Aster believed from the bottom of her timid heart that she was put on this Earth to suffer. As she gazed upwards at the spinning, off-white ceiling of Nancy's living room, she could see no other logical conclusion. At every point, she had failed. Every moment she knew as happiness was only ever a setup towards a grander and more consuming sadness. At last she truly accepted, as her ears rang in the absence of Sylvia's voice, that she would never know what it was to feel joy.

She sat up suddenly from the couch on which she found herself, beset with immense nausea amidst a room spinning due to the sudden change in environment. Her shaken eyes darted around, stopping on Nancy at the far end of the room, engaged in discussion with two imposing men in blue vests. Aster's heart plummeted.

She sank back into the couch, frozen in fear. They had found them out, she could only assume. The concerned look Nancy gave to the men only solidified it in Aster's mind.

Could they hear how loudly her heart thrashed as she lay on the couch, hoping to fade from view? Could the deafening thoughts ping-ponging through her mind at that moment be picked up upon, like the scent of a trapped animal?

A cold sweat broke upon her. They were going to kill her. And if they didn't, she'd wish they had.

She wasn't going to end like this, she told herself as the men continued their talk with Nancy. She wasn't going to waste away in a labor camp for the rest of her days, kept alive by the same mechanisms that would render any suicide attempt futile. This single moment was her remaining chance before they got her. If she could just make it to the ledge successfully this time—

But her body wouldn't move. If she died, she knew there was no returning to Peppermint Plains. If she died now, then she genuinely did only ever suffer for all her days.

One of the men began to approach.

Nancy glanced towards her, though her expression held no degree of concern.

“You worry your parents,” the man uttered, extending his hand out.

Aster couldn't move.

The man looked irritated by her lack of compliance. “Come on,” he continued, this time with more force to his voice. “Your parents want you home.”

Aster's eyes went wide as she looked up and saw the man's unaffected countenance. They hadn't found out, she realized.

The man, sick of waiting, snatched her hand and yanked her up from the couch. Aster, completely disoriented after her usage of the device, struggled to gain her footing, and fell to the ground.

“Come on man,” called his partner as he came over to assist.

Aster staggered to her feet as the other man attempted to help her up. She tried desperately to steady her eyes as the room swam and dive, contorting within her field of vision as the two men slowly walked her through the room, towards the door.

As she was carried through the entrance she turned to Nancy, who met her eyes with what looked like no care in the world, then broke her gaze.

“Thank you for coming to my party, miss!” she gave in a tone of plastic cordiality as she turned away. “I hope you feel much better soon.”

Aster looked back, her lip trembling. She knew Nancy had given her the device. She knew Nancy couldn't at all mention it in front of the men, but for some reason, the sheer doubt borne of Nancy playing ignorant terrified her deeply— what if she had just gone mad?

“But— but we just got started,” she uttered, staring deep into Nancy's eyes as the men pulled her through the door. Nancy's expression at that moment— a grimace of agony and regret, was all that Aster needed to realize that she indeed hadn't lost her mind.

—

Within several minutes she had arrived back at the hall that led to her apartment, silently escorted by the men as onlookers rubbernecked the dazed-looking girl. She tried in vain to string together any constructive reflection on recent events as they walked, but cohesive thought eluded her. The number of questions which her frayed mind sought to answer were too numerous to ponder, the litany of fears which sprouted from their forest of doubt likewise too overwhelming to handle.

But there was one fear chief amongst them all— a concern so terrifying in its implicit misery and threat of loneliness that dreading it was unavoidable and essentially guaranteed— even if Aster were to ever use the Eden device again, who was to say she would be sent back to Peppermint Plains?

Aster's legs buckled as this notion came to mind, forcing the men to drag her the rest of the way. She howled and cried violently, shaking as her mind swirled in agony. The sharp pitch of the setting sun poured in through the windows, its irritating light drawing her eye out onto the cityscape. The vibrant and heaven-staining light of the megalopolis outside rendered the evening sky bruised, so much so that one would be hard-pressed to count even one of the many thousands of satellites that had forced the stars to abdicate. The sight stung Aster's heart, now that she could appreciate the progress of humankind— the gentle evening skies of Peppermint Plains were destined to become hideous, celestial welts.

The front door opened, and Aster was escorted inside to a sight that pulled her already dejected and worn heart near out of her body— her father and mother, along with an unfamiliar woman, were gathered and waiting in the living room.

“Oh, thank God,” her father exclaimed upon seeing her, as the men released their grip.

Her mother, shades of embarrassment and a sour scowl directed towards her daughter, began to profusely apologize.

“I'm so sorry for the trouble,” she cried, rising up to thank them.

“Perhaps you should consider giving her a shorter leash,” one of the men gave simply, and exited with his partner with nothing more said.

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Aster looked towards her mother, her face scrunched with that wicked expression of disdain she always seemed to carry, though in this instance it seemed particularly pointed.

“What do you think you're doing?” she asked, looking towards Aster.

Aster, long since resigned in her cares about much, turned from her without a word, and attempted to slip off to her room.

“I'm talking to you Aster!” she hissed, yanking her arm. “What do you think you're doing, running off after one of your episodes, without any explanation?! Having to call building security to search for you, do you have any idea how bad that makes us look? Do you have any idea how worried your father was?!”

“It was only a couple of hours,” Aster spat back, ripping her arm from her mother's grasp.

“It was incredibly disrespectful!”

“Margreta, she just got upset—”

“She's always upset!” her mother screamed. “She's always doing this shit to us! I'm fucking sick of it!” she whined, collapsing into her husband's shoulder as he tried to console her.

“Marienne, would you like to speak with Aster?” her father interjected, turning to the bookish-looking woman.

The lady, with a thin smile in Aster's direction, obliged.

“Hello Aster. As your father just said, my name is Marienne,” she began. Aster grimaced. The woman spoke with a cloy tone, manipulative and transparent in how it attempted to project some level of surface-level rapport and warmth. Aster knew immediately that this was someone she hated.

“Has anything in particular been bothering you as of late?” Marienne asked, leaning into get a better look at Aster from where she sat.

Aster lowered her brows in response, and adorned a disgusted frown.

“No, everything is just fine,” she replied smartly, looking back at her with clearly tear-stained and swollen eyes.

A loud smack emanated all at once throughout the living room as Aster's mother withdrew her hand. Aster, nursing the red hand print on her face, looked at her with a gaze of absolute, abject loathing.

“Always with your sarcastic responses!” Margreta shouted.

“Margreta!” her husband cried, pulling her back.

“I've had enough of that lack of fucking respect! We do so much for her, and this is what she does to us?!”

“You do it to yourself, you fucking bitch,” Aster mumbled through her grit teeth as Marienne rose to step between them.

“What?! What did you call me?!” her mother shrieked, near throwing off her husband in fury as Aster unceremoniously removed herself from the conversation and stormed off to her room.

“You listen to me Aster, Marienne is the only hope that you have, so you better treat her with dignity, you fucking hear me?!” her mother could be heard screaming outside her room as Aster crumbled into her bed, sobbing profusely.

“Fucking bitch!” she hiccuped in between cries. The glimmer of her guitar's pickup caught her swollen eye, and with a kick she sent the guitar flying from its stand into the wall with a crash, the head-stock leaving flecks of black paint in the divot it had just dug in.

What hope was there for her? She was about to undoubtedly lose all freedoms to the state via her mother, she couldn't kill herself, and she couldn't return to Peppermint Plains.

Peppermint Plains— her heart seized in agony as she thought upon Sylvia and the rest. She trembled at the horrid thought that they didn't even exist while the device wasn't active— a realization that caused her a particularly intense bout of sobbing.

Her time spent there and the knowledge it had given her of realities other than her own had cursed her with an awareness of her grim actuality. Every moment she had spent in Peppermint Plains had been a constant discovery that things hadn't always actually been as bad as she'd known them to be. Now that she had left, such a fact had never been clearer.

She flipped over in her bed, looking with wrath upon the AR menu that she brought forth and which floated overhead, clearly recording signs of anguish that those outside were no doubt watching.

“I just want to fucking die,” she whispered to herself as the room drifted away.

—

Aster had not a dream, but a sickening, spottily-defined parade of terror through which her most distinguished fit of depression and misery could keep itself clearly imprinted upon the forefront of her mind.

The faint hints of nostalgia the nightmare carried suggested a recollection of a moment long past in her childhood where she witnessed the graphic news account of an artist protesting some overreach of the government many years back. She remembered the great fondness with which she had for the persons' creations: striking and colorful, purposefully loud distillations of dissent that her four-year old mind only saw as bursts of hope and happiness. But young Aster could not comprehend the meaning of that person one day suddenly disappearing, only to be returned like reared livestock— divorced and unrecognizable from the beauty and soft elegance they once displayed.

The strongest imprint from that moment was of her father's cautious whispers of them. He elucidated no further on them and was especially combative to further questioning, but the moment had already nestled itself forever inside Aster's fearful heart. It was a recollection she came to realize had great significance in the decline of humanity-derived art and of the act of speaking out altogether. Nobody outwardly acknowledged the subtle but marked shift happening all around them, but then again, to her it seemed like nobody really cared to.

Her nightmare was cut short as the sensation of her leg jostling shook her awake. Her father was at the foot of her bed, with a small but concerned smile. Aster frowned her characteristic scowl and sat up, reeling as a migraine brushed against her temple.

“I'm not here to punish you,” he began in a subdued voice, “but you should realize how easily provoked your mother is—”

“She's fucking insane! Anything provokes her—”

“Aster,” he interjected, motioning to her to lower her voice, “I was clear with her that behavior of that kind is not acceptable, okay? You as well as anyone knows that she has her own problems.”

“Well then she should fucking deal with them,” Aster replied with an irritated grumble, drawing her knees to her chest.

Her father glanced over at the gash in the wall, Aster's guitar tumbled over beside it.

“Your mother was adamant about sending you to a full-time facility where you could get the care you need.”

Aster's face contorted into an incredulous scowl as he spoke, pulling her knees back away from her chest.

“You're going to let her institutionalize me?”

“No. I told her that was an overreaction on her part; we are not going to ship our eldest daughter away. However Aster, you will have to do weekly check ups with Marienne as a compromise.”

Aster's scowl relaxed slightly upon hearing this, though her still beat ferociously. What would normally have been a moment of complete fury instead came as a great relief in contrast to the near prison sentence she was only seconds ago staring down.

She relented, dropping her tense shoulders and lying back onto her pillow, her eyes set on the ceiling.

“Okay,” she whispered with irritation and acquiescence, letting silence linger for some seconds after her reply.

Her father reached out his hand, shaking her leg affectionately as he rose from the bed. “It'll be okay,” he gave softly, as he motioned open the door and began to walk out. He gave her a final, mildly pitiful look as he nodded an encouraging smile and just as quietly shut the door behind him.

Aster closed her eyes, listening intently to her father's near silent exit. Her brain refused to slow down, no matter how hard she tried to focus it onto one thing or another. The ceiling spun every time she glanced up at it, leaving her to lie in grief with her eyes closed, as the irritable voice of her mother and hyper-activeness of her sister sounded through the walls every so often.

Like a rearing and fear-of-God inspiring tidal wave, the gulf of loneliness wound back and spilled over her with renewed vigor, turning her blood cold as she felt true emptiness for the first time.

I'll never see them again, will I? She let me see that world in an attempt to stop me from killing myself— but now, it somehow seems more appealing than ever.

Her dead, darting eyes glided to the featureless, eggshell white ceiling, as she finally cast off her concern for the swirling, feverish twist of the room, and stared head-long into nothing.

There would be only one of two fates awaiting her at the end of the week— a return to Peppermint Plains, or death.