The first to wake and the first to look around the cardinal directions. Breathes in the border of the moldering wood tin cement warehouse district. Putrid deathly dank dark coal crusting forest. Stands from her sleeping camp smoke posture to pull her weathered combat boots upon callous feet. Walks through archipelagos of toppled buildings and the ontology of events behind the crenellations of bright black sky scourge structures. Steps a fair distance. Finds a private ruin. Pulls her black reaper hoodie over her head. Discards the tatter to reveal a loose black sport bra. Drops patchwork pants. Worn through purple panties. Squats. Pisses. Barely shits. Nothing really comes from her bowels to wipe away. Crimson between her legs. Sighs in prostaglandins annoyance. Changes her overflow rag for a somewhat pinkly fresh rag. Wash the crimson cloth along with the other four she's saved to use when there's time at the lake. Where the Grand Ghost will hopefully exist along with her stupid girlfriend. Maybe they'll still be there. On their little break from saving the city that can't be saved.

Silvia whispers in a temper.

"Who the fuck goes on vacation around here? I mean, really. Janice never took a break. Jane is so selfish sometimes."

Silvia spits. Reaches. Eats a few cashews from a bag in the big pocket of her hoodie. Finishes changing crotch cloths. Breaths in her scent. Eyeballs her curling dark damp bush. Pulls purple and black back up antecedent around her paper thin veiny waist. Considers herself vulgar at the moment. Angry. Hungry. Tired.

Notices a broken human skull rests upon a flat piece of fallen cement. Has what appears to be four finger holes and a thumb hole crushed into the forehead. The jaw's missing. Lack of eyes stare into her being. Shivers at the memory of the flying Ghost face decapitations. Turns away. Hears a kind of flying monkey squawk. Witnesses up at the gun metal sky. Peers at three ravens gliding and flapping around like taxidermy marionettes. Smiles at the image in the way the past sprinkles prophecy upon the present.

"Fucking ravens."

Others wake. Roam the camp when she returns. Osteal faces seek their morning latrines. Tenebrosity of fresh daylight hangs like a dead fog. Descends from the gloom of haunted clouds.

One Ghost. Gregor. Pisses his bladder on the ashes of a camp fire. Sizzles slightly. Char thin grey particles fly up and out like dead micro plastic snow souls escaping the dark yellow touch of a dehydrated orange spray from a fountain.

Silvia walks toward Gregor. Wraps her arms around him from behind. Places both hands upon his abdomen. Causes him to misaim for a moment. Touches his hairy abs under his hoodie. One indent at a time. Rests her cheek between his bunny-hug shoulder blades. Smells like dirt and camp smoke. A surly sweat which Silvia's attracted to. Breaths him in. Makes her body ache sickly for him within the cycle of her physical pain. The two sensations collide. Lets go of Gregor. Knows which won. Bends over slightly. Clutches herself. Attempts to minimize the pain. Gregor turns, sculpture hanging. Holds her. Kisses her scalp.

"They're getting worse."

"Yeah. They always get worse before the end. I fucking hate my body."

"I'm rather fond of your body. It's a contorting wonder."

"You'd hate it if you were me."

"No doubt. I wouldn't enjoy being a woman or whatever you mean."

"It's my burden. My stupid analogous crucifix to bleed from. I'll be ok. I'm used to this even when I'm not."

"I guess. Well, I'll never get used to you. You're abrasive and not easy to gather. You smell like time and blood and cashews and you feel like the skin and bones of a smooth tree. You're a wicked witch of the west, Silvia."

"Gregor, I'd love to imbibe you and let you ravage me and melt me away but I can't in this state and we've got to go. There's things to do, my pretty."

"To the lake? Why? We could just leave. Me and you. We don't need this life. We don't need her majesty or any semblance of this place. We can find our own way."

"No. I owe them. What we did to Jane and Rist and Rhie will have our...my atonement. I've sworn vows which I intend to keep. You should take this as a good sign if and when I decide to swear vows to you, Gregor of the rolling hills."

Feels him nod like an oily tin man. Listens to him hide his sculpture in his pants. Locks the rusty safety pins in place where a zipper once was. Crouches her body in cramp. He kneels. Tilts her chin with a finger. Places his lips upon her lips. Kisses. Eyes watch like wet mirrors. Pain staggers but she kisses him deeply. Takes her kisses away from his. Grunts. Helps her to her feet. Both place their masks on. Silvia eats the pain. Plays the role. Takes the handle and chain of her flail. Places the heavy skull face weight in her left hand. Gregor holds the emerald eye skull phallus first reality war hammer. Silvia addresses everyone as she yells at no one in particular.

"Ghosts! It's time to go! Get these first reality assholes up and herd them into the woods!"

                            ~*~*~*~

Hates the dark forest. Such still presses nightmares of soaring decapitations. Blurs of dead faces. Jane, the apparition of a monster, smiles in Silvia's subconscious like witches watching auguries. The spell of prophecy upon a Thane.

Army of the Ghosts climb over snarl gnarl roots. Crouch below the arthritic branches. Balance between concrete ground and bole ceiling. Lumber through the forest ruin of the poor district. Drag barefoot whitish yellow slip chattel of the first reality along. Pull their prisoners beaten bodies by the ropes around their necks. Tug slam such into the thick girth fossil imitation foliage. 

Exploded remains of telephone poles angle like dull impalement stakes through trees which grew around like hundreds of strangling constrictors. A rotting piano lays like the teeth of an elephant in a small clearing. Sad notes which can never again be played.

Stumble up metal stairs. Iron railings in wraps of bark and twig. Vermilion vine innards dangle like sticky fly traps that've caught their fill. An osteology of burnt vehicles lay in the distant disfigurement by the utilitarianism of the forest impalement. Trees are tight. Tighter the further the two simulations of Ghosts travel into the labyrinth of such.

Air breathes through the tangle of twisting black bole long arm thin finger branches which rest pointy elbows on window ledges. Wave at the passersby without moving in the silence from the doors of the long dead houses; coffins. Ground whispers in a rattle of some forgotten language through the giant hollow surface root system. Can hear the distant wind in the curl of each tangle like the fingernail teeth of the buried deceased. Converse about the afterdeath. Innards of the roots bellow like the echo of ghosts which will always claw at the walls of noumenal tunnels. Explains to herself that it's only the apparition of the wind in the hollow and that the suicide trees are ages past breathing. In fact, they're now like Byzantium. Only a myth. The forest isn't just extinct, Silvia wants to believe it never really was. What remains are only a brittle looming archaeology of just simply a kind of weird forest. Nothing to fear. Monsters without teeth.

Spots a leather bound hard cover book. The volume rests between a tombstone sort of rock and a many finger curl root. Bends down. Grasps what's left of such a technology. The book comes away from its stone and timber tomb easily like the forest is handing the worn pages to her for safe keeping. The olden volume has shiny words on its cover that she can't decipher, though she knows what it is by the ornate picture of a crucifix branded into it. A torn up worthless old bible. Understands the dirge feeling that even God was afraid of death in this place before he died. Or was it man who was truly afraid of His death? Feels the simulacra of the cross with her right thumb. Notices it feels smoother than the rest of the cover. Could always boil the leather. Spice it and eat it later. Places such in a side pocket of the rucksack she's forced upon Janice's back. Silvia's mule. The word "ass" is drawn with charcoal on her forehead.

Janice glares at Silvia. Their eyes don't flinch.

"Fuck you."

"Look, I don't hate you, Janice. Not in a fundamental way. I can see why you'd be Grand Ghost in your simulation. But out here, in this wilderness, just bare it until we get to our Grand Ghost. You know? The one who destroyed the you of this simulation? Nobody here would give a shit if I killed you right now. No one that matters. No one except her. She might kill you herself anyway, or she might not. I don't know. But we're getting close."

"Fuck you. I'll kill you."

Silvia shakes her head. Slaps Janice hard across the face. Smells her prisoner's stench and a hint of concrete lake water.

Janice smiles like the knot of a Gordian vampire. Spits blood and saliva on Silvia's lips and cheeks.

Stare at each other. The menstruating Ghost wipes the disrespect away with her right palm and slowly licks it. Tastes the liquids of Janice without breaking eye contact. She's not sure if she wants to destroy Janice or fuck her in this moment. This Janice isn't exactly like the other. This one has much bigger balls. Doesn't hide behind anyone. Silvia slaps her again. Janice mockingly laughs a language of hard words into  Silvia's ears.

"I know your type! You're tough when you have power but when the tables turn, you'll flee and bend your knees to survive! Spread your legs to survive! Clever but not trustworthy. Your Terra Coal seems like a dupe to trust you with anything. You're expendable! A character in a story created to die! So fuck..."

Silvia grabs Janice by the back of her head and kisses her. The Grand Ghost of the first reality pushes her away. Screams and swears into the moment. Falls to her knees. Sobs.

"No! No! Fuck no! Not you! I want my woman! My Patricia! She saved my life! I'm not yours! I'm not..."

Silvia backs away. Sits upon the low curl of a branch like a swing. Witnesses her prisoner whimper in the cement dust flake dead grass under the looming shadows of the tree ceiling. Janice looks like she could use a burial. Silvia knows a carpenter who would be willing to help with the accoutrements. Gregor could make wooden boxes out of blood stain Roman crucifix train track ties.

Silvia waits for Janice to get to her feet before continuing toward the lake. Doesn't talk to her prisoner again. Just holds the rope. Lets Janice make her way. Silvia's no longer cruel about pulling and tripping and cutting and bruising the Grand Ghost of the first reality. The more she thinks about what just happened, the more she realizes this Janice isn't remotely like the Janice she knew. This one isn't conniving and power hungry. This Janice is worth following into a war. But that thought is a long lost contingency. And this Janice is too honest. She has Silvia pegged. Silvia would turn sides if it meant her survival at this point. Vows be damned. She's confident that such a move won't be necessary. Not just yet.

~*~*~*~

The trees end in an opening like climbing out of a crawl space. The Ghosts exchange the woodland for the beach and the lake. Rist's waiting for the travellers, arms crossed. The Ghosts weren't so ghostly while crashing through the dark forest.

Barefoot but otherwise clothed. The skull mask lady scowls at Silvia. Forehead wrinkles. Silvia nods. Smiles and grinds her teeth. Looks back at the other Ghosts and worn down prisoners. Gregor folds his arms with the phallus war hammer in his hands. Turns back to meet the eyes of Rist's authority.

"Hey, Rist. Did you dye your hair black?"

"What the fuck is this, Silvia?"

"Oh, them? Just a bunch of assholes. They're why we decided to find you guys. We found them in the wayward station and this one bitch here at the fairground."

Rist looks at Janice and back at Silvia. Notices absolute hatred written in every atom of Janice's countenance. Notices the same look on the skull mask lady.

Gregor points to the lake and speaks like a chisel carving a name upon a pine coffin.

Coughs.

"Are there two of them or three in the depths out there?"

Rist turns to the lake. Waves.

"Jane!"

A far away arm waves from the up and down of the whitehead lake. Rist doesn't turn back toward Silvia. Doesn't say anything for the next fifteen minutes, the length of time it takes the two to find the shore. In that time, all of the prisoners are roped together in a circle. Hands still bound. Necks still tied like mules. Sat down in the dark sand close to the tree line. The rope handlers watch their prisoners but are also curious to watch their Grand Ghost exit the water. Janice isn't among the prisoners. Silvia has her untied and kneeling beside her. Has a Berretta pointed upon her skull. Silvia watches Janice stare at the lake like a distant sun behind the smoke upon the road of an apocalypse.

Jane climbs out of the water with another woman. Both are in their birthday skins and drag to the shore a third woman as if she were a coffin being saved from a storm to be buried in her last request.

Silvia startles. The scream from Janice makes everyone flinch twitch. In an instant Janice is on the dead body. Lays upon it. Howls with insanity in the wet sand.

"Nooooooo! Patricia...no...oh...no...."

The woman beside Jane bends down. Comforts Janice. Rubs her back. Kisses her head. Runs her hand through her twig and dirt infested hair. They both cry.

From the corner of Silvia's eye, Rist moves. Grips the phallus war hammer which Gregor had. Before Silvia knows what's happening, a blur of Rist runs. Swings. Heaves the weight down. Smashes the back of Janice's skull. In the process of her wild swing, clips the other woman's jaw. Teeth and flesh and bits of bone splash like a handful of nuts and bolts into the zone of the lake. The look on Jane's face is of horror as Janice's brains and blood spray her bare chest and face.

In the next moment, vicious vulgar screams fill the world behind Silvia. Turns to find the Ghosts of the first reality are somehow free and fighting her people with their bare hands. The Ghosts of the first reality are winning. Most of the rope handlers lay motionless in the reddening sand. One prisoner takes a Beretta off a slaughtered Ghost. Shoots another Ghost in the face. Someone fires a shotgun. Blows the prisoner's leg off. The beach is already a total bloodbath.