Kisses her against the reinforced steel doorway between the dark damp smell of the exterior hallway and the warm clean brightness of Patricia's foyer. Shadows crawl across her breasts and ribs and belly soft light brown pubic hair. She steps back to take a woozy breath. He attacks her flesh. Her exposure. Rough fingers. Hard grips. Lips kiss lips kiss chins lick cheeks touch tongues. Suck upon the senses of intuition. For him, her body emanates Cixous jouissance. He can smell the night's aftermath on her breath but her body smells delicious. Intoxicating. Patricia's ripe with the scent of carved apples and fallen ash mixed with hard packed snow. His body begs and his hands plead. Presses his mouth to her breast. Sucks in her nipple and chews her areola. Her eyes panic and roll back into her face. He guides her hand upon his growth. Sculpture underneath his black pants. Sweaty. Smegma. He smells terrible. Knows she's so drunk that it doesn't matter. Pulls his sculpture out and lifts her foot to touch it with her toes. Pulls his pants down. Rubs it's nasty scent against her loins in the doorway. She moans. Rubs her crotch with the head.  Becomes slick. Slowly penetrates her. She gasps and her open mouth lingers. Patricia wraps her legs around him. Places her hands behind her head for stability and grip. Holds herself up by the top of the door casing. Flexes hard arms and torso between the two worlds of the foyer and exterior hallway like she's in the middle of a portal. Bends her knees. Lifts her legs. Slaps her feet onto his chest. Her pushes her legs wider. Bashes his hips roughly into her crotch. Pounds her into the door casing. Grips her ass to hold her up. She groans. Her slickness oozes down his sculpture. He can smell it. Salty carved apple mixed with his own unwashed stench. The sway of the smell is enough to bring him to explosion within her. He continues as she makes tiny moans until his motion slowly becomes less intense and then he has to stop. Keeps his sculpture within her for another warm moment. Her feet slide off of his chest and her arms drop and her head falls to one side. Garret then recognizes that Patricia has passed out while still moaning in short breaths.

Places his sculpture across her face. Grips her hair in fists. Slaps her with weeks of unwashed stench. Rams it into her open mouth and down her throat. She gags unconsciously. Scrotum slaps her chin over and over. Knows she can't breath. Continues anyway. Hates her for leaving. Loves her like bullets. Explodes into her mouth. Pulls out. Patricia falls over. Lays motionless on the floor. Wheezing. Unconscious coughs.

The former Grand Ghost steps out of his pants from his ankles after kicking off his discoloured worn flay lace combat boots. Lifts Patricia into his veiny arms. Carries his used unconscious apple inside the apartment. Closes the door with his foot. Knows where the bedroom exists and takes her to it. Drops her onto the bed. She's dripping. Sticky. Rolls her under the covers. She farts and coughs.

Garret wonders what she'll think when she wakes up in the morning. Will she remember anything? Will she think it was a dream? The proof is between her legs and in her mouth. His body oder and unwashed sauce is all over her. He hasn't showered for days. The mission has been too all encompassing. He wasn't expecting what just happened which is probably why that doorway encounter was the best sex he's had in years. Patricia should leave him more often.

Strips his shirt off and uses her white one piece prefab shower to find clarity after such a spurring moment in the fog of pleasure. Soaps himself in her apple body wash. Pinches his pierced nipples and thinks about the towel dropping and the stunning look on her face. The shape of shadows moving across her nudity. The feel of her feet against him. The long soft hair of her armpits. Brown drunken eyes rolling into the back of her head. Her sex voice. Regrets taking her for granted. Regrets a lot of things. But not having his way with her tonight.

Thinks about what he's learned since Patricia left him. The information he acquired about David's whereabouts. It seems unbelievable. A former surgeon who performed work on Nigel Leonard was in contact with a friend of Garrets. A subordinate of Malice who was a spy in the other first reality. He knew Garret was still hunting David and so for a few vodkas and a promise to talk to Janice about letting him come home, the information was tossed to him. He lied, of course. He has no influence over the new Grand Ghost. He can try talking to her though. He has to.

Apparently David has had facial surgery. He's no longer hiding in his self proclaimed first reality. He's now in this first reality under a new name. And many open portals still exist and go undetected. David is somewhere in this city. David could bring an army in and no one in the government or in the Factory would notice. This information could be huge.

Garret steps out of the shower. Walks into the foyer and dries off with the towel that Patricia dropped. Her apple scent is still on it.

Thinks she was right for leaving him. She needs her own life. He's taken up too much of her time on this earth. Dragged her through the desolation of his vendetta. Of course she wanted revenge too, but at some point along the way she let it go. Epistemology melted like disfigured candles into the shapes of long thin fingers grasping at the possibility of hope. She was tired of him and his war. Wanted to live instead of balance on a tightrope between the past and death. But he can't let it go. He can only deceive himself now.

Garret has made his decision. He'll tell Janice what he knows so that the Factory can be prepared. The situation is beyond him as a single rouge now. And he has another motive. The information he has could mean his possible redemption in the Factory. Misses being home.

Garret clothes himself in his dirty attire. Takes one last look at Patricia. She's sleeping deeply. A poisoned apple. He kisses her on the top of her head, smells her hair. Leaves the apartment. Quietly closes the door.

Makes his way down the dark hall. Down the crumbling cement stairs. Enters the main corridor and walks toward the giant elaborate Grand Ghost area of the facility. Passes every memory of his first love, Terra.

Finds himself remembering the times they spent talking in corners about the situation with the war while holding callous hands and touching arms and feeling each other in the shadows behind rock protruding corridors and in old empty carpet, thin wall meeting rooms. They would make out on wooden countertop cabinetry and under long wide metal tables. Talk like generals and at some point, kiss. She'd let him feel and he would let her feel. Awkwardly in the beginning as first time teenagers do. Had no idea what they were doing but they figured it out. She taught him how to kiss and how to nibble and how to lick and how to stay in a certain spot while she moved her hips. He taught her about the male anatomy and how her flexibility could preform feats of magic. They learned what they liked and what they didn't like. Best friends and lovers. They respected each other and they told each other everything. Until they didn't.

When she became Grand Ghost after the brutal assassination of the old man and then the vote for leader, she had to keep secrets. It was the secrets that ended it for him. He should've known through her necessities. He understand the game Terra had to play but didn't like it. And that game wasn't about him. He was so stubborn and stupid. She would order him to do things that he thought were wrong but in the end made sense. She was playing chess while everyone else thought the game was checkers. That last order, though. "Don't go save your family, Garret. It's a trap." She was wrong, it wasn't a trap. The concentration camp was a diversion. David was going to launch his weapons and Terra stopped him. She was supposed to fall for the diversion like everyone else did. Like he did. Her family was all gone though. She had no one in that camp. It seemed like the people in the camp were expendable to her. Garret doesn't believe that anymore. Chess and checkers. The Leonards weren't expecting her. Oh, the regret.

Why did he stop trusting her? He loved her. She never stopped trusting him. Not even in the end. Not even when he called her every vulgarity imaginable. Not even when she was Muerte. He saw it in her emerald eye. She was counting on him to put her down. At least he did that. He does it every night when he falls asleep.

The giant staircase is like an osteal stone Aztec serpentine neck. Twists toward Garret's perspective in the dim ghostly afterlife night. Climbs each coatl step, softly and quietly like midnight winter and enters the giant double door chamber of the Grand Ghost.

Takes a long breath and a few steps inside the tenebrosity of the room. Notices glowing skulls. The darkness vanishes. Bright lights turn on to reveal ten skeletal mask with arms holding M27 infantry rifles all pointing in Garret's direction. Not surprised this would happen. Janice isn't stupid. He raises both hands, palms out and nods. One of the Ghosts walks to him. Crushes him hard across the temple with the butt of a rifle. Garret blacks out.

When he wakes up, his hands are cuffed with steel short chains to a stone wall in a chamber. Can't move from a sitting position upon the cold cement floor. He's naked. Knows this room. Was once his room. Bow Janice's. Looks up. She walks through the light denim blue of the moonlight toward him. Moves in and out of long toothy horrible shadows in front of the massive curl of ornate ivory skeletally carved window frames.

"So, Garret. Why would you come back? I mean, it's nice to see you in all your buffery but I hope realize, at least for now, the amount of shit you're in. It's way over your head."

Janice stands in front of him now. Waves a gun around while she talks. Wears a thin black slip and nothing else. Sable toenails. Bone white hairless legs. Greyscale tattoos of eyes and fangs of vampire mouths seem to suck her blood all the way up to the exposure of her bald crotch. Arms are ringed in black ink swirls. They're like two Halloween candy canes. And she isn't smiling. Mouth contorts in anger. Unsympathetic. Steps on his sculpture. Twists her weight with the ball of her foot.

"You know, I've been watching Patricia. There are cameras in her apartment and outside hall. I watched your corridor sex. Very hot, Garret. Except she was extremely drunk. So maybe not so hot. I don't think she was conscious. And so this kind of shit is why I let her back in and also why I'm going to kill you. She's authentically herself and you're just another piece of shit. You play people and you play with people. I don't like you. I never have. Do you have anything to say about your rape tonight, Garret?"

"You don't know how our relationship has worked for the past five..."

"It didn't work. Obviously. She fucking left you."

"Let me finish. We're both toxic for each other. We both know it and yet we still find ourselves crying into each others arms in that fucking marsh on that fucking night which is every night for me and every night for her. You don't get it, Janice. You weren't there. If you had been, Muerte would have ripped your head off too. That's why we keep coming back to each other. What you saw wasn't rape. Keep thinking that, though. Whatever gets you through the night, Janice."

"I know you're both still very damaged. There's hope for Patricia. I don't think there's any for you. So now, what's the real reason you've returned? because I don't believe that it's because you love her."

"Ok. I do love her but you're right. David's here. In Veridiction. There're unknown open portals that he could potentially bring an army through. He's also surgically altered his face. He could be in the Factory at this very moment and we wouldn't know. I think that the Factory needs this information more than I need vengeance. I can't prevent an army coming through by myself, so here I am. I'm being honest and forthcoming."

"You sly little Satan. This is valuable info. I'd say it's even worth your life. Thank you, Garret. We know about the portals. Dr Riese and I put a plan in motion to open some older gateways with the intention of luring David back in. I guess he took the bait. Every portal is heavily guarded. But I wonder how David slipped through?"

"Probably because the portals that you're guarding aren't the portals he's using. Seriously, he's an evil bastard but he's not a stupid evil bastard."

"Very true, Garret. Unlike you."

She looks down at Garret's crotch and then back up at him. Steps off his sculpture.

"I have a secret to tell you. You're going to love it."

Janice lifts her gun and presses it against Garrets forehead. The cuffs jingle. She grabs his penis. Makes a fist and begins stroking raw it until it hardens. Flicks the tip and strokes.

Garret feels less agitated with her. Is she going to rape him? Go down on him? Keep him in her room as a toy? He wouldn't put it past Janice to use him in such a way. The gun remains against his forehead as she continues stroking him. Rough. But what's the secret?

Janice places her face into Garret's crotch and licks his pre-ejaculate with her forked tongue. Continues to stroke him. Her face comes back up to meet his.

"I just wanted a taste to see if Patricia's flavour was still oozing on you. Alas. I'm disappointed. Terra is alive."

Garret's eyes widen for a moment. Confusion sets in.

"What did you say?"

"Terra Coal is alive."

Why would she tell him this? Why would she lie about something like this? How? How is she alive? They burnt her to ashes in the marsh with gasoline and flares. Janice wouldn't lie about this. It's too unbelievable to be a lie. Terra.

Janice rubs him harder and harder. Feels he's getting close to exploding. But Terra. Janice doesn't stop. Instinctively or because of the way she's looking at him, Garret tries to kiss her. She presses the gun harder into his forehead. Pushes him back. Shakes her head.

Garret looks directly at the dark eyes staring into him. Janice moves her face close to his. Black lipstick lips touch his mouth. Her pierced forked tongue touches the tip of his tongue. He taste's his own crotch on her mouth. Then he begins shuddering because her soft violent stroking hand is making him ejaculate. He moans and drenches her hand in his  gooey fluid.

Janice stops stroking. Grips him harder, like she's trying to squeeze every last drop out. Violently kisses him on the mouth before moving her face away. Smiles at him in a way that says she's won. Wonders when he can see his Terra. While still gripping his sculpture, she pulls the trigger and blows out the back of Garret's head into bits of skull and brain against the wall behind him.