The way I planned it...

...you didn't leave, and I didn't know I'd been left behind until after the things that needed to came back together again.

The way I planned it, your daughter was just a figure of speech, a figment of imagination or maybe hope gone terribly wrong.

Because the way I planned it, the way I imagined it, you were broken down and sobbing while I looked on, wondering what had caused it, wondering how things can go wrong.

Because the way I planned it, she didn't live long enough to hold on to your attention.

The way I planned it didn't involve wanting anyone dead, just out of the way so I could have you back around again.

The way I planned it didn't require extra sympathy--just the absence of apathy so I could start feeling again the way I've been trying not to for so long.

Because the way I planned it, we were going to go for a walk down the path that connects minds together, the way we did in nicer weather than it is now, with all the rain.

Because the way I planned it, you were going to tell me I had a shot again, to make things go right this time, and I didn't have to accept the past fuck-ups, where I didn't put everything of myself into what I wanted to do.

The way I planned it, you and I went as far as we did in August, except closer, now, and--

The way I planned it, you touched me in ways you never had before, with your hands leading the way to exploration.

Because the way I planned it, your hands on my arms wasn't the only thing I had in mind, despite the fact that that was all I ever asked for when I knelt before you.

Because the way I planned it, I could have what I needed without getting greedy, and seconds of touch before a world that didn't understand what that touch meant was about as satisfying as walking out of a bank a few hundred dollars richer.

The way I planned it could have happened, except for the mistakes you made when I wasn't looking over your shoulder like I should have been.

The way I planned it might have happened, except I didn't know you soon enough, and now I'm just following in footsteps, tracking progress and wondering how long before you realize I want to be more than just a constant in your life.

Because the way I planned it, time doesn't end.

Because the way I planned it...well, maybe I'd begin to mend.

Word of the Day - Waver

I waver between the idea that things could be better, and between accepting that they aren't going to be. It's less than two weeks, now, though I couldn't tell you exactly how long; I've gotten farther away on my oscillating trip, shaken from the side of obsessive to merely dreading. Just waiting, hoping the here and now can hold me faster than the then and there will ever do.
I need to escape these memories--this flirting with future that you're in.

4/20

Happy holidays, to any and all who celebrate.

I'm not afraid of being jealous of your abilities to fight back.

I'm not afraid of being jealous of your abilities to forget.

I say I have a shitty memory, and then the details refuse to leave me alone. I'm caught.

There are a few upsides to life.

But more downsides.

Do you realize how many people are leaving?

It's going to hurt. It does hurt. I wish she had told me before she told us all. I'm getting better at acting, but in the moments of shock, it still shows through. The bitterness still finds life.

I made the mistake yesterday of knowing things. I don't like knowing things. Sometimes. Having it thrown in my face is - at the least - uncomfortable.

But I'm running away, this summer. To better and brighter things.

He asked me if I would live with him, this summer. Train with his memories.

I can't wait. I have no idea what I'll do.

I want--

I want...

Class starts in twenty-two minutes. I don't want to go. I want to stay here, amongst the books and spin fantastical tales. I want to be amazing.

What's the biggest problem with being alive?

...knowing it won't last.

The same problem for all good things, I suppose. I guess I'm free now, escaped.

I just hope it stays that way. I've walked out of reminders of the past. I'm going to sever connections with a world I don't belong in.

Just a creature of water.

Where are you?
Where are we?

Right here.
Right now.

I love you more, And that's why I will never abandon you again, no matter how bad you fuck up.

Sometimes words are more truth than you need.

It hurt when she took it off her favorite quotes page.

I still don't know why.

Ghost Image...6

You’ve been out of it too long.

Booker opened his eyes. He was lying flat on his back on the library floor, staring at the figurine made of smoke. The figurine had morphed from a snake creature into something more resembling a centaur, but still too animalistic—no human characteristics present in the way it presented itself. Just... Just itself, as itself.

Booker narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing here?” he demanded of the figurine.

Nothing, it said. There was a pause, a moment where its head—vaguely horse like, but also just not—cocked to the side and it regarded him. Booker looked away after a moment, unable to meet those not human eyes for too long. It made him feel dizzy, almost nauseous. It was sickening and exhilarating all at once.

“Why am I here?”

Do you want to be back there? The figurine asked. It was a valid question. Booker considered the woman with the bleeding breasts and the child’s voice, the man who had been in white, and the man who looked like a version of himself.

He shivered.

“No,” Booker said finally. “I guess not.”

So there you go, the figurine said. You didn’t want to be there anyway.

Booker might have argued, but it was then that Derick Holt opened his eyes, and Booker was a little too distracted by the fact that Holt was moving again to ponder the figurine’s words.

“Derick!”

It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected Holt to move again, ever. Or not to breathe again, ever. It was just that in usual circumstances, it took much, much longer to recover from accidental possession. It wasn’t like preplanned possession, where you had all the materials on had to cleanse yourself. Being dead—well, being dead took a lot of time, and effort.

It was just something you had to learn how to maintain.

“I’m so glad you’re alive,” Booker said. It sounded weird to stay, though, like he hadn’t expected it, when he knew he had.

“I am alive,” Holt said. His words were slurred, a little stilted and stiff. But they were still words, coming from his mouth in a coherent stream of thought. That was more than Booker could say for himself.

He wiped tears—when had he started crying?—out of his eyes and beamed at Derick Holt, his hands pulled up to his chest.

Derick Holt looked down and saw the blood all over his white shirt. Booker winced slightly. It was one thing to kill someone and have a chance t o switch their clothing before they woke up from a possession. It was another thing entirely for them to wake up mid-possession exorcising, and to see themselves drenched with more blood than they currently had in their bodies.

Booker hoped Holt wasn’t too scared by it, mentally. It would be a terrible waste of a librarian if such a sight made Holt queasy, and unable to work with books ever again. Murder wasn’t normally part of the job, after all!

Maybe he’d stick with it in some other capacity, if he did leave Founder’s.

Holt shook his head. “I’m not leaving Founders,” he said.

Booker flushed a little, feeling the warmth rise to his cheeks in response. It was obvious, he told himself. Obvious that Holt wouldn’t leave founders. It was just that he was nervous about losing—

“I’m not going anywhere,” Holt said. “You don’t have to worry.”

Booker grinned, and then stood up, trying to step over the smoke, to get out of it. The smoke was thick and heavy, pulled tightly around the area he was in. He put his hands up to feel the air, and it was solid. That wasn’t possible under the rules of math, of physics. There was magic in the founder’s library but it still obeyed things simple as physics, or as complex as basic algebra.

Or maybe it was the other way around—but still!—there needed to be someone paying attention to the above, Things were really starting to get out of control, on the upstairs level, after all.

“Why’d you kill me?” Holt asked Booker. His voice was mellow, soft. He tilted his head to the side. “I didn’t want to die. And you didn’t tell me. You didn’t—“ he paused, as though looking for the right word. “You didn’t ask,” Holt finally said.

“It was an Booker said. The smoke figurine cleared its throat. “Is,” Booker corrected himself. “It is an exorcism. I’m getting rid of this pesky thing for you so that you can go back to being alive again.

There was a long silent moment and then Holt shook his head and sighed. “No,” he said. “No, no.”

Booker wasn’t sure what he was saying no to, but it didn’t really matter, he supposed. It was just...no.

Holt stood up. “I’m not happy with you,” he said. His voice was still stilted, but his words were less slurred. “I’m not happy with you at all.”

“I—I’m sorry?” Booker said, but he was really asking it more than saying it, the lift at the end of the words the dead giveaway. “I didn’t mean—“ But that was ridiculous, because in order for him to be able to free Holt, there had to have been death, and Holt was the one who was being freed, so Holt had to die. It was just the way things worked. So why was he apologizing.

“I’m going to leave, I think,” Booker said. “I’m going to go downstairs and go to sleep. It’s been a long day.”

The smoke figurine snickered, hideously. Booker waves his hand at it. “You’re exorcized,” he said, yawning. “You can go away, now. I’ve done my work with you.” The smoke figurine fluttered about, flitted and then disappeared.

Holt was gone too, when Booker looked for him, but it was all for the best he supposed, and went towards the downstairs in order to find a place to sleep.

The downstairs was empty and open, filled with benches that were brown and chairs that were white, and the tables all had candles—fake ones—on them, sparkling all night long. Until there was one that died, and Booker thought of the first time he had ever take n a girl out on a date, and how the candle between them had flickered and flickered and then finally just died, without any sort of warning.

He wondered if it had been because of leaving the windows open, but he didn’t say anything, and eventually people brought him a new button anyway.

It was just how life worked—if attractive men wanted to see you in a swimsuit, they’d buy the sped. It was...

Booker shook his head, not entirely sure about that particular train of thought.

He must have had less sleep than he’d presumed, Booker considered. It was one thing—and entirely different—to just sit around and wait for something to happen.

It was another thing, altogether and weird, to make things happen to someone else.

Less than gratifying.

“You killed me,” Holt said. He was standing right beside Booker, as Booker had lain down on the futon that they kept in the basement of Founder’s. “You killed me,” Holt said again. “You killed me.” And again. “Killed me.”

Booker shook his head. “No,” he said. “I didn’t. You’re alive.”

“But you killed me,” Holt said, and he reached out his hands to put them around Booker’s neck, and then there was some squeezing involved while Booker struggled with it, trying to pull the wiry, thin fingers off his neck before it snapped into pieces. It was painful, so painful, but there was a moment when he managed to get a finger underneath Holt’s hands, and pry the grip off his throat.

“That’s going to bruise,” he said.

“There’s only two types of things in this world—“ Holt said. “The ones you can do and the ones you can’t.”

“You can’t do anything,” Booker muttered.

“Maybe I should just kill you then,” Holt said. He reached out again and this time put all his weight behind his strangling hands. It was impossible to breathe, and Booker clawed at the hands as long as he could, until he started to hear the sirens screaming in the background, and his eyes hurt from trying to do something about it, trying to see, to hear. It was impossible.

“You’re drowning,” someone informed him. “Just try not to breathe in, too much. It’ll still hurt the same, no matter what, just try not to breathe in, too much.”

“You’re drowning. Just try—“

“I’m drowning,” Booker growled. “I’m not breathing, for fuck’s sake.”

“—no matter what, just try not to breathe in—“

“Too much,” Booker finished.

The warning kept going.

He tried to sit up but it was close and cramped, and he couldn’t move. The he pushed upwards with all his strength and suddenly there was blinding light, so bright that it hurt his eyes to see it. Hurt his nose, even, because his nose started to run and Booker choked on the excess light. He closed his eyes to slits and tried to see beyond what there was to see. Tried to see what was hiding out there.

The pod he was sitting in had constricted around his legs and kept him from being able to move the way he wanted to. He couldn’t get his legs out. He pulled and pushed and they just stayed there.

“It’s not wise to keep moving,” a woman’s voice said. Booker looked over to see a woman in a wheelchair looking up at him.

“Oh?” he asked.

“It’s not wise to keep moving,” she said again. “It’s not going to help you. They won’t’ let you go and you might accidentally injure yourself.”

“I’ll be fine,” Booker growled.

The woman in the wheelchair laughed. “They all say that,” she said, but to herself. “Now, you’ve just drowned five hundred times. If you’ll hang on, I can get someone to let you out so you can remember what breathing air is like.”

Booker stared after her as she wheeled away.

Do you remember writing this to me? Because I'm trying to forget.

This is not to tell you anything. It is just a letter. A letter I'll send through the ether hoping that some day it will find you. So I'll write this, leave this on street corners I know you'll visit; spray paint it beneath overpasses which I'm sure, some day, you'll pass under. After you pass on.
Although you were my lover you are still my love. You are the one I left behind, the one whose face is missing in my dreams and fails to haunt my nightmares. I just wish you would appear, in some silent seconds. Gaze at me, we could share that look we used to have, we could love again. Our scars may have spread and our love may be dead but it doesn't matter anymore. My arms are dotted with reminders of our time together and your legs have the marks to prove that you were mine. This letter might even mean something to you if you remember the fire tasting the flesh of your palm and awaking from your stupor on my lap, you looked up and you said ?that was beautiful? you asked me to make you remember our last day together and I marked you like a calender: the day the boat left port. I marked you and marred you, you'll remember me I'm sure. and you'll forget my face as surely as yours will leave me some day.
This, old friend, is a letter to tell you all those things I failed to say. Those things I wished you knew, this is tell you that you were one of them. One of those people who changed me, you were the fifth person. The fifth and the most recent. The last. You made me who I am and you made me believe that the scam mattered. I never saw my son born and my sins were left unscorned by the people who should have known my mistakes and consoled me. I didn't know if he lived but you did, you knew his name and I didn't know his face. That was my son, or was she a daughter, either way I knew her name.
You knew me like the people did in ages past, you knew my soul; the one that I was supposed to bare to preachers and to priests. You knew me though, the way they didn't. There was no salvation in my future, now there isn't any salvation in my present. My presence in heaven is unwarranted and unwanted. God doesn't want me here and I don't want to be here either. This is not the afterlife I was promised, this is not my beautiful world. Not the place I wanted to spend the rest of my days, of all the days, in; this is place of clouds and happiness, not the place for me. I wanted fire, I wanted desire and what I have is prayer and post-mortem depression. I was working nine to five when I died, hoping for a little money. A little something to make our life easier. Working to make sure we had a life where that kid we wanted would be welcome.

Ghost Image...5

In the empty hallway, Booker lurched after the vanished set of men, but then stopped, wondering why he was bothering to try to follow them at all. He wasn’t going to do that! It was useless—pointless and stupid. Why would he follow the men who had tried to hurt him?

Shaking his head at his own stupidity, Booker turned around to walk out of the hall. The open door of one of the rooms beckoned. He paused, not sure if he should go in or not, but when he walked by, there was a bed that was bent at a curious angle, without sheets, in the corner facing an unbroken window, and a black belt lay on the floor, buckled.

It looked very much like the belt that had been around his doppelganger’s middle, that had held Not Booker’s arms in, to keep him from being able to wreck any specific havoc.

Booker shivered when he recalled how it had been to come face to face with himself. More so when he thought about how the men who had been following hadn’t seen him. No notice—not even that they had ignored him; their eyes their faces would have reflected that much. Just that he wasn’t there.

Booker turned away from the open room. He wandered a few steps more, drawn again to an open door, and the way the light played against the opposite wall from within. There were curtains over the window in this room, and bloodstains on the floor, but they looked old, and well-scrubbed. Booker wasn’t as revolted by them as he thought he should have been. They were just...part of the scenery.

He stopped long enough to poke his head into that room, and see that the opposite wall was almost completely destroyed, holes punched into it at all heights, and there was more blood work done on that wall, to the point where Booker thought he might lose the contents of his stomach. But nothing came up, he just dry heaved for a few moments, and then stopped looking at it.

The thing about this place, he decided, was that it was almost possible to get used to it. To think it was homey, or nearly. Acceptable. Not a loss. Not frightening.

It was just the people, he decided.

The people who weren’t quite right, and the ones who wrote on their ceilings.

Booker looked up, to see if this ceiling had been written on.

White glared down at him, except for one black smirch across the corner that read “gulible” in hard blocky writing. Booker wondered if it was a joke.

A mad joke, then, one played by mad men on other mad men.

He turned to go, realizing he’d walked right into the room, to explore. He hadn’t meant to do that.

“Leaving so soon?”

A women was in the doorway, her arms extended across, smirking at him. Her eyes weren’t staying still—one flicked from side to side like it was following someone pacing; the other jerked erratically. Booker blinked.

She might have been pretty otherwise, cleaned up, with makeup on and a bow in her thick curls to pull them back and make them slightly less unruly.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the woman said. She giggled, a high girlish sound that was entirely inappropriate to be coming from a woman who looked like she was in her forties. “You better not tell anyone,” she said to the doorframe, threateningly, t hen turned her sickly sweet smile back on Booker.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said, her voice jumping a few octaves upward. “Just don’t tell anyone I didn’t tell or I’ll get in trouble.” She simpered, and then her face changed again, hard and contorted. “You’re in my room.”

Booker followed the personality switches flawlessly, counting them with each new voice, posture and mannerism. He came to twenty four before they began repeating. An endless cycle. But she was almost coherent, like each one had a part to play, knew its lines, and was reciting along with the others, waiting for a cue to break out onto stage.

“You’re in my room,” the woman said.

“Who are you?” Booker asked. He didn’t expect a reply, really.

“Wolf,” the woman said. Her voice deepened with her name, and then the girlish voice came back, the high one that seemed like a six year old living in a grown woman’s body. “June,” the girlish voice said. “June Wolf.”

“June Wolf,” Booker echoed. She looked like she should be baying at the moon, with that mop of hair, he thought to himself. Or like she could be a wolf with how sharp her nose was—a touch too much so for classic beauty, at any rate. But she was mad, and wouldn’t be in any beauty contests anyway.

“You’re in my room,” the little girl voice of June Wolf said.

“No,” Booker said. “I was just leaving.”

“But I don’t want you to leave,” the little girl voice said. “I want to kill you,” the gruffer, almost manly voice added.

Booker sketched a smile. “All the more reason for me to go.”

He backed up, wondering where the Spanish Inquisition was now, when he really needed them to come to his rescue. Or even to his demise—it didn’t matter! As long as that woman got away from him, stopped talking to him, and staring at him like she was going to leech part of his soul out through his eyes—it was disturbing on a level that he wasn’t quite used to yet.

The window shattered inward.

Bruno wasn’t ready for it. He yelled in surprise.

The woman shrieked, her voice going high and wild.

There was a brief silence and then there was screaming all throughout the place again, the walls echoing with shouts. There were sounds of running feet, and a pair of men went by the door, but they were in white and one was beating on the other one.

The woman looked out the door and then back in, and leaned against the doorframe in an imitation of a sex icon model, her leg protruding from under the white split gown, but not nearly enough to be seductive. Only vaguely disturbing. Booker’s eyes couldn’t help but trace the line of her leg, from the knee showing down to her calves and marvel at how shapely they were. How—

She saw him looking and giggled again.

“Wanna touch?”

Booker shook his head.

“I want you to touch,” June Wolf said, her voice angry now, and she came forward, out of the doorway, stalking like she had murder on her mind. She was moving slowly, but with deliberate security to each step. Booker backed away, put a hand out to the window.

The shards of glass cut his palm.

He expected to wake up.

Nothing happened.

When he looked at his hand, there was blood across his palm, dripping down his forearm and seeping into his shirt sleeve.

“Shit,” he said.

“You’re going to do it with me,” June Wolf said. “I haven’t had a chance since they took me away from my home. He used to do it with me all the time.” She pulled at her white gown, attempting to rip it off. Booker looked away.

“Look at me!” she snarled. “Come here,” June Wolf said, extending a hand, and speaking softly, in a whisper. “Come touch me, darling. You want to. I want to feel you touch me.”

Booker shook his head. “No,” he managed, though it took him a few tries. “I—you’re not—I—no.”

June Wolf looked at him, and then started to laugh maniacally as she came forward, hiking up her white gown. “Then I’ll have to do it myself.” She looked away from Booker for a moment.

He followed her gaze to the belt on the floor and then looked up. She was grinning wickedly.

The bed was bent in the middle.

Booker froze.

June Wolf kept coming.

It took a moment of concentration, a moment of thinking what might happen if he didn’t move to make himself move. And then Booker was able to do so, able to walk backwards those few steps towards the imploded window, tripping through glass shards, and getting cut up on his hands and feet. He reached for the edge of the sill and a shard went right through his palm, coming up out the back and he screamed, but June Wolf was laughing as she lunged for him, and Booker couldn’t take it so he threw himself back trying to avoid her and fell—

The ground was not soft. It hurt when he hit, his back taking the brunt of the blow, and sending stubborn refusal to move through the rest of his body. His rib cage felt like it had cracked in two, and his spine didn’t feel like moving. Booker lay on the ground, staring up as June Wolf leaned out the window, but she didn’t look down. She looked out, instead, wildly from side to side like she expected him to still be on the same level as she was, running away. Her white gown had come completely off, and her breasts were dripping with red as she retracted back through the window.

Booker tried to move, tried to sit up, tried to breathe, but it hurt too much to do anything, so instead he lay there, and watched the tiny drops of crimson from up above as they slowly began to migrate down the walls of the building, slowing from a crawl to a frozen moment in time as they hardened and the sun’s rays flecked off them, sending sharp pains through Booker’s head until he thought it might explode.

From above he heard more yelling, and some high pitched shrieks that he assumed came from June Wolf. But there was nothing else to be said, nothing to be done.

Booker closed his eyes, and hoped that someone would come find him soon.

Trio.

Obedience is suicide.

Obey yourself. You'll live as if you couldn't die until you do.

Ghost Image...4

A new voice. A new person. Unless Romeo’s voice had changed so much in the past twenty seconds—but no. It was someone new, someone who limped into Booker’s field of vision.

“I think he’s ready to be taken in,” the new man said. He was skinny and dressed all in white, but the lab coat wavered between being a coat and an actual suit jacket, just in white. “Take him off,” the man in white said. “And I’ll take him up.”

Romeo Emerson cackled and then hit the edge of the board that Booker was bound to. He twisted in midair, turned until he was facing the ground and fell on his face, his arms pulled back behind him, so he didn’t actually fall on his face—just thought he was going to.

Booker stared at the ground, his torso sagging between where his wrists were still bound up and his ankles as well.

“All at once now,” the new man in white said.

Romeo Emerson kicked the edge of the board and Booker did fall flat on his face, then. He groaned, but Romeo and the man in white grabbed his heels and pulled him out from under the stretcher and hauled him to his feet. Romeo stared at him for a moment, then, and there was something odd in his eyes, something almost not mad.

Then he grinned.

“You’ll be dead before you know it,” Romeo said, and then kissed Booker, full on the mouth.

He tasted like sawdust and ash. Dead animals, and rotting meat. Booker gagged. Romeo Emerson slapped him across the face, still grinning. “I’ll see him on the East End,” he said, but to the walls, and Booker could only manage to stare as Romeo Emerson started skipping around the room in his white bindings, singing a high pitched, girlish tune about flowers and jars that turned bloody and violent just as the man in white dragged Booker out the door and shut it.

“Don’t mind Emerson,” the man in white said. “He’s a little different.”

“Only a little?” Booker muttered.

“Hard to get used to, I know,” the man in white said. “I’ll take care of you, now, though. You don’t belong down here, obviously.”

Obviously. Booker thought it was obvious too, himself, but he wasn’t sure how to say that without sounding self important, so he was silent instead. He followed the man in the white coat-jacket and kept his mouth shut, taking in the hallway as they marched down through it. The hall was white as well, and grey under the peeling paint, with huge chunks ripped out of the ceiling, but no crumbles on the floor. It was disturbing on a level that Booker hadn’t experienced before. The ground looked perfectly well kept and lived in. The ceiling, though...

The way it worked seemed to be that the lower floor was perfectly all right, but the higher one progressed, looking up the walls, the more age was hidden. There were ugly scratches across the walls up there, and almost all the white was gone, or spattered with rusty spots that Booker didn’t try to identify.

They stepped into a stairwell that was grey and cement everywhere, like a memory gone wrong, or hell frozen over. There was graffiti on the walls, just images that weren’t complete, and a painting of half a man.

“The rest of him is two floors up,” the man in white said when he saw Booker looking at it.

Booker made a sound like a strangled sob and jolted forward, jerked by an invisible tether of needing to be near some other human being. “I don’t need to see it, thanks,” he said.

“You wouldn’t be able to anyway,” the man in white said. “We’re not going two floors up.”

The stairwell screeched at them as they went up, as though the concrete blocks had minds of their own, because they were shifting under Booker’s feet, he was sure of it, and he wasn’t able to make them stop. It was the shifting sliding motion that made him slip against the man who was wearing white, and then the man who was wearing white turned on him with his eyes wide open and angry. There was something strange inside him, a desire that looked fierce and frightening and sexual all at once.

He wanted—

“I will kill you,” the man in white said, smiling gently. “If you do t hat again.”

Then they were walking up the stairs again, and the railing looked like it was coming closer, so Booker crowded against the opposite wall, trying to keep away from the man in white, and trying to keep from falling over the center guard rail because it kept snaking towards him, slithering like it was alive. He didn’t have the gumption to fight back.

“You’ll drown if you keep fighting like that,” the man in white said. “Ask anyone. They’ll tell you.”

“Yeah,” the walls agreed. “They’ll tell you.”

Booker gulped and drew himself in closer, just as he was seized by the man in white and dragged bodily up the final flight of stairs, and shoved through a door. The floors here were diseased, broken with holes that looked down on the lower floor. There hadn’t been holes in the ceiling from below.

Booker stepped over one, carefully, and stared down, watching in rapt fascination-morbid fascination in fact—as he saw himself, walking underneath, moving and shivering from side to side. He was dressed in white and his arms were tied to his sides with a black belt. Booker looked closer, kneeling—

Booker below looked up. His eyes were cold, bleak and dark.

Then he screamed, and Booker from above jumped back, away from the hole. There was a moment of silence then the whole building started to echo with riotous screaming. There were screams from everywhere.

“You started them!” the man in white said, angrily. He came up to Booker, and made as if to hit him, but then didn’t. “We’re going to fix you,” he said, instead. “If it’s the last thing we do. You’ll learn to behave.”

There was a terrible moment where Booker was being dragged through the air when he thought that he was going to land right in the hole—he passed over it though, and saw himself down below, still there, looking up, but as he watched, receding, he saw a bunch of men in black take his lower self out, tackling him to the ground as his lower self screamed like it was on fire.

“What are they doing?” Booker asked.

The man in white hit him across the face, and Booker went silent.

“You’re going to be taught a lesson for daring to fight back,” the man in white said.

Booker didn’t say anything.

“I said!” the man in white said, turning and hitting Booker again, “You’re going to be taught a lesson!”

“I didn’t!” Booker said.

The man in white grabbed the handle of a door and yanked. The door—already splintered—came apart in his hands so he was holding a length of wood, controlled by the door knob. Booker stared at it, and then backpedaled furiously, trying to get out of the way as the man in white came after him, screaming obscenities and trying to bash his skull in.

“You’re going to die for this!”

There was a moment like in the movies, when everything starts to move slowly, in slow motion, like the world is on pause, but someone hit fast forward anyway—like things were going, but not, at the same time. A contradiction, a paradox. Booker stopped being able to think when he saw himself dragging a host of men behind him up the stairs, arms tied to his sides.

Except that booker was in all white, and he was in his own jeans and shirt, dark-wash denim and black button up. It was trouble waiting to happen. Not-Booker started running, but it wasn’t clear if he’d been running before or if time had just gone back to normal speed. There were men behind him, attached by a black rope to his midsection, trying to pull him back, but Not-Booker tugged them forward with a strength that did not belong to Booker himself.

He stared, and the Not-Booker took it upon himself to fling his body right at the man in white, crashing into him and somehow getting the both of them tangled up in the ropes. The men behind Not-Booker started talking amongst themselves, calling out orders between gasps, and suddenly the man in white was being held hostage by them too while Not-Booker climbed slowly to his feet and turned.

Booker had collapsed to the ground, or maybe he’d been there all along—he wasn’t sure—and Not-Booker grinned and held out a hand, but when Booker went to take it, he noticed that there were missing fingers—two specifically. Someone had cut off the index finger and the pinkie of his not-self’s right hand. When Not-Booker turned the hand over, as though to assure Booker everything was okay, all Booker could see was the heavy scarring, extending from the tips of the fingers that were left up to where the sleeve fell down midway across the forearm.

He couldn’t put his hand out after that, just stared at himself, feeling like he was drained of energy altogether.

The men gathered up Not-Booker and the man in white and hustled them off, paying absolutely no heed to Booker.

They poked and prodded Not-Booker and screamed in their foreign languages at him until he moved away, reluctantly, from where he was standing, and started off down the hall. Booker lurched to his feet, but by the time he was heading after them, they were gone.