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Darkness encompasses everything within everywhere. It's a world that seems void of any remnant of the other world's light. All except for Jane's eyes. They glow like Christmas without the red and gold. She can witness their dim shine upon her hands and the fading distance before and beyond her palms streaming back and forth beside her face. Her beautiful, terrifying eyes seem much brighter than before, like a guide has come to take her by the hand to maybe lead her down the back stairs into a Ballard style fender flesh cutting crashing no man's land.

The world has drastically changed since her body's performance at the Ghosts Holden street slaughter. The butchery left her broken and misplaced. But now, she feels herself, whatever that is. Whoever that is. No. She knows. She knows she's someone and not just "whoever." She's the girl from the mire. She's Jane. She's a vicious fighter. She's an acrobatic climber. She enjoys thinking in circles. She likes the rain plummeting and splashing in torrents upon her naked flesh. And she's falling in love with her best friend. She's someone. Jane doesn't need to think of herself as lost anymore. She doesn't need to perceive her life as that of an apparition. Rist's found her. She's not lost. But it seems Jane has something she must do. An ending to the epilogue.

She can feel the gray tent dress and the tightly torn roadside jeans upon her snow white flesh. No flip flops, though. Maybe she didn't make it past the first level after all.

Why is this attire present and not the boots that she now views somewhat differently? Why not the knee high shit kickers? They were a gift from Rist. They were special. And even more special now. She can picture herself wearing them and nothing else in front of the skull mask lady. Posing her bare pale bone skinny figure off to overcast eyes and letting Rist watch every bend and goosebump and slight fondling touch.

I need you, Rist. I need you so much. You're my someone.

The mire girl remembers extreme confusion and horrific pain upon slowly becoming conscious in the aftermath of the bloodbath. She also knows awareness in her last moment. This's the second time she's died in Rist's arms in as many days. But now, Jane knows that she isn't conscious. Her body's dead. But then how is she thinking? Maybe she's conscious in some other way. It's a Sorites paradox. She asks herself a question.

"Where am I?"

The next moment opens a hidden world to Jane. It appears like a nob being turned from zero to ten. Her Christmas eyes look back and forth and up and down. The angles of what're horizontal flow back and forth with the angles of what're also vertical. Ninety degrees and forty-five degrees and twenty-two and a half degrees become wooden distortions. It's breathing is written in a language of its own cardinal lunger domain. The dark forest's literally alive, like such beastly boughs are living body motions of twisting and bending and contorting torso shoulder hip elbow limbs. The trunks sway and bend and shudder and flake. It's as if the crooked woods have hearts and are all in all  breathing in and out at different times. Serpentine roots slither and curl and grasp like giant worms. The sounds of their movements upon the concrete ground and up the bark flayed boles is that of heavy furniture sliding across a wooden floor.

Jane' standing in the middle of a clearing with four trees tilt looming above her. Waving at her as they sway. The mire girl watches around for Rist but knows the skull mask lady isn't in this world. She just wishes for her to be.

Jane exits the clearing and enters the forest's thick, throbbing innards. She stumbles a few meters past the borderline until constricting layers fold like pieces of paper into strangling walls and becomes impossible to move. And then a word comes into her mind for some unknown reason.

"Motherfucker."

Why did she think to say that? Jane shrugs and pays no mind to what she can never begin to figure out.

Two branches curl around one another from above Jane's head and hoist their twiggy, leafless hands in front of Jane's face. They contort and fold and curve into a wooden Ghost mask, except this simulacra has fangs between its gapping teeth. It grins like the crack of a firewood chop raising hingeless chest lid and the advancing deformity opens a rind bone overly smiling orifice expression, like God's hand in Satan's mouth. The wooden countenance sways back and forth and the mask turns around, as if its intention's to place itself on Jane's face and eat her lips and cheeks in chunks. She punches squarely and its features explode into limature disintegration and sweepings. In the moment, the air becomes silence. The trees cease breathing. The forest takes notice of Jane and doesn't mind addressing her violent action against it in a gaze of knot opening eyelids of ocular prosthesis.

But it doesn't attack. It simply bends away into the likeness of a corridor, like it's creating a doorless path for her to follow. In this moment, she's made of straw and tin and cowardice and wears invisible silver shoes. She feels that there're many witches to drop water and old houses on. And one's somewhere around here.

Jane begins following a path that the mangling branches form. The trees and roots come undone in front of her and weave back together from behind her. She witnesses down at herself as she walks. Her bare feet have a hard and smooth cement surface to tread. She watches her toes and ankles and admires the parts of her body that she actually thinks are pretty. She's found that her own little feet are a turn on, maybe a fetish. Jane's perfectly happy to never wear shoes again. She enjoys how they look to her. A simple pleasure in her life. She also loves that Rist enjoys going barefoot, or so it seems that her lover does sometimes. Jane has never witnessed socks on Rist; shoes or naked feet. Is it wrong that Jane wants Rist's feet in her lap and then Rist's toes in her mouth? She doesn't care if it's right or wrong, she just wants them. And there're many parts of Rist that the mire girl wishes to also explore. Her breasts, her back, her legs, her rock solid curvy hips and certainly Rist's ass and every inch of that vicinity. Jane hasn't touched that part of her...girlfriend? Yes, her extremely bad ass and sexy girlfriend. Rist's definitely explored between Jane's legs, when they had that early night in the van. And from behind, the first time Rist kissed her. It felt wonderful. Now Jane regrets not giving herself to Rist. She won't let another moment like that end too soon again. If she ever finds her way out of wherever this climate exists, she's going to enjoy learning more about Rist. She wants to swim in her depths and taste her flavour. She wants to see herself through Rist's eyes as well as her own. She doesn't need her old memory for that. She wants Rist inside her and she wants her as deeply as the skull mask lady can go. Body and soul.

The trees make thunder cracks above like collapsing buildings of mortar and straw and sticks and offscouring femur.

A living wooden sky above her blonde head conceals the revenant stars as Jane gazes up. Every branch and twig moves as if it's an individual but also as if it's a part of a whole. They knot and loop and tighten and kink and loop again as Jane walks.

Where are you leading me? To a horror? To a place where I can heal?

A crackling voice fills her ears. Her own voice. The vicious crunching distortion of the haunting monster.

"To your destiny."

Fuck you. I hate you. Leave me alone.

"Aww, you should be thanking me, Jane. Show a little appreciation for your own body. Without me, you'd be dead. And I was hoping that you'd fucked her by now. I would've enjoyed that."

Jane becomes nauseous at the thought of that thing having it's way with Rist. It laughs in her ears and instantly the nausea is gone. She thinks that her body healed it away.

Go to hell abomination. Maybe I'm dead. Maybe I died a long time ago. So what? What do you care? What are you?

"I'm you. I said that I'm your body. The you that survived. The you who murdered almost all of your friends. The weapon. But you wouldn't remember that. You do remember the torture, though. Don't you? I do. That's what made me. They made me out of your suffering. You faded away and became like all the others within you. And so, I took over. I was all that was left. You were always my prison, Jane. It's been so nice to have complete control for a change."

Say my name! Who am I? What friends did I kill?

"These are not the right questions, Jane. Aren't you the least bit curious why Rist thinks you were shot in the back? Your one memory before the mire doesn't line up with her story. Why is that, Jane?"

Jane stops walking and sighs. The roots and branches also stop pretzeling. They wait for Jane.

She never said that I was tortured or turned into a weapon. She never said anything about me killing my friends. What's going on here? Can I even believe that one horrible memory?

"Do or don't. But keep in mind the memories Rist has shared with you of your death must now fall under the same doubt. Did either happen? Maybe both happened. Maybe they both took place at the same time. Imagine the possible contingencies floating around here like...ghosts."

Her body laughs viciously at that last word. It sounds like a landslide with people trapped in the fall.

Jane's brain lights up at this thought. Contingency. What if Rist's world isn't her world? What if her memory is accurate but Rist's memory is of a Jane who's long gone? A person who the mire girl is and never was?

"I see the wheels are turning. They always do with you. It's time for me to join the others within you. My part in your demise is now over. I won't be taking control again. That last parade of death satisfied every atom of me. Enjoy figuring out who you are, Jane."

It howls in her head as it fades into the murky depths of Jane's being. Like winter wolves croaking as if they were ice mouth toads.

Doubtful of the monster's speech within her ears, she smiles at the idea of her worst disability vanishing like water evaporating from blood. She's relieved. However, what's coming may have required the monster for her survival.

No. The last time it took me, I almost didn't come back. I'm better without it. I want to be in control of myself. It's an ugly thing and it makes me ugly. It makes me feel inhuman. Good riddance, you horrible fucking monster.

Jane continues upon her path without a second thought about the creature that was made of her unending and all encompassing suffering. She wants to let it go, for now.

The forest moves and directs her feet. She looks down to witness bricks. Jane's walking on callous bricks, feeling with every naked step the red and orange porous surface coupled with mortar lines. And then she witnesses a window under her toes. It doesn't feel like she's ascending. The bricks eventually turn into hard dry tar and after awhile, brick again.

While she's descending without feeling like she's dropping, Jane walks over a white sign with big red letters that are upside down. It has "slaughter house," written on it.

Is this it? Am I walking over the slaughter house? Was it ever what Rhie thought it was?

Jane and the forest womb pass the brick building as if it never mattered at all because it doesn't. And her bare feet feel the concrete again. Her toes touch cracks and granules and wald parings. Her ankles feel occasional archipelagos of stiff grass. The feeling arouses her and takes her thoughts away from the body that hates her and the destiny before her.

Before Jane can take a break from walking and explore such arousals, the path ends in another clearing. There's a square, one room house which seems shabbily built of silica substance and partially melt siding half crook and trick crushed by overlapping roots. She can see a window and a green light blinking through the murky fog beyond the glass pane. Though it's small, it feels dark and menacing to Jane. She also feels as though her memory has been here before. All topography silences as she notices what lays before her leading up to the house. Death. Skeletons litter the ground like ornaments and art projects. It's not a graveyard, it's a display, like manikins in a clothing department.

One fleshless body is sitting in a slanted, torn out driver seat and wears a yellow dress. The seatbelt holds its torso tightly, like it's crushing the already dead driver's chest and ribs. Daisies grow out of its sockets and mouth. She doesn't look peaceful at all. Jane get's the impression that this girl was going somewhere and ended on a "to be continued" with the last day of a calendar countdown moment.

Another bone ornament lays like it's in a grave, except the ground around is burnt like a black snow angel. The ash and dirt are manicured around its shoulders to give off an illusion that the body has folded wings. This corpse has bleached bones and is brighter than all of the others. It seems to shine in the darkness, like every limb is a moon reflecting a star.

The next skeleton is in pieces. It seems like just a discarded afterthought, like it didn't matter at all. Except for the skull. It's placed in such a way as to be watching the mess that was its body. Jane notices a pattern to the littered bones. A tiny labyrinth takes shape in her mind. Intricate and utterly useless, since there's no visible exit.

And finally, closer to the house, a corpse lays on what was its stomach. It still has its hair. Blonde. Pieces of its shoulders and spine are exploded. It looks like it's stretching its arm out for something in front of it. There's nothing there to grasp. It seems like there never was. Nothing that would have mattered in the end. This skeleton saddens Jane the most. It looks like it still had hope when it was destroyed. She notices the dead, partially feathered ravens protruding from its broken ribs. She counts three in total. Jane knows this person wanted to fly. This person might have been her.

She kneels next to the raven girl and takes a feather from the broken torso. Jane places it in her hair and wishes that she could leave something in return. In a lost memory, a prior life, this girl must have been a force to be reckoned with.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to die like you. I'm not someone who can be discarded for nothing so easily. Because if you're laying in this place, I think your end was nothing more than a passing whim upon the story of your life."

Jane hears a ticking creak and a bang. She looks up at the wretched door to the house. The ancient entrance has opened like an unlatched gate in the wind. It bangs against the house over and over. Her body is still her guardian, but she has control. She can walk through. She knows now that she's the only one who can gain admittance through this way. The emotion of a memory knows that this door was intended for her to go through. Jane gets up and walks over to the entrance. Her eyes fixate insatiably on the innards of the house as she enters. Without looking back, her hand reaches for the brass knob handle and she closes the door behind her, closing the entrance for anyone else.

The raven girl looks up from her death as the door disappears.