Everything spins. Stops. Spins. Red hexagon within the vision of the moment which lays in overcast matte light warm upon bare flesh thighs laying before her. Witnesses above the goosebump world toward a focus beyond. Old Sol breaths in the sky like consumption. Appears as a pale apparition. Blanks with her wide eye malachite blinks. But the world of sight isn't really incumbent in this moment. Closes her gravities. Heightens all else. Topography of scent blankets and warms. Earthy vanilla tang sweat. Musky sharp pants of fresh molecules made of the atom gaps between and within such distance. Can whiff beyond her senses in these sacred moments. Moments concatenate like bouncing echoes of a mind toward a mind. The love of her life.

And the world of touch registers all manner of rubs and grips and temperature. Mind travels until she thinks about how no one really touches anyone, not really. Not with such gaps between atoms. It's like everyone is a ghost if they also exist as the caesura in between the solid. Jane wonders if anything can be called "solid" based on these physical thoughts. What's an atom except mostly empty space? Maybe everything's more like a ghost than anything else. Maybe it's the electricity that fondles a mirage of the corporeal. But what's empty space except more particles beyond and below the realm of the atom. Maybe ghosts are as corporeal as Ghosts.

Maybe the world is a series of combinations with numbers and letters that unlock nothing except a lifelong series of such combinations. The symbolic as reality. Perhaps death is the final combination lock. Final. But is anything truly final? Feels like sometimes. Maybe that word, "death," is just one situation between many. Another portal that leads to another portal and so on. Maybe death is just another simulation.

A soft hoarse breeze from off the concrete lake touches Jane's bare feet. Whispers its language up her drippy backside and rivulet exposure. Shudders at the gently whimsical presence upon her nudity. Smiles.

Thinks of thoughts in terms of scent and touch and taste. What flavour lingers on her tongue feels like heavenly inner thighs wrapping around her head, like she's breathing through the peach fuzz smooth orifice of her lover, which she is with such skull mask lady liquid on her face. In and out, back and forth. Lips kissing lower lips. Tongue licking the drench of labium and clitoris and perineal raphe and bold anus.

Rist moans like storms pounding rock cliffs. Grips Jane's hair in strong fists. The mire girl's making juices lather as she burrows facial and fingers into Rist's crotch. Presses on her abdomen. Tastes the froth of the skull mask lady's Grafenberg.

Sweat slicks both as they've been at each other's bodies all afternoon. Ribs. Bellybuttons. Fingers. Toes. Heels. Palms. Breasts. Napes. Thighs. Calves. Every inch of all they physically are. Smell like each other. Drip each other's drips. Exist within the gaps of each other's atoms.

The mire girl and the skull mask lady are laying on the beach of the concrete lake making love on old faded rainbow blankets and soft silt sand surrounded by the blooming dark forest and the sounds of watery wind and imitations of branchy elm wide bowl oaks grey gangly ironwood. Suicide trees. Faces hidden within faces.

Rist moans again. Bursts and shudders. Opens her legs as wide as they will split. Continues to vehemently grip Jane's tangly hair.

"Oh, Jane! Jane! Jane! My Jane! My Jane!"

Jane feels the eruptions within Rist's body. Lips and cheeks and chin wash by warm fresh juices. Rist's chest and belly move up and down with each deep shuddering breath.

The pleasure storm passes in twitches and giggles. Rist slowly calms in the aftermath and lowers her legs, one twitch at a time. Unfastens her fingers from Jane's disheveled mane.

The mire girl rests her dripping cheeks upon the skull mask lady's belly. Pants breaths of accomplishment. At ease upon the sticky slick world of loving her Rist.

The skull mask lady runs fingers through Jane's messy wet blonde hair, over and over. Jane moves her arms up Rist's slick sides with her face still resting on her belly.

"I could fall asleep right here."

Rist takes a deep breath and rubs her big toe against Jane's backside.

"Me too, Jane. Easily."

"I love you skull mask lady."

"I love you, mire girl. My mire girl."

Jane squeezes Rist like the world is a prologue.

                         ~*~*~*~

Jane wakes up. Darkness. An expert about coming to life in darkness. A situation in time where she feels mostly welcome. The beauty of the tenebrous world compels her. Sings to her in chatters of dull silent shadow whispers. Trees sway crackles of dry leaf branch whip contemporary motions.

Sparse cloud moon blankets Rist's sleeping nudity in a dull dim otherworldly light. Peels her mire girl self from belly skin. Sits up, crisscross applesauce. Witnesses her own shadow upon Rist. Bends toward Rist's loins. Sniffs. Smiles at such musk and wants to taste but thinks better of waking her. Rist looks at ease; so beautiful. Natural. Vulnerable.

Sinks toes into decade ancient sand and stands. Yawns. Stretches skinny pale body. Rubs her month old perched tree silhouette raven tattoo upon her right forearm. Turns away from her lover to face the dark lake. Barefoot steps into the cool water of wonderful goosebumps. Holds her body as she walks deeper. Ankles. Calves. Thighs. Loins. Ribs. Breasts. Shoulders. Nose. Deeper. Submerges all of who she is. Jumps off spluge slick concrete bottom to a surface splash. Muck slips away from between toes. Swims breaststroke so as not to make too much noise. Sleeping lover should sleep for now. Might need her rest for when Jane returns.

They're on vacation. Her little twosome monarchy. Away from the Ghosts and the city. Away from all of its interpretations of truth cast out by the power of her reigning interpretation. Jane's interpretation. Her truth. The Grand Ghost's truth. The skull mask truth of what was before the likes of Pete and Janice. The Terra.

Jane swims away like an escaping athletic tradesman from the cardio art of cold blooded wood and cleat politics. Wants to trade away her square foot worries for a wild animal inclement instinct. The feeling of timelessness in her veins. A philosopher of bare feet and moonlight and little twig and branch marks on her torso. Wants Rist to notice such brush strokes upon her body when she returns. Heal like face in the sand washed away by the tide. And these thoughts remind her of the mire on that first night. Alone. A wild animal letting go of confusion and anxiety and just existing. Swimming. Running. Being. Dasein.

The mire girl switches precaution for swimming front crawl. Arms reach long with double stroke breaths and the propulsion of leg kicks. Hates bilateral. Hips torso spine neck shoulders balance full body motions. Like flying.

Reaches the other side of the lake. Touches mucky slab bottom. Climbs out. Crouches on the sand and the heave of a concrete section. Takes note at a tangle of distorted tree growth through the decimation of an old house. Reminds her of that place where she met the pure evil bone saw man and Judith. The false ending of her story. The prior aftermath. The house itself is like a dug up broken coffin with shreds of cloth and bits of bone and shark tooth glass decorating a yard of verbose chaos. Chunks of foundation. Warps of plastic siding. Brittle black shingles. Sun bleach bones haunt the dirt and pebble lawn. A cabin at the end or beginning of the lake, at the end and the beginning of the world.

Jane avoids the shark bone smile glass closer to what's left of the front windows. Strides gingerly up to the crooked doorway which's doorless. Mire girl eyes seem still a gift in the dark. Witnesses through the house toward the opposite doorway, either the back or front entrance. The far door exists. Corporeal. Closed. Oaken roman panel. But Jane can sense something else about it. A familiarity. The residue of a feeling of an event outside of this particular moment. A shadow of a shadow locked in a cavern of shadows which's locked in another cavern, and another. Like reading a compass made of many different positions upon a planet. A portal. Must be. Crouches to the floor. Witnesses up at the doorway. Mulls in terms of concepts upon the manifold and pretends that everything before this moment is a priori. Or she pretends to pretend.

'I thought I found all rabbit burrows in this world of mine. How did I miss this one? Because it's weak? Is there something wrong with it? With me? Are there more which I don't know about? Can't sense? Can I only feel what was and what isn't anymore? This wasn't a portal for long, I think. But how do I know? Oh, I know. And what does that mean? Are there portals that can show up at anytime, anywhere and then never again? What does that mean for each simulation? Who or what can make portals come and go like this? Maybe the system of portals is damaged and it's like glitches that happen when certain moments spark them. How do I know that? Michael might know. Michael. If anyone could ever find him and Judith again. And..."

Hears a whisper within a whisper. Turns her blonde drench to witness the shadows within the darkness of the house on her left side. An empty living room. Rubble of a gray brick fireplace.

A woman sits in a corner. Leans against a crumble plaster wall. Holds another woman who looks dead. Listens to the held woman's heart echo from some other reality. Not dead yet but dead around the here and now.

The woman leaning against the wall witnesses up at Jane. Tears hold an illusion of water within large green glowing eyes. A revenant.

"Help."

No. Not a revenant. A creature like herself. Jane nods. Stands and walks her nudity toward them.