Music Track List:
Agnes - All I want is you
***
Emma's POV
I felt so weary in the hipster's arms as he held me pinned back to his hot-water heater chest, my small frame encased inside his large gangly one. This wasn't like me. To give up so easily without fighting within an inch of my life. Sure, for a skinny guy he was stronger than he looked. But...whatever the hell that had just happened to me earlier tonight...it took its toll; I guess: there just wasn't any fight in me left. And maybe...maybe the fight wasn't there because I...trusted him...strangely enough. How else can you explain me letting my guard down long enough for him to pull that stunt over his shoulder? I scolded myself for giving into my instincts and allowing him the brief upper hand. You should know better by now, Emma! Never trust anyone.
Perhaps it's not even him you trust, I questioned myself. Perhaps it is the man with the soft warm brown eyes and the cedar cinnamon scent from the dream.
Only it wasn't a dream, I cruelly mocked myself glancing down at my blood stained shoes. I closed my eyes for a brief moment and my mind flashed back to that moment when I was in back in his arms, his coarse hot jaw brushing up along the cold skin on my neck. My blood warmed at the thought and I became suddenly conscious of the hipster's hot breath on my neck. The hipster who was for all intents and purposes the same man from my dream. And at the same time: not the same man.
I despised this increasing feeling of softness I felt in my chest the more the hipster yammered on to me. How I was sinking down into him and drawing from it all the heat and comfort I could muster. Ugh. Where is my cold detachment when I need it most? I hated this feeling of dependency. Of want. Of neediness.
I violently hurled my head back to butt-head the hipster in the face but he swerved in time.
It was hard to concentrate and hold onto the soothing words the hipster caressed into my ear. I answered him but couldn't tell you what I said. My mind just kept going back and back over what happened. Between this latest "episode" and the one at RAW...what the hell was happening to me? Perhaps I was going crazy...just like Gran. Wasn't I too old for latent schizophrenia? When is the onset? Or maybe the stress of all my world travels was finally bringing me to psychosis.
Or perhaps Gran is right...and you did find a rift...
Nonsense! I shouted at myself. Utter and complete nonsense! I shook my head clear and brought myself back to the present reality.
"David," he had said his name was. David. My heart clenched and wondered if David was also the name of the man from "my dream that wasn't a dream." Were they one and the same person? Maybe my dream of the hipster's doppelganger was just his ideal manifestation that my mind had conjured up. That made the most sense.
"...just looked like you fled the scene of a crime," this David, the one who pinned my arms back, was saying.
Oh yeah...that. Thanks for reminding me.
If this was a dream, how could I explain the blood on my shoes? The all too visceral sensation of the blood splattering on my hosiery while my ears nearly bled from the deafening crackle of the gun. I flinched in the hipster's arms in remembrance of the chilling successive pops, and wondered if he felt me doing so.
And in my ears, here was this David cooing an offer of help.
And at that moment, I desperately wanted to be helped – despite the wall of defenses I had built around myself of never accepting any help from anyone. Let alone a man. And maybe...he could help...there was something he had said...something back in the lecture hall.
"David, is it...?" I asked, choking back my pride.
"Yes...?" he said softly, prompting me for my name.
"Emma," I relinquished.
"Emma," he repeated softly and it sounded as if he near sung the word.
"You can let go of me now," I promised. And for once, I meant it. I could feel him mulling this over...then suddenly, his legs and arms retracted from me like a squid in flight.
I swiveled around to face him and he flinched at the sight of me. I would have laughed if I wasn't struck by how much he looked like the David from my "dream" and yet at the same time didn't look like him.
It wasn't that this David was skinnier or fairer or even that his facial hair exuded more irony. It was...his whole aura and presence. The man with the soft brown eyes...that other David – he was so...self-assured and confident and...magnetic. And...something...he had that special "something else."
And this David was so...so not. He exuded panic and anxiety and weariness and I began to wonder how he ever managed to take me down.
But the features were all the same and placed in the exact same position. It was uncanny how much two men could look alike but seem so different.
I leaned towards David sitting before me with his one eyebrow arched at me in suspicion. Ignoring his wild look, I brought my full face towards his shoulder and breathed in deeply.
But all I could smell was the dank smell of this horrid room he had brought me to.
I pulled my head back and looked back up at him. Scrutinizing.
"David," I said his name and it felt both clumsy and clunky inside my mouth, "Tell me about...sea foam."
***
Dqvid'S POV
My face scrunched up and I squinted at Emma. "Oh...you heard that, did you?" I asked bitterly and drooped my shoulders, the wind taken out of my sails. I don't know why my poor pathetic heart had held onto hope I still had a chance with this chick. It was bad enough she thought I was a psycho or worse. "It's nothing...just some lame theory of mine. Don't worry about it," I said and shrugged. I looked away so she couldn't see how absolutely defeated I felt.
"I only heard parts of it," Emma began, "and...I really want to...no, I need to know. It's important."
I turned to face her and could see the gravity in her eyes. "You won't laugh?" I asked.
She gave a solemn promise she wouldn't. So after some thought, I began, "The Vedas taught that our cosmology is comprised of many multiverses that ride the Causal Ocean like the multitude of bubbles found in sea foam. Imagine, froth riding a wave," I demonstrated with my hands and arms, "You have large bubbles and small bubbles, and the motion of that wave creates dynamic energy between bubbles: more are created through the friction while others pop and disappear while others take their place. Larger bubbles begin to form an infinite number of clusters inside, and they are all riding that wave...swapping positions, never static, while many myriads more of other bubbles rise up from the depths of the Causal Ocean to join them. And through all this oscillation, bubbles will often envelop each other and occupy the same space, though...here I use the term "space" in the loosest sense of the word."
I studied her solemn face for a moment before inquiring, "Does that make sense?"
"No," she honestly replied, so I started again. I pressed my tips of my fingers together and pursed my lips.
"Alongside this reality, Emma, the one you and I both occupy...at this moment...in this room...are an infinite number of other realities. All those things, Emma, the little choices you make – those things impact your fate in this life. You order that egg salad sandwich, and poof!... your chances to become President of the United States are gone. Every decision you make creates another reality. That's what consequences are – new splits in reality. You should just be glad that your realities aren't collapsing around you either one minute you're eating that sandwich, the next minute you have your finger hovering over the little red button, ready to kill us all. And you wouldn't even remember how you got there. You just are," I said, pausing for dramatic effect. "That is what the multiverse is like: your realities just don't branch off towards a linear end point...they create bubbles, a myriad of bubbles residing on sea foam oscillating on a wave...and sometimes, sometimes, bubbles can be forced into each other and occupy the same space...and well, when that happens..."
I trailed off at the sight of her face gaping at mine...Damn, I had rambled again, hadn't I. I was boring her to tears. Why can't I just learn to keep my goddamned mouth shut?
"What happens," she said breathlessly and then I realized she wasn't in a trance because she was bored...she was transfixed because somehow something I said was meaningful to her.
"Well...let's just say I hope you never go from eating a sandwich to suddenly Chief in Commander in the midst of a nuclear holocaust," I tried to smile, but then my mind went to the deep dark place and thought of Alice, and the waves of nausea began to bubble up my spine.
"And how do you know...how do you know when that...collision has happened?" Emma asked with wide eyes.
"It might start off as a sense of déjà vu. Sometimes a feeling of hovering outside your own body. An out of body experience. Or so I have been told," I said, trying to cover myself and hoping she wouldn't notice.
"What about," Emma started tentatively, "What about...one moment you are in one place and the next moment you are some place altogether different." Her voice became strained and she began to shriek while trembling, "And the next thing I know you are kissing me and then pulling guns out of my pocket and shooting people stone cold dead and suddenly I'm back here wearing shoes that I have never seen before in my life caked in blood."
"Whoa," I replied and the moment I did, Emma's stormy eyes clouded over and I knew she regretted ever saying anything to me. "No, wait. Did this...did what you describe just happen to you?" I pressed. Emma turned her head away from mine but didn't deny it.
"Has anything like this ever happened before?" I prodded.
She nodded slightly.
"When?"
"Earlier today. At work."
"What were you doing, right before you jiggered," I asked gently.
"Jiggered?" she asked.
"Crossed over," I explained.
She thought for a moment but then her eyes narrowed. "How come you know so much about this?" her voice said riddled with suspicion.
"I-I-I," I began to stammer under her glare, "I created a portal...once...inside another reality. It's my work...well, not mine...I work for Atticus Mayday – the Timothy O'Leary of sound. I'm sure you've heard of him?" For once I was happy to allow Atticus take sole credit.
"Did you cause this...? Is this portal...you opened...does that have anything to do with what's happening to me??" Emma demanded, her face red and strained.
"Nooooo! No! Of course not," I countered. Of course not. I hoped. "That was months ago. And you just said the first time it happened was today."
Emma hung down her head deep in thought. I saw her eyes cast a glance down at her shoes, and my eyes lingered on the blotches of blood. In the hall, hadn't she said: I put the blood there? My mind raced at the implications.
"What did you mean: I kissed you? Was I there in the other reality?" I asked with a nervous gulp. Was I, or another me, with Emma in another reality? The thought almost sent me over the moon.
"Of course not." Emma snorted. "I said you as in the rhetorical you."
"I see," I said, tapping my boot with my hand. "The rhetorical me kissed you and then covered your shoes in a bloodbath. I get it," I shrugged.
"So if you didn't cause this, what did," Emma suddenly asked and we were both painfully conscious that she was changing the subject.
"I dunno. A catalyst, I guess...Is there anything new and unusual in your life? A strange event or mysterious new object or person?"
She looked up and bore holes into me with her eyes.
"Besides me," I tittered.
She looked thoughtful and then shrugged, her enigmatic moon eyes driving me wild with curiosity.
"Well...I dunno," I ventured. "You came here tonight...some places are...sacred...and this area..." I trailed off at thinking of what a crazy dingbat I must sound to her.
"Now you sound like Gabriel," she snorted.
"Gabriel...Gabriel who?" I started and she looked up at me with a guilty expression. "Gabriel Rath???" I guessed. Oh gawd, anyone but him. "And you are on a first name basis. I see." I said shaking my head and not hiding the bitterness and jealousy in my voice. Of all the...gah...
Suddenly, Emma rose. "I need to go home," she said flatly and I rose up to follow suit. "I need to sleep. And forget this day ever happened." And when she looked at me with cold eyes on the word "forget," I felt the icy blade of rejection plunge into my heart.
Sensing I blew it again, I only mustered to say: "Okay. Sure. I'll walk you out," before opening the big red door that whimpered for oil.
//
A/N
hope you had a good week, but I hope even more that you have a great weekend! What did you think of the chapter? What did you think about a friday release? We were really happy to see the return of some of our fans (you know who you are ;) ) and the addition of some new ones. Keep 'em coming. Tell your friends, sisters, brothers and literate pets! And as always - vote and share.
We love ya
~Tom
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All Your Fates © 2012 Carrie Cutforth, Jim Martin and Tom Liljeholm. All Rights Reserved.