WTWCS

Alice truly didn't mean to procrastinate sleep.

For an adult— which physically, she was, although her mind may lac the qualifications, it's recommended they have 7 or so hours of sleep. Never over 9, because it bodes the risk of sleep drunkenness, and never any less than the aforementioned 7, because a plethora of health problems could arise.

And she truly didn't mean to. Not really. She felt the exhaustion, heavy in her bones like the settling of a malt liquor, and with the force of having your neck snapped back from a weighted blanket being tossed over your head. Which, mind you, did not assist her in sleeping. It was warm and suffocating but never alluring enough.

It wasn't insomnia or somniophobia that kept her up. It was something else- a true detest for rest. She refuted it most of the time, pulling all nighters and sleeping through the day when her weary body finally crashed because it didn't have the necessary energy supply to keep going.

Alice had done so easily all throughout high school. Going two or three nights in a row with no sleep- no naps, no caffeine. Nothing, beside gas station food stock and grit, and then proceeded to do survive an entire 8 hours of school and a following 6 hour work kitchen job shift. But in her mid-twenties, the fiscal responsibility to let your body be governed by a job and expectations was an exhaustion in itself.

But alas, still, she refused.

One night, she'd gone to sleep early after waking up at 4pm with a headache and a strange twist of irritation in her teeth that beckoned her to scream at everyone. Alice lay there supine, popping melatonin until it left a bitter taste of cough medicine on the back of her tongue, soft music and the whirring of an AC filling the emptiness surrounding her bed plush with blankets and pillows in a bid to seduce her mind to relax.

And she did it. She slept.

A sleep filled with dreams of an actress-- one she couldn't remember, like the answer to a math problem on the tip of your tongue. She hadn't had that particular actress on her mind- yet she remained there, stagnant with soft smiles that blurred, and physical aesthetics that morphed like watercolour on a page.

Because, as she researched as soon as the afternoon had summoned her, a persons subconscious cannot create faces you do not know already. And even still, whether family or a childhood friend, one's sleeping mind will never fully comprehend and recover features lost to the black space of your eyelids.

But these dreams— she huffed about every night and screwed her eyes tight enough until there were stars made of deepest brown eyes and a dimpled smile- weren't one her REM brain made. No. It was in that space before you were asleep, but were nearly unconscious. Liminal dreaming, she had discovered among her google symptoms, was the term. Straddling the waking world and dream. Where you can feel the fabric of your sheets bundled by your feet, and the warmth of your mattress well worn from years of tossing and turning, but where you could reach into your creativity. A world on the edge of your mind, a swirling kaleidoscope where your meandering consciousness mixes memory and thought with visionary imagery.

Except, it wasn't that.

It wasn't a recollection of your day combined with fantasies like a floating briefcase next to yourself grocery shopping.

Because in Alice's new dream world— she existed. Jenna. With soft black hair, pale skin, the exact amount of freckles and two dimples; one on the right side of her cheek and one nestled within the divot of her chin she'd seen blown up onto 120 foot screens.

A famous actress, that spoke back with vivacity and alertness. She soon learned, that Jenna was asleep during these moments. If she fell asleep, fully, before Jenna was, she wouldn't see her. But in that liminal space- like the grey in a monochrome scheme, or the cold-blooded sensation that seeps through you between living and dead, Jenna existed. And it had become the most painful, and comforting experience in Alice's entire life.

The first time Alice meets her, is after a particularly grim week. Her girlfriend had broken up with her the day after a sexual assault, where her supposed friends had walked away and left her alone to rot in her own body. The memory lingers still like a leaded weight in the pit of her stomach, a dreadful anchor in every happy moment.

Her cheeks weren't strained with tears. She couldn't feel anything beyond empty. The floor was littered with empty liquor cans that were growing stale, and the ashtray beside the bed was toppling with every little tap. Red-rimmed eyes move from the TV screen where Pretty Little Liars is playing--a comfort show that carries memories of summer slurpees and laughter-- to the phone on her thigh thats vibrating.

The contact photo is her ex, glaring. June never did smile, especially if you pointed out the liveliness of her namesake. She answers with a heavy sigh, borne on the edge of funeral depression.

"Hey..."

"Hi."

There's a silence that drags between them. Alice's thumb runs along the grooves of the TV remote, desperately wanting to escape into the fictional world again.

"How are you?"

"I'm fine."

Fine. What a mockery of the English language.

"You're not. I know you--"

Alice's eyes screw tight, her jaw working to stop the anger that gathers on the back of her tongue. "--Im really okay, June. I just ordered food." The food was among the liquor minefield on the ground, a cold burger and soggy onion rings. "Thank you for calling, though."

There's something in the silence that they both recognize as a necessity. June had to call. Because the guilt was too much for her poor shoulders to carry. Alice's fingers dig into the plastic shell on her phone, knuckles white with restraint. And she has to restrain, because if she spoke too loudly June would call her abusive.

"You can come over, if you want."

Alice releases her grip on the remote, rolling the thought around in her mind. "Do you want me to?"

June's voice is noticeably forced-- tight and annoyed like she usually got when the other girl needed reassurance. "If you want to you can." And she evades the need for reassurance perfectly as always, "I can call you an Uber. You shouldn't drive drunk."

"Im not drunk. I only had three seltzers."

"That's three too many. Call me when you're here."

The call ends. Alice doesn't even feel the urge to say I love you like she might have a month ago, though it was never reciprocated in their two year stint. Because all you can feel, when you're exhausted and broken, is resentment to the thing that scattered your pieces.

She wears the same clothes she was assaulted in, because she hasn't been able to change, or to even touch her own skin or look in the mirror. She sneaks out through the window, and has to clamour over the fence because her mother would scream if she were caught-- it's too late to be out (it's nine) and she wasn't supposed to sneak out last night, either, and maybe if she hadn't maybe she wouldn't have been assaulted.

Her feet land on the pavement. Her ankles ache with the force at which she lands. It's a torturous cycle. Sneaking out of a window with a broken bug screen, clambering out onto the road, and climbing inside a waiting car. The mans dark eyes meet hers-- and she can't even beg like she usually does in her mind, quietly and desperately, that she arrives safely. Alice wouldn't be upset if he killed her.

He doesn't. Whatever God reigned here was not a benevolent one.

The drive is longer than usual. Maybe because she doesn't have her music playing, but there's a symphony of heartache following each and every turn of the tires. It crescendos when she sees June-- magnificently devoid of emotion in the threshold of the apartment.

"Can I have a hug?" Alice asks, because maybe having the touch of someone relatively good'll help.

It doesn't, of course.

It doesn't assuage the ache, or smash the pieces back together like she hopes it will. Because this is just another devil in sheep's clothing-- or a devil in shitty Shein clothes-- and this is the devil's house. A small apartment with another bed she won't sleep in.  Its covered in crumbs and makeup and certain stains that weren't there before, and there's plates and pots all around the limited counter space covered in mold which is far less charming when they're not under the guise of a happy relationship stretched too thin and vaguely rose coloured.

Alice blinks at the dead roses-- also rotting-- she had bought six months earlier. There are teddy bears she had seen on store shelves and had picked especially for June, to give to her when she'd drive the hour to pick her up from work at midnight every week. Bears, flowers and time, all stolen like her ability to consent.

When she thinks about it, as she carefully maneuvers the minefield of charging wires and dirt, June wasn't even the one that paid for the hotel and dinner on Alice's 20th birthday.

What a mythic bitch.

"I have work early, but you can stay as long as you like." June says, moving the pile of trash from her bed to the never-before-seen floor.

"Yeah, thanks." Alice mumbles, arms crossed over her chest. It's more of a defence mechanism then an act of disrespect, though disrespecting the woman who broke her heart wouldn't be the worst idea. Not like she could trash the crack den she was in. "I'm just gonna get cleaned up."

The bathroom smells like cigarettes. A habit that Alice tried to quit but June forced her to pick up again once-- you know i'm going to be so stressed coming back from my trip and need a pack waiting. You can quit any other time, don't be selfish.

But at least June hadn't trashed her toothbrush and conditioner after her very dramatic monologue--- your assault was cheating whichever way you spin it. Alice is actually shocked that June has any kind of hygiene products, given how she often looked greasy.

But at least her toothbrush was there. That was something familiar in the ruins. Like seeing mount Vesuvius right before it decimated all of Pompeii. Familiar, and horrifyingly so.

She goes through the motions, and no-- I don't need a change of clothes. Yes, I know it gets hot in the night. And then they're settled down for the night, on a mattress that feels like two sheets of paper thrown over a rock, and with June on the absolute knifes edge of the mattress, back faced toward her not for the first time. Had this girl ever wanted her?

Probably not. Because in a weeks time, June would be with someone new and unburdened by trauma and they wouldn't see each other ever again.

Alice's eyes are drawn to the blue and green LED globe that make ripples on the ceiling like water, dancing and dancing the same stupid little dance.

She's stared up at this popcorn ceiling-- at these lights-- so many fucking times and never under any good circumstance. Either her face looked weird when she was thinking, or she didn't want to go out enough, or she was being pressured into sex. All under these stupid fucking lights. And now she has to spend the night next to the body of someone she feels unsafe around, with no Pretty Little Liars to pull her stream of conciousness.

Because, what? What could possibly make a nightmare worse. Unless the girl beside her suddenly unzipped her human suit and revealed to be a monster with a thousand razors for teeth, and then told her she should get her teeth filed down because they were too long.

It always skeeved Alice out when demons were shitty in just the same way humans were.

Her eyes drift shut out of boredom, to the sound of the fan and the even breathing beside her. Alice's mind searches for something to latch onto-- something pleasant and safe. Something better than this stomach churning, dull and uncomfortable reality.

And then... there's Jenna-- in a field that belongs as the landscape to a favourable childhood family trip. She's sitting in the grass, her face is bleary like trying to see beneath the cover of wet eyelashes, and her body isn't a physical thing. It's made of waves, that drag the colour of her to and fro. She sits in front of a sunrise, seemingly doing nothing with a flimsy basis in reality, but too important of a nothing to interrupt.

And she knows it's Jenna-- her mind supplies it for her. And it's weird. Because she feels the harshness of the mattress against her thigh, but she can see the indentations on the earth from where she must be walking because she's getting closer to the watercolour girl. The fan is whooshing in her ear, but there's the chirping of birds just beneath the veil of it. It smells like petrichor, the sun lovingly lapping at pale skin and its lush with life. Nothing hurts. The scars and bruises accumulated over so long aren't here, when she looks down to check that she's real. Only the smattering of freckles and tattoos.

Its home.And its comfort.

The feeling congeals in her stomach with the weight of unsettlement that appeared yesterday. There are apologies pushing at the backs of her teeth; one for disturbing the other woman's peace, another for being an unwanted guest and a third for not finding her sooner.

"Are... am I... is this death?"

The other woman's head raises from where she's looking at a blank canvas that hadn't been there a moment earlier-- and even with the mash of colours and textures, there's something curving in the visage. A smile, Alice thinks.

"Do you want it to be?"

Her voice-- oh, it's like spiced honey. Illustrious and raspy. Alice feels the apples of her cheeks flush with the desire to take and taste and keep.

"I don't wan't... anything." She says.

"No? Well, thats a shame." Jenna points to the trees. "I made you coffee."

Everything shifts, like the world on its axis, or a polaroid camera snapping between film. The field is gone, and the two are now seated in a cafe that Alice recognizes as the one near her dad's house. A sweet, homely little thing.

She inhales heavily. It's smoky and has that old house smell-- from walls well worn  and covered in paintings, to the chairs uneven with the shotty floor installation. It's grounding. That's something she's been lacking.

Alice relaxes into the chair, looking around her.

Mechanical whirring of the coffee blender, brewing a fresh pot for the lunch rush. The soft glaze of the walnut table marred by mug rings and crumbs from previous patrons. The current patrons, idle in conversation. A woman sits to Alice's left with a short, spiky haircut. It's a full orange, with the quaf above her slim-rimmed spectacles a vibrant blue. The largest cappuccino sits in front of her. To Alice's right, an older gentleman with a fleece and jeans. He's currently fiddling with the napkin dispenser to bring his wife one to clean her fingers from the sweat of a microwaved-warm muffin.

Alice blinks.

Jenna spears a potato with the tongue of her fork, looking over the spudded deliciousness at the confused blonde. Waiting, patiently. Quietly holding space for her without judgement. At the apex of a breath, she let her shoulders relax, and for half a second, rested. For half a second, it was peaceful.

"Where are we?" She asks.

Jenna shrugs, spearing another potato that looks coated in the glaze her mom uses for roasted veggies. "This is your dream. We're wherever your sleepy mind takes you."

Alice nods. And then seemingly remembering herself, halfway through she shakes her head.

"And you're here why?"

Jenna places a hand to her chest-- a mix of physical tanned skin and blurry motions like the surface of a lake, feigning hurt. "You wound me." Her hand falls back to the table, drumming something that ,matches the tempo of Alice's heart beats. "I don't know. Ive been stuck here for a long time, I think at least. There's no clocks in this place."

Alice was deeply aware of her hand. Her left hand rested on the table, next to her coffee cup, fingers languid in a gentle arch. It would be nothing to slip her own hand into that gap between palm and table, and then they wouldn't just be having coffee, they'd be having coffee and holding hands , which was a thought so fucking lame Alice wanted to tear it from her eyes. Caught in a gust of beautiful illusion, she reached out with her own right hand, and wrapped her fingers around... air.

Alice blinks down at their hands, separated by more TV static, she doesn't have much time to think about it, or ask about the sympathetic smile Jenna sports because  the patrons within are suddenly shrouded in a darkness that seems to not bother any of these watercolored imaginieries-- Jenna is still happily eating, even around her pity.

Alice forces her body up with much effort, feeling weighed down by something other worldly and stumbles across the room to press her hands to something real—- the cool glass of the window. A large, dark smog is encroaching, swallowing the world into its sundering depths.

"What the fuck is that?"

"Your unconsciousness. You're about to fall asleep." Jenna says.

Alice whirls around-- but it's slow and sluggish. Her body feels drugged. "Im not already?"

"Nope. Not really, at least. Not fully."

For some reason, Alice is swamped with nerves as she asks, "Will I see you again?"

Jenna nods, raising her fork in salute. "As long as you need me."

And with that, Alice falls asleep for the first time in a long time--- content.

Awakens alone in a sorry-excuse for a bed covered with crumbs, and muses idly about how when she gets home she's throwing away those wet onion rings heaped on her own bedroom carpet.

————

Weeks pass where Alice slowly begins to find her missing pieces to put them back together. Scattered within the very things she refused to face, starting with the starts with the clothes she was assaulted in-- burns them in the backyard fire pit.

She cries, then, for the first time. When she decides to block those friends that had abandoned her that fateful night, she cries even more. Alice stops talking to June and... doesn't cry, because the grit of crumbs beneath her nails the last morning she woke up in her bed was vile enough to push past the grief.

Alice's hair has been lobbed off to about shoulder length, too, for the first time in three years, freshly highlighted and deep conditioned. The woman that touches her is the first stranger she interacts with in months— and Alice cries in the swivel chair while the woman offers tentative smiles and you don't need her, I bet she was ugly anyway.

Alice gets a little job-- something to keep her busy but doesn't pressure the healing process. Started up at the gym-- something to keep her active to offset the early arthritis rotting in bed for weeks was likely causing. Started seeing a therapist, which was expensive, but she got the reassurance and pride she looked for in June within the bright-smiled professional.

Best of all, Alice sets a sleep schedule-- soft, to start with. Whenever she's tired she sleeps, which is beneficial to start even if it's regular. It's November now., as she switches off the Christmas tree in her bedroom and closes the blinds that show softly falling snowflakes. She thinks of her mum, who's been much kinder lately, and the holidays. It's always a pleasant time in her family, and they've been watching home videos from when Alice and her siblings were much younger. It's been cathartic to see that she's been loved for longer then she'd been alive. That love will be immortalized long after she's gone, too.

The dreams have changed with the seasons. They've left the coffee shop, with a whirling tilted axis, to end up in Alice's high school theatre, just the pair foregrounded by the incandescent lamps. It's dark, as always, in this little ampitheater built for two. Two leather recliners they never sit on facing each other, in lieu of sitting on the floor or dancing around the room in a fit of ethereal enchantment.

Alice had mastered in her few times doing this, how to change the setting.

It was the rule of three's in the dream world.

The same three places. The huge field filled with the thick brush of tall grass, the dark theatre or the tundra of a castle made of a dark blue ice. You could, if you tried hard enough, feel it beneath your palms. The tickle of blades, or the burning bite of something frozen. And over time, Jenna's face had become more recognizable. Something she could find even in the liminal space of her mind. In one of the same three outfits. Either the outfit she wore in a film Alice had belligerently pressed 'not interested' in a thousand times on social media to stave away the sting of pain, or in something basic and simple. Because that way, in all black, she could focus on the slightest gleam of light in dark eyes.

Tonight was no different, as she flickered off the LED's (always red, never blue or green) behind her bed to snuggle up in the thick comforter. She balled the blanket to her chin, praying she wouldn't have to shift around- because  in that distorted the picture of them together- and quickly casted aside her wayward worries and thoughts so she wouldn't be distracted. And she's transported, always in pale-washed jeans and a orange sweater, opening her eyes to blink up at the ceiling, laying on the floor of the theatre. Jenna's already waiting, giving Alice an appraising once-over.

"I like your haircut."

Alice hums, glancing down to check her own hair length then back to Jenna. "Thanks."

Her dark eyes are alight, looking Alice from head to toe with something soft, something kind.

Alice pushes herself up into a sitting position, asking, "So, how do you figure this all works?" She gestures around mindlessly, desperately trying to hide beneath the beaming sun that is Jenna's attention.

She kindly accepts the bait, "As I've always said-- it's your head. What do you think?"

Alice bites her lip, blushing slightly in the low light.

"I was playing this game-- Assasins creed Valhalla, in case you were wondering."

Jenna snickers. When she looks at her like that, she doesn't need to say nerd.

"And I had to kill all these guards to get to this kinda king guy. I was meant to rescue him but he was dead, like, slumped over rotting in his throne with flies and buckets of something gellatenous near him kinda dead. And a woman was there and I had all these dialogue prompts and one was to ask her oh were you just speaking to him a few minutes ago? And she says yeah and I ask how and she tells me she speaks to him and gets these prompted dialogue lines in her head of what he was saying, and hears it in his voice. And I think... maybe that's how this works. Sure, if it was some crazy woman with a corpse my character would be like okay weird but it was more than that. So... I don't know. Maybe that's how."

Jenna blinks a couple times, though her expression didn't give anything away. Her lips twitch slightly in what Alice hopes is amusement.

"Thats... truly evocative, Alice."

"I... know you-- like, the real, hyper famous one. Well, I don't-- but I've commented on your posts and DM'd you but you never see them... because this you and that you aren't.." Alice's fists ball with the effort of trying to get out a cohesive thought. Her jaw moves-- blue and green lights and accusations drift across the forefront of her mind, only to be snuffed out by a soft smile and a slow, unassuming nod.

"You're not... real." And there's a hope underlying her words-- a quiet plea. A reassurance, that she isn't going completely postal in a time she thinks she's doing good for once.

Jenna just shrugs her shoulders, head canting to the side.

"I like the taste of stale chips better than a freshly opened bag." Jenna takes a deep breath, and speaks her next sentences slowly, like she's carefully considering every word. "I make my room as cold as possible and leave only my hands out of the blankets so they get freezing and I can soothe my head with it. I like to tuck my weight onto my arm when I'm sleeping, and I like to stick my head out of windows when I'm on an upper floor of a building or out of a car window. These are all very basic things about me, but all things that make me human."

Alice pauses. Her eyes flicking over the other girl's body. Theres not a single hair different on this version of Jenna then the one she sees on screen. Not even a mind as twisted and ruined as hers could create such a perfect replica... and even so, it was her psyche, anyway--- she was the one imagining this. What would it matter if she indulged for a moment?

Her fingertips draw mindless patterns on the speckled synthetic flooring. She read somewhere, that if you think of any surface your tongue knows exactly what the texture feels like. Her fingers must be the same in this real... just if there's-- yes! The hole her friend made with a pair of scissors in ninth grade.

"I don't watch anything with you in it, and also have a deep aversion to seeing your name or face pop up on my social media. So, I kinda muted your name and blocked you on everything."

Jenna laughs. Its full, tinkering and fills Alice's chest until she can hardly breathe around the fullness of it. Her own lips curve in response.

"Thats fair. I hate social media. It's all so surface level."

Alice groans, "Don't make this a cliche where you rather be reading."

"God, no. I prefer being asleep than anything else."

"You always are waiting when I get here. Is it a timezone thing? You live in New York."

"Stalker."

"A-lister!"

They're both smiling so much if another third party appeared, they'd think them pathological. But then they would be too. And like that, the dark fog swallows them whole.

———

Alice has been more tired lately. The depression comes and goes, but the PTSD clings to the mind like wet clothes to the skin. You can't get them off without exhausting yourself trying.

It's unbearably lonely, having no friends. None that are close, anyway. Alice doesn't quite remember how to socialize, and usually ends up forcing an awkward smile and shifting her eyes on the off chance someone does try and speak to her. The people she does reach out to, don't answer, or read her messages and don't reply. It's a rotisserie of punishment, and it would probably be a lot easier to unwind herself enough to use the rope to hang by. But then that's not healing.

The holidays have come and gone-- and even her therapist can't do much but be an ear for $400 she can't afford to hand away, because she learned all the skills-- all the coping mechanisms when she was a fucked up teenager. So, really, this is just life now. And it's awful. And all she can do, is cry. She misses not feeling anything-- because trying to get clear air in your lungs when they're being constantly filled with your own tears is so uncomfortable.

She tucks the blankets to her face tonight, sticky with emotion and eyes swollen. Calls out to Jenna, desperately, in the darkened theatre. She appears after a bit, a smile in her eyes as she shuts the book she's reading. She reads a lot, contradictory to her claim of not being a cliche.

"Hi! I've been wondering when you'd show up!" She pushes herself up to stand-- she's shockingly short even to Alice, who's always been small. Jenna approaches excitedly, but stills when Alice raises a hand.

"No. Don't come close- because I want to hug you. But I know all I can do is imagine hugs I've had before- feel the many heart beats and curves of other people and pretend they're yours but it isn't. Because I don't know what you feel like! Should I wait for Vogue's 73 fucking questions to come out?"

The girl hums. Then, sits cross legged on the floor. Alice watches, teary eyed. Sniffs. "What are you doing?"

"Well... if you don't want to pretend, then talk to me. Tell me what you imagine I'd feel like."

Alice sighs, following suite to sit crossed on the floor, rubbing at her face that's expectantly dry. Looks down to her palms and laces the fingers together.

"I don't know. You look warm."

She can feel the soothe of warm cheeks against her hands, smiling faintly to herself but it doesn't quite reach her eyes, tilts her fists like she's dropping the entire idea. "And you have smatterings of freckles, a strong. jaw and a dimple in your chin. You're also really, really soft because I've seen your skincare ads. And you'd probably smell really good cause you have a net worth."

Alice is near breaking. "I want to meet you. I try to- I pretend to, at least."

Jenna doesn't answer. Alice looks up to see the girl smile sadly, nodding. "Okay, then imagine it."

"I don't see you every night. Its a waste of our time togeth--"

"--Your happiness is never a waste to me."

Theres a strong pause. An ebb, and a flow. One girl breaking down, while the other is a pillar of strength. She can imagine it-- has while doing real life things and then forcibly reminded herself its ridiculous.

But... what's indulging just a bit more?

The world shifts.

Alice feels her back on a truncated dome, blinking up at the sky and wondering idly why she can never imagine her standing.

With a groan, Alice pushes herself up on her forearms and glances around the sideroad-- there's gorgeous Plantrees standing tall above her, shielding the cars and pedestrians from the sun. Old colonial house fronts were the giveaway for their location. Alice blinks at the cars horizontal to the one she's on. She looks around, and spots the short, jet. black haired girl jogging on the sidewalk.

Once again, what does she have to lose in a made up world? This was their only meet cute. So, she lays down on the pavement thats warm from the sun and waits.... waits... waits...

"Oh my god, are you okay?!"

Alice tilts her head, smiling at the concerned Jenna that doesn't know her-- thinks she's fucking insane, tugging her earphones out. "Yeah. Why?"

"You're laying in the middle of the-- were you in an accident?"

"No. Lady, you're acting nuts." Alice says, rolling her eyes and her body so she can push herself up. She brushes the dirt off her sweater and jeans, approaching the sidewalk with the clean hand offered. "I'm Alice. Street-tester extraordinary."

Jenna eyes the hand skeptically, taking it after a moment and giving it a single, lame shake. "You're.. what?' She says once the words settle in her already boggled mind.

Alice smiles again, all teeth and charm. "Don't you know?" To Jenna's emphatic shake of the head, Alice clicks her teeth and tugs on their still-joined hands, mumbling about how this just wont do.

"Hey-- what the fuck, lady?!"

"Oh, relax, don't you trust me?"

"No, I really do not."

"Just-- wait here, and watch, and then follow."

Alice drops their hands, praying that the other woman won't pull pepper spray and force her mind to wake up-- collapsing to lay starfished on the ground. Her palms are downturned, rubbing the pavement with an appraising hum. "Yep. This is a good one. But I'll need a second opinion." She says into the collar of her shirt that she holds between a thumb and index, as if more to a secret service then an agency.

She looks up, eyelashes batting comically. "Assistant?" Her hand raises, fingers waggling in a gestures for Jenna to follow suit

Jenna slots her eyes to shoot a cursory glance over her shoulder, just to find brick walls and plants. "No. This is nuts. You're gonna get ran over!" And there's a laughing lilt to her words, her hand flying to her mouth but it's too late. Alice is beaming.

"Come on! These streets wont be safe for others to lay until I get my second opinion!"

Jenna lets her hand fall away a minute later, her lips pursed to try and hide her smile in vain. It's bright in those dark eyes that glow hazelnut here."Fine. But if anything, I'm your co-tester, not your assistant." Then, a little louder for the imaginary comms system, "Got that?!"

The world shifts once more. To a lake, open and pretty in the middle of dark green forestry with a broken dock planted by the waterside. They sit in a boat, in the middle of the green-tinged lake with no oars. It's a metaphor, maybe. Being stuck out at sea-- drowning with no one around. Exposed, raw to the elements.

Jenna-- the dream one, black eyes and a bit fuzzy— sits across from her. Lips pulled up, soft and reminiscent. "I think thats a perfect way to meet someone."

Alice wipes at her face-- but her hands don't touch her skin. She's so, so tired. And so they just drift along the water-- in silence until the fog comes. Something heavy lingers. Unspoken, and then swallowed up into the spanning months of dreamless nights.

———-

Alice finds some kind of peace again. She feels stable, strong. She's still alone a lot of the time, but she's not much lonely. She has her passions, caring friends and a long future ahead of her she knows will be filled with love, just like in those 8mm video tapes that sit prized on the shelf. It's summer again. An entire year since her assault, and it's hot in her house now. Hot enough to wear short sleeves that show battle stripes, but still cool enough in her room to sleep.

She hadn't been back here in a long time; in the world she and Jenna had built with so many landscapes and conversations. And try as she might to force the world to bend— to warp even a tiny bit just to alleviate the pressure that felt borderline asthmatic it won't. It's all dark blue ice.

And it's dim here; Jenna is shimmering though. Like a fictive of a vampire in the sunlight, her body holographic in its sweep of digital static before settling into a materialized state that wasn't quite stable.

She's dressed up in an all black pant suit- snug and then free as water on a body that can't fully materialize. But Alice recognizes, with a tilt of her head and squint of her eyes, that it's from the actress' latest project. She downvoted them in hopes they'd stop frequented her timeline.

The dream world is cold today. Alice feels the prick of winter's nails in her marrow as she weaves through the room that's a disheveled glacier— deep blue spikes twinkling eerily.

It's a world her brain had crafted back when she would lay in bed at 6pm, her mom carding fingers through her coily blonde hair and singing silent night. It remained a pillar of strength. A fortitude that couldn't ever be changed. It was all a dark blue, like a plastic icicle you'd use as an ornament on a Christmas tree, and as frigid as leaving a water bottle in the car and drinking from it when it's turned to a block of ice.

Jenna's face is twisted, once she turns— inverse features and something guarded in her expression once Alice can force it to align.

Her stare is blank, a scowl on her lips and a down-current draw of her tongue when she speaks. It's almost robotic. "I haven't seen you in a long time."

"I know. I'm sorry." Alice winces. "I just... I don't know. My mind hasn't needed to be here."

"Here? Or you just don't need me anymore." Jenna retorts.

Recovery is weird. Sometimes she feels like a newborn. All pink skin and blue eyes, something to protect. Something raw with delicate potential.

Some point along this journey, Jenna decided to be the person to protect that newborn. She nurtured it. She took care of it. Even June's dramatic interruptions couldn't send Alice back to the loony bin after all these months of therapy. There's pride in that.

"I am... thankful for you, you know."

Jenna's face morphs. The hard set of her jaw strong, stare unblinking and unwavering. She doesn't speak.

Alice hums the lullaby her mother would so often, leaning against the huge icicle and willing it not to break. Speaks once Jenna is a little more recognizable in this strange world made for them alone.

"I figured out what you are."

"Oh?"

"Mhm." A moment passes. Then, Alice raises her chin.

"I know, that you're part of me. You're the good parts. The parts of me I forgot for a really long time, and needed to think about just to sleep at night. You're the memories of good stuff that was so overshadowed by that fucking fog— that stupid sadness. Nature, and coffee, and people and childish fun. And I don't come around anymore, because I've found that exists in the waking world again."

Jenna looks down to her feet. Its a show of vulnerability-- something small, and fragile that hasn't ever been present before. It makes Alice want to shatter this little bubble of other-reality and fall to hers knees; I'm yours I'm yours I'm yours. But her knees would get bloody and she would look like an idiot.

"Thank yourself. You made me."

Alice watches. The puff of air that would be following her exhale in such a cold climate doesn't. The letters tumble from her lips-- a messy scrawl in the air. Her sadness is blue, placid and pretty, soft as the sky.

"No, I-I don't think I did. Maybe you're fake, or a metaphor about self love or maybe you're my soulmate and this is some karmic intervention of grandiose. It doesn't matter. I just know you're in me, half my heart and all my soul. Whichever way you spin it, I'm sorry. For not visiting."

"Don't apologize. You don't need me now."

And it's gold-- honest and pure and strong.

Alice swallows her pride. Steps closer, and holds a hand out. It passes over Jenna's but there's a buzz of electricity that tickles up her skin. She wishes she could put her arms out-- catch her as she falls. But she can't. So she smiles, and hopes it's soft, and kind, and offers a languid nod. Quiet reassurance that Jenna gives out in spades.

And Jenna nods too. The ice melts into the earth of a field, bright with flowers where seeds were sown.

It's painful to outgrow something you desperately love. But a fractured mind cannot heal where it was broken. And when it's whole again, it no longer needs the balm to glue the pieces back.

She dreams, still, months later. But of people she's known, that she no longer does. Or of her family. Sometimes, she catches blades of grass between her fists, and other times she can feel the harsh, unforgiving floor below her as she falls. But Jenna isn't ever there. And thats okay.

Its okay to grow.