I was afraid, so very afraid of the world. It had been instilled in me at a very young age. Everyone is dangerous, you could be kidnapped, don't talk to strangers, don't walk behind cars, don't go anywhere without an adult.

But I loved to explore. I never wanted to go home when my family drove to a new town or I got to see distant relatives. I wanted to stay on vacation just a little longer. I wanted to roam for a while. At the house meant I would be trapped, confined to the small place we called a home. There was something that drew me to the outside world, to someplace other than here. It gave me a sense of freedom, a desire to experience the unknown.

I know now that it was trying to take me away from the nest I lived in, to force me to experience the world before I became to complacent with where I was. This sense of adventure was pushed deep down, as my parents said no, as they refused to go anywhere. Because now, I am still afraid, so very afraid of the world, but the difference is I don't ever want to leave where I am.

I was a lonely child growing up but I wasn't aware of that.

I would always go to my neighbor's house to play all day, pick a fight with some boys with the same age, quarrel with some kids in our village plaza, borrow a stranger's bicycle because I didn't have one, the list goes on as my unruly self was being molded.

But I always felt lonely and I didn't know that word at that time. It was a foreign but familiar feeling as it accompanied me in my youthful adventures.

Waking up from our once tattered house, roof filled with holes, hearing the rooster's crow wasn't enough to arouse my childhood self but someone was already up, preparing for breakfast and preparing for work.

And just like that, my morning would come and go as quickly as it began.

I always followed my grandfather together with my brother every morning to stroll around the village as we walk our dogs. The same routine happens in the afternoon.

Grandfather was always lost in thought, in daze, everytime we finished our routine.

I always see him like that,

him sitting before a vegetable field,

him sitting under the shades of trees,

him standing always looking beyond to what I couldn't perceive,

his shoulders always looked droopy but his back was straight,

It was still a foreign feeling looking at him like that but still familiar, if only, I knew what loneliness was at that time.

Then would there be a difference?

My mother was a highschool teacher but during my youth, she was still a practice teacher.

In my 3rd grade, I was a hot tempered child, quick to use fist but quicker in shedding tears. A very unruly girl indeed.

Because I always felt lonely, I learned how to seek attention from my parents, especially from my mother.

I always craved her warmth. And raw emotions were rampant within me, steadily flowing out and urging me to be out of control. It was a terrifying feeling.

I once thought,

"Why does she always spend time with her students and not me"

And from those thoughts turned into this,

"I hope mom won't come home anymore so I can play more".

A child couldn't understand how their parents suddenly lose their time to play with them just like a parent who couldn't understand their child's desire.

But then looking back,

My childhood self probably wanted to say,

"Mom, I was lonely and so is grandfather. So look at me, look at us, properly see me so I can see you too".

It starts in small, indiscernible spurts. Little lapses of time where I have left my body and returned to it again, a flickering of a dream that’s forgotten the moment I wake. But I continue to practice, and soon I can leave and return more easily and for longer stretches, the memories of my experiences in the Second Space, as I have come to call it, growing less blurred around the edges.

The hands are always the starting point. I wiggle my fingers, moving them in rhythm the way a conductor swishes his wrists, until they come unstuck from my physical body. I feel them float above me without gravity, and then I move to my forearms and into the creases of my elbows, following the line of my shoulders and down through my back. The stomach is the hardest part to unstick (my theory is that it’s because of all the organs that must be left behind when one fully projects), so I usually skip it and move to my feet, up my legs and then my hips, until the stomach is the only thing left to separate. Sitting up is easy, but I have learned not to twist my spine and search behind me for my own body, still lying splayed out on my bed. The body does not like to be separate from the mind, and the disconnect is disorienting enough without the visual reminder.

There is always a moment, the Last Moment, where I can choose to resettle my astral form back into my body and abandon the project. It is the moment before I swing my astral feet over the side of the bed and fully untether myself, bound by only a single, invisible string to guide me back home. This Last Moment never gets less terrifying, but I broach it each and every time, because this is the way to get what I want.

I once saw a video of a stout that killed a rabbit ten times its size. “Stamina is not enough,” drawled the narrator in his lilting British accent. “It requires patience and a well-placed bite.”

He is easy to find, always walking the same corners of his small and filthy world, always filling up the space with too much of himself because no one has ever bothered to tell him that he can’t or shouldn’t, that what he is doesn’t deserve even an inch. I have been watching him for a long time, ever since I began this astral dance, so I know his habits. He is where he always is at this late hour: sleeping like the dead, wrapped in his high thread-count sheets and as still as a puddle frozen all the way through. I like to watch him like this. It only takes one well-placed stomp to shatter ice.

There’s a humming to this world, a vibration I wasn’t in tune with until I began to astral project. I have not skipped a day since I began, and I imagine that even after my initial goal in pursuing this practice is complete, I will not be able to stop. Once a bird learns to fly, it cannot hunt any other way.

Something shifts outside the window, a glint of silver caught in moonlight seeping in through half-closed curtains. I envy the way he can sleep so deeply without the full weight of the dark around him. Ever since the day his long arms wrapped too tightly around me, the dark is the only place where solace can reach me, and even then it is fleeting and sunken and the shadows move on the walls.

The glint outside the window is a knife, and the woman who wields it is a stranger to me. She searches along the sill with her fingers for a moment, intent on using the blade to unlock the window, but stops when she realizes it’s already open. The woman huffs, disbelieving. I mimic the sound unconsciously, watching as she opens the window inch by inch until it gapes wide enough for her to slip through. Men like him never think they can be touched.

She hasn’t bothered to wear a mask, perhaps hoping to get caught. Auburn hair curls around her shoulders in sleepy little ringlets. She draws closer to the bed, closer to him, and I know the look in her wild eyes. I am accosted with the same one each time I stare too long into the mirror.

The woman readjusts the knife in her hand, searching for the perfect way to plunge it into the sleeping man’s sternum.

Hello.

I let my voice filter out from me like a breeze, a soft thing. The woman startles, her body coiled to spring. She waits. Slowly, gradually, I move the air around me, rearranging protons and neutrons like flecks of wet paint. I know the exact moment she sees my form begin to shimmer and solidify before her, and I watch her face morph from shock to terror to disbelief as her eyes meet mine, as she sees the easy way I hold my hands out to her, a call for peace.

“Who are you?” she whispers, redirecting her knife to point at my jugular, even from across the room.

I know what he’s done to you. He did it to me, too.

The woman’s face crumples, the air pressed out of her limbs. She almost sags. I move to catch her, even knowing that I can’t from where I am inside the Second Space. The woman steadies herself without my help, her spine realigning to stand taller than she was before. “If you know, you shouldn’t try to stop me,” she says finally, voice sharper than the knife grasped tight in her hand. The man in the bed rolls over in his sleep, as if sensing a threat in the room. But those born with the world at their feet never truly learn to walk through it, and he sighs deeply and is still once again.

I shake my head, now standing only a few feet away from the woman. “I don’t want to stop you,” I say. “But I hear that revenge is best when shared.”

The woman tilts her head at me, one of those lazy ringlets brushing against her cheek. She grins, toothy and cavernous. “I’m Iris,” she says.

“Lily,” I answer. We almost wake the sleeping man with our soft snickers. “Seems he has a type,” I say once we’ve recovered ourselves.

Iris says “Irises look pretty, but they’re poisonous.”

“Calla lilies make you vomit,” I counter.

I take Iris’s hand and she takes mine, and together we guide the knife home.

I looked over my chipped teacup, wondering all the while what the point of this conversation was. I think I thought I was enjoying myself.

Maybe I was.

Maybe I was playing into the witty banter of getting to know a handsome stranger, not caring how in this moment nothing we said actually held any substance.

But I suppose substance on the first date is a rare occurrence. When I go on dates, which is quite also rare, I feel like I am 16 years old girl- not a 29 almost 30 year old woman who has traveled, seen the world, fought many battles, and has lived to see another day.

When I think about dating I think of a maze that everyone wants to enter, that everyone needs to enter, but no one can actually find their way out.

It is probably incredibly pessimistic of me to believe this concept. But my mind immediately goes to this image- are we all mice trying to find the prize we see in our mind, feeding our ego that maybe, just maybe, there is someone out there that you mesh with enough to want to see them everyday of your life?

I hate dating. I can talk to a goddamn rock, but as I have gotten older I realize there are so many fucking rocks to sort through. And every time I feel like an egotistical ass for believing this, yet here I am. I am trying to flip the narrative in my brain.

Short circuit these images of no hope and paint the new story of an Anna that is learning what she wants in a partner, she is interviewing for the position, she is in control... when for so long I let others have power over me.

I am trying. Ooof let me tell you I am trying to flip this narrative.

Another date, another "no", another stab to the ego,

BUT

I am still here smiling.

Even if I don't believe what I am about to say, I nevertheless say it to the clear eyed woman in the mirror,

"Well goddamn Anna, on to the next shall we?"

Put on Sidney Bachet, 'Blues in thirds ' , 'Blue horizons' ...the sound of Monday is a dragging moan.

if a Monday makes a sound, and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound at all?

because no one is there to hear!

everyone is still in Sunday, or looking forward to the immesurable improvement of Tuesday.

A radiator fan belt, freshly installed screeches incipidely, struggling to cling to the drive wheel. a messy symbol of friction. who isn't a screeching a fan belt on Mondays?

a door hinge the has never been oiled, so worn, that a drop will probably dissolve the metal.

an ambulance rushing to save someone,

who's day is ruined.

oh, to be hospitalized on a Monday...

Neighbors fighting, even before the sun came up, their chairs dragging incesently above like a herd of elephants in must.

An asphalt grader, grinding the pavement, kicking up dust, and failing to conceal the cancerous mess under the rubber skirt.

Sidney, oh Sidney, why must the blues be in thirds? tell the clarinet I'm going to cry.

the earphone plug breaks, just as well, it's too noisy to hear a thing with all that Monday going

I don’t know how I knew it was time. For months I had poured over the tome in my hand, following its guidance. The astral plane holds many risks was a sentiment echoed across every chapter, not only penned by the author in their rigid script but inscribed in the margins by those who possessed the book before me. One must not travel too far without practice and conviction: I was certain I had both. For months I had wandered the confines of my home, observing the tether to my body as it lay slumped in the dark room clouded with incense, practicing manifestation, each minute fighting against the blooming curiosity in my chest. He’s only an hour’s drive away, I can remember thinking to myself, I could be there within minutes. Even as I did my best to focus, ears open for the clicking sound mentioned by the worried scribbles in the book, I couldn’t help but play and replay what he did to me, and how good the look on his face was going to be when I manifested in front of him, how dumbfounded he would be as I…

But I wasn’t ready back then. I don’t think I was ever ready, but somehow I knew it was time. Time to see him. I took my time with the ritual, preparing the circle with runes practiced by rote, hand shaking with anticipation. Images of him crept into my mind as I fetched the incense and candles from the sturdy wood dresser. He had me pressed up against this. “No one will believe you” he whispered. I hastened to get the matches. All around me were phylacteries of memories from that day, from that whole month: all opened at this moment, revived to fuel my hatred. I turned off the lights and knelt in the circle, my defense against the things which waited in the shadows. One by one I lit the candles, beacons of amber in the darkness. My compass through the void. Guided by dim light I started the incense, sandalwood smoke filling the air in a matter of moments. That’s my anchor. It took tremendous effort to get him out of my head, but I needed a clear mind to separate myself from my body. I am above a lake, perfectly still. My mind is like the lake. I envisioned myself, seeing my reflection in the water, pushing through into the unknown depths below the mirror like surface. The chill of the water in my vision was palpable, and with its cold touch I opened my eyes to see the back of my body sitting lifeless within the circle. A smile grew on my face, as it had each time I had succeeded, but behind the smile this time I could feel the sparks of anticipation.

It was finally time.

I took just a moment to check my tether and listen to my surroundings. Despite what shows will tell you everything looks normal when you’re projecting yourself: there’s no funny blurry effects or drowned colors or anything like that. But there are Shadow People. I could see them staring at me with curiosity, their figures only just visible as human shapes in the darkness of my room. The book said they were harmless: it was only time to leave if you heard the clicking. Tonight wasn't the time to think about that. Tonight I was going further than I had ever before. Like I had practiced I focused on something I wanted to go to. I pictured his face, the drooping brown hair that covered the left part of his forehead, his blue eyes with their feigned kindness, the toothy smile he always wore which I grew to hate. He was clearer than I had imagined him in months, and I lost time staring back into those eyes that had devoured me with such maligned intent. It took me a moment to realize the smell of incense was gone, and I found myself in an all too familiar room: it was still painted the same dull beige, covered by a mosaic of rock band posters. I could feel the rough carpet under my ethereal feet, could feel a gentle breeze from the opened window.

And I saw the bed, tucked in the corner, illuminated by only a streetlight. His back was to me, sleeping, curled into a loose ball like I remembered. His hair was still the same, cut just above the neck, and he still wore the same black nightshirt: it had more holes in it than last time. I found myself frozen, staring at him as his side raised and lowered with each breath. Old memories flooded my mind and clashed with my anger, memories of laughter and softness and tender moments. Those memories which pain and betrayal had soured. In the end those good memories had left deeper cuts than I ever gave myself. Does he even remember me? Does he think of our time together the same if he does? Should I even be here? The doubt hit me like a train, but like the astral projection I had practiced against that as well. I knew the answers to my questions. I remembered what he did and what he took away from me. I remembered how I felt after he left, remembered the tears on my parents faces after they found me at the hospital. I remembered the months of pain and doubt, I remembered how broken he left me.

And I knew this was right.

I approached him as he slept, rehearsing my lines one more time. Every one of my senses was alive and stronger than I had ever experienced, which is why I noticed the shadow grow behind me. I turned, and for the second time that evening froze as a figure crawled through the open window. Their features were indistinguishable with the pallid light behind them, but the glint of a knife was obvious. Fear clutched at my heart for a moment before I realized they couldn’t see me. I watched them peer around the room, eyes invisible but their focus obvious: they were looking at him. How could I know if they were a nervous thief or some nut looking to get an adrenaline rush? Scenarios bubbled into my head as time seemed to slow. I could feel panic climbing from my stomach to my head, the static buzz of anxiety beginning to simultaneously dull and heighten my senses.

The figure had made their way into the room completely before I was able to take control of myself, and I saw them turn to the dresser, eyes now fixed on the open laptop and the little box which kept spare change. Any noise from the thief… I thought to myself. I envisioned both their surprised looks, and imagined how that knife would look buried in my former lover’s chest. The vision lingered in my head, and I didn’t fight it. The thief was busy rummaging through my former lover’s things, and again the ember of rage burned bright, but this time paired with cold revelation. I remembered a passage in the book, one circled and annotated by countless other practitioners before. A feeling of joy began to creep upon me, and without hesitation I moved towards the thief. Not pausing to question the sensation I pushed my hands into them, feeling around for something to grab. The thief shivered as my grip solidified upon something, and with my greater presence of mind I ripped out their spirit and cut their tether, ignoring their garbled screams and the sound of clicking as I took their place in their own body. There was a momentary shudder before I felt the strain of the thief’s eyes in the darkness, before I felt the roughness of their clothes and the tightness of their boots and the weight of the knife in my hand. And I looked in the mirror and saw my own body. The toothsome grin across my face flashed for just a moment before I turned around in this borrowed body to mete out my justice.

The news reported it as a homicide, a man stabbed to death by a thief caught off guard. An autopsy was still in progress on the thief to identify the cause of death. The picture they included with the article was an old college photo of my former lover, smiling with that hateful smile. But I’ll always remember the look of recognition and fear on his face when he saw me that night, and I don’t think that will ever not make me smile.

The streets were filled with the crashing waves of cheering voices. The boy that had started as a mere sheepherder, an unwanted child was now returning as a victorious hero. He smiled at the woman beside him and she beamed back. She reached her hand to slip into his and they walked together through the cheering crowds.

The next page is blank, the story’s end. The journey I had taken with a boy in another world comes to a close. I sit here the story slowly fading away. I stare at the bed I sit on and listen to the sound of shouting voices. Voices not filled with cheer, but anger and hidden hurt. The work I still have yet to do waiting impatiently on my desk. My momentary bliss has ended. Reality has returned.