Capeesh

"Oh, no..."

The portal is only a reflection of Janice upon the mirror door of the room and no longer the actions of her lover blasting the enemy horde in the control room of the Factory. Turns her face from the bygone exit. Tears rivulet like a grieving liquid soul. Crawls away from the portal. Stands. Spit screams like an osteal banshee. Punches a mirror on the wall. Shatters glass in the middle of an intricately carved coppery simulacra foliage frame. Slices knuckles. Watches the wound slowly turn sanguine. Bends over. Finds the edge of the masturbation bed with her vibrating grip. Lifts the frame. Tilts the bed upward and slams pink into the adjacent wall. Ornate frame mirrors smash and the reflective glass descends like broken morals. Crunches steps onto piles of rat skeletons upon a topography of pink hardwood which rot under the freshly destroyed bed frame mattress ceiling. Their little bones turn into dust at the step of Janice's boots like the language of faith speaking speechless at the sound of God's shadowing bodiless thunder. Mixes with the smell of her lover forever blasting her enemies. A last glance of gravity.

"Patricia..."

Collapses her knees into the bone piles and screams vulgarity again. Collects little skulls and crushes them in her shaky, bloody knuckle hands. A voice interrupts her rage like an uninvited vampire at the door of her crataegus emotions.

"Grand Ghost..."

"Give me a fucking moment! One fucking moment! Capeesh?!?"

The Ghost bows. Turns fluidly like an apparition. Opens the room's only door, hiding the mirror all who're left escaped through. Exits the room for Janice to release what cannot be released.

The Grand Ghost flexes her phallus war hammer grip. Climbs out of the pile of voodoo rat dust. Rages and swings the weapon into the centre of each ornate mirror frame on each pink wall in the room. Bits of reflection explode in slow motion. With each blow her hammer bounces back with shards accompanying horizontal gravity like descending crater glass remnants. Her rage is the exact moment of each world behind each sleeping portal. Desperation is the broken reflection of herself in every tiny piece watching her watch herself. Regret. Longing to go back for Patricia who's probably already dead. More tears rain from her face. A few disappear upon contact within the borderline of a certain broken piece. An eye watches beside her foot in the shard. Eyes open within every shard; near and far within each piece of glass. Howls at her loss and what it means to have finally found someone worth finding only to end in utter despair. She'll never see her again and the memory of Patricia will dim and fade until Patricia is all but a feeling that Janice once knew. Even that will fade away with the dust of the future upon this horrible moment. Thinks about giving up. Suicide. Feels a wind. Witnesses the room through heavy breaths. Notices the shards on the floor like eyes. They all blink at once. Malachite begins glowing from each bit of smashed mirror. Senses a hand on her shoulder.

Janice turns to scold whichever Ghost interrupts her moment of mourning and mind game mirage but no one's there. Not a soul. Not a body. Feels a breeze like fingernails run through her hair and tap the sweat of her forehead. Glances up at the heave and fissure mirror on the ceiling. Witnesses a shadow with green glowing eyes peer down through the fissure. Her vision follows the contour of an arm which bends with the ceiling and distorts in dark layers down the wall and across the floor to the shadow hand that rests on her shoulder. Incorporeal fingers begin to corporeally grip Janice's hair. All eyes widen at the feel of a shadow tugging on her.

The ceiling mirror blears away from the Grand Ghost's reflection and changes into a reflection of something else entirely. The dim eyes of the shadow flicker an image upon the mirror. Reveals a dream state video of Janice's decapitated head and spine wrapping through the spokes of a destroyed Ferris wheel in front of a bright black midnight horizon in the landscape emulsion hands of a monster who wears only blood and long black boots. Reminds her of Terra.

Behind the shadow, other shadows watch from a certain darkness. A darkness that Janice has never witnessed. It's her lifeless face that stares back through the broken mirror on each side of the crack. The emerald eyes of the unknown blink and the image disappears. Witnesses behind the absence of a reflection.

Janice is mesmerized and terrified all at once.

A black tentacle root falls from the ceiling mirror. Wraps around Janice's war hammer. Rips it from her hand up into the crack between the mirror. A shadow climbs out and jumps onto the floor, crushing more little rat bones to dust. Its arms are long and thin. Holds the contour of a deformed naked man. Presses itself against Janice. Wraps distorted arms around her. Licks Janice's chin and lips and nose. Speaks like something previous.

"My girl. Time for what time it is."

Jumps off toes with a power like flying. Janice is whipped through the air into the world of the long crack in the mirror. What was vertical in the masturbation room becomes a horizontal un-gravity in the shadow play.

They're flying through darkness with no light except for the shadow's eyes glowing malachite. Won't break contact with the gravity of Janice's witnessing.

The Grand Ghost stumbles words from her mouth. Hears them tumble into the descending and ascending echo of the void.

"What are you? Where the fuck are you taking me?"

Wind howls like laughter sobs.

"I don't really know what I am, my girl. I know I was left behind. Watched my better half vanish in front of me. Maybe I'm taking you back to where you died. Maybe you'll die again."

"That decapitated head wasn't me."

"Are you sure?"

They spin around and around and spread out like a spiral. Spin backward and forward. Up and down and in and out of everything around them that isn't there and never was and never will be.

"Take me back, I have to help my people."

"No, I don't think so. Their fate is your fate, though."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean if you were with them right now, you wouldn't share their fate."

"Fuck sakes. Straight fucking answer, please! I'm going to vomit!"

Janice lets her bowls go from both ends in the dizzying movement of twirling through unknown chaos. Control is completely gone. Her head aches like the crisp hours of winter covering bare feet.

"We're taking you to someone who might help you. Might not, my girl."

"Who? And where's my hammer?"

"In your hand."

Everything stops.

Janice feels the war hammer's long handle as if she's held it the whole time. Blinks. Breaths. Tastes stomach acid. The darkness is gone as if it was never there. Finds her balance and herself standing in front of a collapsed Ferris wheel in the remnants of a fair ground in the daylight of a recently discharged gun metal sky. A pair of destroyed black knee high boots lay on the ground in the shade of the decomposing structure beside the rump of a plastic carousel horse with the word "Judith" scratched into its hind.

Swallows the sick air. Crouches down like she's about to urinate. Touches one of the boots. Shakes her sweaty black hair. Stands back up. Smells that she's shit herself. Vomit chunks covers her face and hair and chest. Doesn't care in this moment.

Turns away from the Ferris wheel. Vomits again. Dry heaves. Groans like a hangover. Wants a warm bed and a blanket fort and Patricia. Steadies herself with her war hammer. Looks up. Witnesses flat distortions of skulls like tiny white archipelagos in a sea of heave and crack and dry friable lead bone concrete. There are at least a hundred discarded Ghost masks in her view of the fairground. A chain link fence folds the border of the devastation from the other devastation existing distantly below the menacing horizon. Grips her war hammer with both hands and spits a chunk. Bites her lip. She's in Veridiction, or what's left of it.

"Fuck me."

Janice swings her hammer onto her shoulder. Holds the handle in preparation with both hands. Doesn't trust this place. It will attack her eventually. Walks away from the Ferris wheel with uncomfortable steps. Comes across a headless skeleton wearing clothing similar to her's. Extremely similar to her's. knows this is what was.

"Just my style. It's me. Just my style."

Janice scoops up the almost weightless pile of bones and clothes. Heads for a stream or pond or river to wash the depths of her body. Smells worse than what she knows is her skeleton. For some unnatural reason, the clothing entombing the bones smell like rain and leaves, not the rot of anything. Wonders how long she's been dead in this world. Decapitated, too. Wonders about "nature." Wonders if anything is ever natural at all. How could it be? She's in a simulation. Maybe she is a simulation. A simulacra of the bones she carries. "Nature" in terms of the innate, doesn't seem to exist. Existence though? That word goosebumps and sends a shiver down her spine. Chills her soiled backside and frowns into the very marrow of her own osteal complexion.

Smells and finds a slow river which doesn't reek of grey water or decomposing gasses. Strips and wades into the cold wet world. Washes herself. Dives under. Feels free like something she can only call "natural." Swims underwater to the other side. Climbs out and up an embankment of rocks and dirt and Carib grass until she can witness what's beyond the embankment. Barefoot and naked. Watches.

The desolation of the city looms like a ransacked graveyard. In one direction exist structures like sepulchres and in the other, a mire which stretches the horizon like a crow flying hike. And in the distance, walking out of the streets of the ancient graveyard city, numerous people. Some are wearing skull masks. Are they ghosts? Ghosts? They're waiting to be if they fuck with her. A single Ghost of this world stops and witnesses her. Points and the others, not in unison but one at a time, turn their direction toward her. All of them.

Janice climbs back down the embankment. Swims freestyle quickly across the river as it takes her a small distance away from her clothing. Climbs out of the moving water. Runs to her phallus hammer and soiled pants and shirt. Discards the attire and picks up her skeleton. Shakes it out of the pants and shirt and jacket like bits of a brittle fossil. Clothes herself in her skeleton's attire. Keeps her own boots. Laces them on just as the Ghosts reveal themselves at the top of the embankment. They're all pointing guns at her. One of them shouts down and across the river.

"Hey, you. Do my eyes deceive me? I know you. Holy goddamn. But she killed you. And were you coming to see us? Well, if so, you've found us. Time to see the Grand Ghost, bitch. Capeesh?"

Janice nods. Swings her war hammer backward a few times. Lets it rest on her shoulder. Knows for certain she's in serious danger. Sighs.

"I'm not who you think I am. Capeesh?"