She's lived entire lifetimes digesting the morsels of visions. Tasty treat after tasty treat. And now...
Judith stands in a final place after defeating her shadow self in a previous room. Survived death within the labyrinth of herself. Slaughtered the devil on her shoulder.
The final room is minuscule. A closet, really. Cluttering electronics. Wires. Blinking lights. Very little room to manoeuvre. A certain button on a console catches her eyes. Her thoughts. But a man is in this particular room behind her. Holds a gun to her back. Swears at her with an insanity of vulgar desperation. She can't see who he is. Can only hear him. Was hiding behind the closet door.
"I'm going to kill you! You deserve to die!"
The graveyard girl's drawn to the certain button. She needs to press it, like she's no will of her own. Reaches a finger for it. Doesn't know what it'll do. Feels compelled to touch its round, green light surface. Collar bone bursts all over the console. Stops. Staggers. Feels a blackout pain cripple her whole body. Manages to press the green button as she falls.
The sound of thunder deafens her ears. Over and over. Maybe she's deaf because she's dead.
Judith realizes she's been shot to death at point blank.
Vignette closes around her vision. Darkness. Darkness becomes a silhouette. Becomes more. A bleary figure stands in front of a white light. All the pain vanishes. Witnesses a woman whom she knows is dead but whom she doesn't recognize. Judith reaches for this apparition's hand. Hallucination touches phantasm. All of existence becomes tenebrosity except for this one person saying how proud she is of Judith.
The graveyard girl shrugs.
"You're proud that I just died? Really? Motherfucker."
The vision passes. The moment dies. She opens her underwater eyes. Wipes the blood from her underwater lips. Farts bubbles.
The revenant visions have treated her to the madness of many dystopian civilizations. This last one leaves her sullen.
In the vision, she was in love with a man who ended up becoming a different person. Like a man reverting to being a boy. He was so strong and amazing and then over time, anxious and petty. She still loved him, though. She was hoping he would grow up again and snap out of the uncertainty within himself. He was the only person that felt like family to her. But then she died. Never got to see him become a man again. A man...a face drawn in the sand. Washed away by the tide. Maybe whoever Judith was in this vision didn't know that a man isn't just a rock to lean on or a stone to throw around or a sandy beach to draw faces in. Or maybe she understood that all words are metaphors. But he did fuck up. Badly. He was irresponsible. Got someone dear to her killed. It doesn't matter, though. Whoever she was, she died and that was that. Judith left that place disappointed. Wonders why she entered that death room at all. A life that really meant nothing.
"That was so unnecessarily vacuous. What a waste."
Other events have taken place throughout the adventure of eating tasty treats. Her foot has grown back. She witnessed her ankle and heel and toes melt into place from her body's bones. They became wrapped in a sinewy flesh and gore around the shape of an osteal stocking, perhaps hung as if by a chimney with care. A present received from a deceased revenant. When this happened, Judith whispered a "thank you" along with a "fuck you" to whoever the revenant may have been. There's been so many...
Her self proclaimed "fine little ass" has healed itself as well. She watched the muscle and skin grow and stitch back into her tush.
Judith also has all of her fingers again. Feels like the Strawman having been re-stuffed after all the flying monkeys had their wicked way. She hums to herself, "if I only had a brain."
Licks her lips.
Every so often, a ticker or a thinker rejuvenates her or does something wonderful to her physicality. Her senses have improved and she can feel a harder strength within herself. Bulging veins. Stern muscle.
Judith takes a tiny break from gorging on slaughtered revenant. Swims to the soft tree. Arms bear hug the spongy flora. Wants to test her strength. Lifts. Pulls it out of the ground by the trunk, almost breaks it in half with her hug. The roots suck un-suction out of the muck. Lifts the dead tree over her head and throws it as hard as she can into the murk liquid sky above. Quickly becomes an unnoticeable object in the vast distance. Judith breaths on her fingernails. Rubs them against her chest. Makes an extinguishing sound. Ptssss.
"I would give that Terra monster a good licking now. But it's not that pretty little monster whom I want to throttle. I have my hopes set on finding that bone saw motherfucker."
Judith sniffs the air of the sea. There're tasty treats everywhere and not merely within her vicinity. She catches a whiff far above and far below. There're also more revenants in the distance of this underwater realm. This existence seems spread out over many different levels. Something exists below this place and something exists below that. But it's not as simple as the idea of a structure with height. Each bottom seems to have an above or another below just beyond its borderline. A six foot deep grave can turn into a completely different, upside down six foot grave. Every path can be a Möbius strip. A ceiling can be the bottom and the bottom can be the top and they can also be the same world within the same world. Judith can hear and feel these things as they whisper their vibrational and molecular secrets into her Kantian internal. She realizes this place is a labyrinth within a labyrinth within a labyrinth and so on.
"This world is a warren with no exit like my mind is a maze without any place to escape from because there's nowhere to escape to. Every bread crumb leads me to another harridan witch. So it seems that, before every tasty treat, I'm truly a ghost waiting to be a ghost."
Judith decides to go for a short swim back to the gothic church and the backyard cemetery. She's hankering to eat the first monster whom she witnessed today. The one that set the horde in motion. The one who's eyes Judith peered into and found deep holes of the deepening whole of gravity.
As the graveyard girl swims high above the gore cloud sever pieces of Terra, thinks of the topless Jane who ripped her vision's head off in what seemed like the dark forest above the underground. Was that really Jane or was it just Jane's body? Jane's body is Jane, though. We're nothing without bodies. And what is nothing? Really, what is nothing? Maybe the word is just an idiom of something. But of course Judith knows all about being nothing. Her thoughts pivot and pivot.
"I know full well that the bone saw man was controlling her in that hallucination. I'm convinced. I think he may be the desk drawer skeleton key to the curtain of this world. I need to catch more of his particular mint mangle scent to truly distinguish that closet creature from all the other mothballers around here. Though, I do need to eat the right revenant to get that kind of haunting vision. I'll find that damn man again. I feel a strong inclination to terrify the ghost out of him, like I did the people of my old dusty graveyard. The bone saw man will fear me. It's a simple fact."
She finds the steeple quicker than she thought possible. Her speed has increased by a fair velocity. Maybe her body shies away from copulating the same amount of lactic acid as it used to. She's a better swimmer now.
Judith finds the first Terra revenant. Observers the fiasco of it. The wretched thing is as she left it, sitting up in it's shallow grave, flailing arms at its head which hangs stringily from its back. It's as if its stopped thinking and's merely reacting to the situation it sort of exists in.
Judith swims upon the tether head Terra monster. Watches her own fingers grasp the writhing facial contortion. Does the undead thing to the undead thing. Rips neck flesh away like a creamy colour paper. Completes the decapitation. Pulls the heart from where she left it beating. Rips the mouth wide open with a pull. Holds the heart. Bangs the skull in two with a few chops from her elbow. Swift knocks and the pink, yummy gelatinous organ slicks into her hand. They both smell like cinnamon mixed with a bit of womanly swell sweat. Judith smiles widely at the taste of a nether regions orifice. She decides to live dangerously. Eats both delicacies at the same time. Oozes the flavour inside her mouth. Tapioca texture. Tongue circles around the bits of organs. Laps them up like slick meaty members.
Swallows every morsel. Closes her eyes. Nothing happens. Opens her eyes. Looks around. The graveyard girl wonders if she didn't just happen to waste two surprises with her privilege. At least they tasted earthy and divine.
Shrugs. Bites her lip. Waits. Feels something. Anxious.
A wave of something tingly washes her spine clean from her tailbone to her brain. Becomes like being eaten by deep water. Spirals away into the darkness behind the darkness.
The vision traps her. Becomes aware of herself within another type of atmosphere. Judith's still swimming but she isn't sapien. Maybe a fish. Judith can't tell. Watches her surroundings. Notices something at the pitch mucky bottom of wherever she might be. That something has a contour of arms and legs. Fetal in position. Long eyelashes on closed eyes. Womanly. A girl. Lays under a muddy blanket of murky tenebrosity. Fishy Judith swims quickly toward the mammalian curiosity. The girl at the bottom opens her eyes. Judith witnesses green glowing orbs undress themselves. The girl screams a language of bubbles.
The vision switches. In an instant, Judith's no longer a water thing. Now a bug on a piece of grass. Witnesses the same girl who now lays within the soft blades of eternal tiny jungles. Graveyard girl's many eyes watch as she feels a screaming vibration shudder from the girl who just crawled out of the mire water. Something seems wrong. The newly conscious, skinny flesh is not in a state of relief. She's crying into her hands with an anxious desperation. Why? Somehow, as an insect beast, Judith can feel the sad molecules emanate from this wet, naked girl. She reeks of gray water and pure terror. Judith finds this moment to be sad and haunting and hopeless.
Unfolds her beetle wings and lady bugs herself toward the mire girl. Just before she lands on one of the girl's drying knees, she drops. The vision switches like a sleep twitch. Finds herself soaring high above the mire. Circles with the wind. Watches the same girl run through dirt and grass and mud. Witnesses her enter the swill water again and swim like a frog across the marshland wilderness.
Wonders what kind of bird she exists as in this moment of witnessing an actual wild animal human. Notices something else with her avian eyes. Something enormous. Gangly silhouette structures. A dark city in the distance. Dirges black at the peripheries. Dim amber light glows from the centre. The girl's heading for the city. How does she know it's there? She can't see the lights from her position. Is she from that place? Are her senses different than Judith's?
Judith feather flies until she finds a tree. Perches on a creaky branch. A torn dress hangs in the lower twigs, like it's been placed there for someone to easily reach. Potentially wear.
Wind blows mire stench. Time passes. Nothing happens. Almost falls asleep within the vision. Avian dreams. Frolicking feathers. Dinosaur dreams.
Clopping sandal clicks. Eyes open. Spots the mire girl walking on the pavement below. Wears black flip flops and nothing else. Judith surmises this human isn't a wild animal after all. Senses a relief in the girl when she takes the gray tether tent dress from the branches. Places it over herself. The mire girl doesn't enjoy being naked.
The flip flop girl looks up at Judith. Eye contact. A moment of recognition.
Judith gasps. The bird caws. She recognizes the mire girl as Jane. Malachite eyes. Blonde kindred. Understanding.
Takes to heart Jane's anxiety. Fear of nudity. Far as she knows, Judith's never once felt the urge to wear clothing. Enjoys the exposure of her skin. In her old world, never felt the weather. But maybe, after the vision has run its course, she'll experiment with the stitch and different colour skins of wardrobes. Might like the feel of putting stuff on and taking stuff off.
Next instant, the vision spins like a kissing bottle. She's looking at Jane's enormous feet in her gigantic flip flops. Looks up and meets glowing malachite ovals staring down at her. Judith squeaks like a rat and loses her bodily functions. Jane picks her up and bites her head off.
The vision spins again, like a teetotum falling off a table. She's limping through a street. Toward an elm tree enclosure. A playground. Talking to herself. Mumbling damnations and goddamn curses. The limper thinks of memories. A control room. A green light.
Judith recognizes this person. This man who's perception she's caught within. Hears his insanity and tastes his memory. Recons he was in the room of that different vision. This man shot Judith in the back. It's him. Somehow it's him and this vision holds a connection to the disappointing hallucination. Maybe she'll reappraise her thoughts after this vision.
She comes across a playground. Ancient and silent. No wind. No city sound. Not a bird or insect. Calm. Watches the remains of monkey-bars and slides. The man comes here often.
The silence becomes the sound of flip flops. Someone's walking toward the enclosure from the other direction. Concrete clapping. Play sand shuffling. Jane approaches. This man watches her as she penetrates the nighttime void between them. He's like a corpse waiting his turn with God.
Judith can feel an anxiety. An absolute terror as the man she's within recognizes Jane. Her malachite eyes glow. Shock. But it's not just terror flowing through this man. It's also hatred. Rabid rage. The more he watches, the further away his sanity retreats. Jane notices Judith and the graveyard girl screams out one word,
"Noooooooooooo!"
The vision slams into a wall like a crunching car crash. Judith's painfully running. Can hear Jane's pleas for help in the distance behind her. Reaches a building and opens a door. Slams it behind as she enters.
The vision collides with another wall. Judith's face to face with Jane. Holds a gun at the mire girl's face. Contortions of anger. Listens to herself speak,
"You! After all this time it's you. I killed you and here you are...I hate you...for what you did...what you did to me...for your friends...your lowly friends..."
It dawns on the dusk of Judith's interpretation that this event has much to do with the vision where she was shot in the back. She was very likely in the mind of Jane being killed by this man. A world within a world turns within her like a counterclockwise, clockwise movement of arms upon nothing truly resembling 'time,' least of all the economic idea of such an intuition. Lineal and then a fissure of caesura. Falling through to the next lineal to fall again through a caesura.
The vision slips ahead and slows. Jane lays on the ground, blinking and breathing like a revenant. Her chest is a mess of bullet holes. The tent dress's no longer gray. Head to toe in blood. Her own blood. Judith holds a gun.
Jane's fingers twitch. Malachite eyes open. Sits up and reaches for Judith. Crackles and creaks. Wheezes. Horrible smile crosses Jane's face like the smile of the mirror doppelgänger in the dark forest encounter. The graveyard girl doesn't expect what happens next. Judith witnesses the gun in her hand enter her own mouth. Teeth clamp. Judith pulls the trigger.