Tale Of Souls (Cathartic Nightmare)

20 Hospital Dues Pay Up Please!

"Sparky, sit up – sit .. Up."

My eyes were groggy, I could hear Kaji trying to get me to pay attention, but I didn't know what was going on. My eyes opened, and we were right back in the hospital ... this time I was back to being 21 but everyone was around Lily's bed.

"Sparky... sit up.... SIT UP. SIT UP!"

"What's going on..."

"The timelines are fluctuating again. I'd say hold on we're going in dry, but that was the desert we were fighting in a minute ago – I forgot the lube to go with sorry about tha-"

Tensei slapped Kaji in the back of the head. For some reason the two of them were rivals. Kaji was a mere human being, with the ability to control and create fire – explode things from fire, and cook a fucking good steak over nothing. Tensei was a prince, intergalactic blood with the ability to control gravity and knock up other aliens like him... Male or female. I'd seen these people in a dream or three – but Lily and I ignored it thinking we were just over imaginative children with no life.

"Terrin, gimmie the tape deck – this could prove something." Tensei motioned for Terrin to pass the aforementioned tape recorder over. I'm still in the chair, it's as if I never left the room at all. Head in my hands – stressed that this is all just a nightmare and I'm never going to wake up to fix things.

"Sparky. Sit up. You're fine." Kaji's appearance was different, making it harder to understand even more now why he was familiar. Slick black hair with a large streak of flamboyant orange in a ponytail, with flame like burns around his eyes.

"I don't understand what the hell just happened." I rubbed my eyes and looked around the room for a minute. Tensei turned the tape on to playback what was going on...

"It's anything BUT blank – there's too much on here to process in one go. It's as if it recorded every single timeline. It's as I thought..." Tensei had a light bulb moment ; more as though he had an educated guess ready to throw into the mix.

"The timelines are screwed from point a-to-b, and the cause is, well of course it's the problems with the government testing. They've opened up too many portals, and stretched the tape inside the cassette and twisted time and space."

"So Lily and I are the cause?"

"Far from it, you are not even a catalyst, but mere pawns to be frank."

"You make it sound so fucking dramatic." Terrin quipped.

"Think about it baka, this isn't just space travel – this isn't some fucking mars rover. Your government ripped holes in what they called "the time channels" to explore what was on the other side. YOUR timeline was never meant to meet with ours. Your poor Izuchi here was tested on LONG before you children were." Tensei yelled back, angry as a mad cow I'd gather...

"Shut up, just get to the point..." My head pounds, I can't focus.

"Justin, pay attention... We need to wake Lily up." Terrin snarled and narrowed his eyes at Tensei, before thwacking me in the leg again.

"Terrin, I don't want to wake her up for once, five minutes ago she was trying to kill me for shit I did in that timeline." I growled loudly – I couldn't bear the thought of her waking up right now. Don't you fucking make me do this, I'm not ready.

"Five minutes ago you weren't in this timeline; five minutes ago you were in what I'd call hell. Now help me wake her up, for my sake please?" Terrin had a point, I was being selfish... but for a reason. Dumb reason sure... but it was me. I didn't want her to wake up and tear my world apart again.