Rain weeps down the empty building; water lurks and conveniently ebbs through my head. My limbs are tied tightly behind me, and my knees digging into the dirt that’s slowly digesting with the rain. I thought I could smell osmium tetroxide. How I know this is ridiculous. It’s a deadly toxin only few know how to cook. I start to notice how fast my breathing has slowed, the sudden excessive sweating and the bitter taste of blood slowly filling my mouth… I’d say I’m about to die. Makes sense, I walked into this one. The room around me is evaporating. Why am I here?

Scott Liber, remember that name. Remember your name. Remember your job. What led you here? Think. THINK SCOTT. S.I.S. S.I.S.? Secret Intelligence Service! Yes. They think I’m dead. This isn’t reality; the real reality…the real reality is a dimension away. The Book of Lies. Yes. The girl…Shelly. The girl. Dammit, she’s here, isn’t she? The blood backing up so much it’s almost as if it’s choking my brain. Think Scott. Don’t black out yet…

SCOTT THINK. She’s sitting across from me now. My vision is fuzzy, but still her eyes glare through my haze like they’ll burn me alive any second. Even with all her hate and determination, I can’t look away from that lush of pulchritude that streams across her whole figure. I can’t picture anything else I would rather see when I die.

Why am I about to die?

She reminds me. The gun is in her head. Fully loaded, and ready to off my sins. Betrayer. Deceiver. I made her do this. I lied my way through her life and into her love. A woman in love is the most dangerous woman. If only she could understand for just one moment why I did all this, maybe she could forgive me. She was the key to this discovery.

I gave her my name six weeks ago. I gave her my word and stole her away. She trusted me. She trusted me like no one should ever trust someone. Led me to the organizations and people running the show. Led me to her heart and her life. Maybe she just felt comfortable; maybe she just wanted to believe herself that trust wouldn’t kill. She gave me all of her so she could hide, and I exposed her to the world. I shed her skin and took what I wanted for my own being.

My reasons for what and why I did what I did were more complicated than something as simple as money, or revenge. It was my own personal pain that I felt the whole world should feel. Call it selfish; call it crude. I just wanted everyone to know what this feels like.

Reality.

Remember the real reality.

I can’t fully say what the crime I did to her was. I just know its 11:59 right now, and I won’t live to see tomorrow. I would have brought you in sooner if I had the time. Her face warps and her speech begins. I’m out again.

Dazed. I wake back up. That stench is gone and she has left the room. The rain drips out from the empty ceiling. I glance up and see that hours have passed. She just left me here; the shattered girl didn’t zap me off. I’m surprised. The rain echoes through the fog and smoke wraps around me. Rain taps almost in time with the looming, slowly approaching voice traveling through the walls. Echoing steps of boots lightly splash on the floor. Through the smoke his skeletal frame approaches.

“We all shine on…. brighter than the moon… brighter than the stars… stronger than the Sun.”

He’s smiling, singing his heart out on his approach, strikingly in tune. Leaning over, his brown hair falls over his perfectly circled glasses. He whispers to me with the revolver nailed into my ear lobe.

“The fight then had cause and reason,” he said with a sly, crackling tone.

Thunder discharges above us, leaving sound waves reverberating through my body. His breath blasting my senses full of neoteric cigarettes, fine meat, and wine trailing through my nostrils.

“They’ll come after you. How could you not see superstar?”

Is he lit? Or is he just more insane than I could fathom? The thunder is preaching above us. Lightning seems to hit perfectly across his face with each bolt to highlight his eyes confirming how wacked out he is.

“You need to get yourself together.” His yellow-patched teeth gave a dim grin.

The rain chokes my responses as I push the words past my lips.

“Pretty soon you’ll be dead. You should hide from your brother, everyone you meet. They’re everywhere.”

His coat rippling in my face as the wind tears through us. I have no words, as if I’m not alive at this moment. As if the shot rang out already.

Am I dead?

Am I already dead?

I’m screaming but I can’t remember how to make a sound. The rain clouding my glasses and filling my eyes as I stare up.

“We will all shine on, like the moon, the stars, oh, stronger than the sun!” He sings loudly.

“Why are we even here?! Craving a little pain and fear?!” His voice cracked with a high pitch.

I touch the opposite ear lobe form where the gun was at. I’m unknowingly at first, leisurely fingering my brains as he sings on.

“I’ve just saved you! Your glasses aren’t cloudy anymore, are they Scott? Get it together and live in the real reality! The one they all claim doesn’t exist. Earth was all fake, darling. Fossils like me found this out early on. I enjoy saving people like you. I enjoy saving you all just as I saved myself. This is heaven.”

His words rang on with thunder drumming behind him as the light show continued. A puddle formed under me. Worms burrowed under the slush of wet dirt. The lighting struck once more, but it never faded. It burned on and on.

Brighter than the moon, stars, and the sun. It burned on, the last I saw.

“Do you know how you got here Scott? Scott. Scott, can you hear me now?”

My body ached, but in a new peculiar kind of way.

“Well I suppose I’ll go on then.”

My mouth doesn’t taste like blood anymore. That’s a good sign.

“You figured us out, all those years of searching, working with The British Government. Oh, the Secret Intelligence Services what a darling name.”

That’s the second time I’ve heard that word, and it’s really getting to me. Who is this guy?

“Somehow there was a leak on our half, and somehow you were the one who stumbled upon it before any of our agents could. That shred of “dark matter” that you discovered, was actually a piece of reality. Well not your reality of course, ours, the factual, sincere, kosher as one may say, reality. You claimed to have died three weeks later, liber indeed Mr. Liber.”

Then it hits me. The slugger of a headache and my stomach twists upwards and pours out of my shell.

“My dear, I apologize I should have warned you of the sudden side affects when you wake up. Well then, I’ll let you rest a moment before we continue. Put some clothes on.The Red King would hate to see you in such a naked state. Ha. Liber, latin for “the free Man,” how precise for you. Destiny indeed.”

What the hell is going on? I wipe my mouth as I finish dry heaving whatever just spewed out of my system. Why am I naked? I step out of the lavish sheets that I’m wrapped in and stumble across the kaleidoscopic marble floor that seemed to unfold consistent spectrums of color.

Did I do it? Am I here?

“Welcome to reality, Scott.”

The voice, it’s her. It’s…

“Don’t be frightened Scott, you’re not dead for a reason. I gave you what you wanted. It just wasn’t how you expected it to happen,” her voice sweetly ringing out.

The gas, it wasn’t poison. The gas pulled me out from that world, that means it had to be--magic.

How do I not remember?

“Reality is only captured in a fragment of what you understand it as. Here things are much more…expanded.”

Out of the window liquid glass floated, gleaming warped silver that lit up the room as each pour rolled by. What was outside wasn’t just space, but spaces between and through space. Patchworks of settings blended in and out, mixing but not interrupting what existed in each one. A red-haired man speaking to himself aged and grew younger between mere moments. The apple he held was gloomy, rotten, fresh ripe red, and a seed all in the same instant. His whole life was happening at once. The universe breathing in and out time. It did not leave or stay. I look back at her; she smiles, hazel eyes glimmering, with luminous hair partially draped over the white veil of skin over finely crafted bones. Genes that would make angels question how comeliness could exist before her. Ideal, heaven would be honored to have her in there with them. She’s a dream fallen into the dimension of this reality, completely unreal and pure. No notion of pain or small amount of tenderness within her being, innocent and ideal for any broken man. She speaks without lips moving.

“Scott Liber, your name is indubitable now. The meaning held true. You’re finally alive. Welcome to the wonderful place.”