the floor like a marionette.

And now Clara was glaring at me.

"Come here!"

I crawled there on all fours as my legs refused to work. 'What else does my hallucination want?' bubbled in my head. It was obvious that Elm was beyond help; his jaw was hanging loose and his eyes were rolled back, not to mention his entire body turned a hue of blue, what could possibly be done?

And then I was roughly thrown onto Elm's body, and the sensation of his hair was the last thing that I felt before being enveloped in an orange glow.

***

A dust devil twists around my legs like a kitten, the wind throwing sand grains into my face. I cover my face from them and the dying light to take a look at the Incubus' face.

No, not a face, but faces.

The monstrous denizen of this crimson desert has obtained a human form, yet he still does not have his own face.

The faces flow from within, seamlessly changing on the surface, but this time it is even somewhat pleasant to gaze upon them... I recognize Johan, a boy I adored in my earlier years, a handsome bloke at the supermarket, a Hollywood actor, a vocalist from a famous boy band, another singer, then Johan again. It's a collection of my love interests!

"I am lost." Says the Incubus.

"So am I" I reply.

"What do you see around us?" He asks.

"Cracked red earth and a dead tree. Tops of houses and towers in the distance."

"A place of birth and bloom."

The faces change, yet the voice remains the same; a booming, well-put voice like that of an opera singer. I have not noticed this before, but he also talks in a song-like manner and drags out words like he is enjoying the combination of sounds.

"What do you see?" I ask.

"Nothing good. Your astral projection reflects itself where the black puddles of rotting plants gave way to a field of flowering irises. Upon these circumstances, the synchronisation of wave characteristics of our energy bodies is heading to zero but in a strange way it turned out like this."

"Maybe because I lost my mind?"

"Maybe because I died?"

"Death and insanity on the crossroads of eternity?"

"Death and insanity." He repeats and stretches out his hand toward me.

Our hands interlock and the earth trembles, dropping down all around the tree. We stand on the edge of an abyss, holding hands like best friends. From the abyss spring forth tongues of flame, and amidst them, in the deepest part, burns a fragile body of a girl with long hair. 'Sophie! What is she doing there? Why is she burning?'

I scream and point at her body. The incubus winces, turning his face against the fire, then jumps in place and clicks his fingers. 'What is up with him? Is he... happy? Now?'

He embraces me, pushing my cheek up against his bare chest.

"I have a chance!" His happy shriek nearly bursts my eardrums. "And you have a chance, the beauty has a chance, even this loser has a chance... do you understand? We all have a chance to stay alive! Sorry, dear, but we'll have to jump into the flaming gehenna, the Ignis Sanat!"

"What? No!"

A-a-a-a-ahh!