She felt the slam of the door strain the three meat hooks that were embedded into her back, their chains jingling in the cool, dry, night air, each end trailing back into the house. Each one pulled her as she resisted forward, deforming the smooth skin on her back into veiny cones. The only shared property each of the restraints was their goal–each choosing a different method to keep her locked in place.

The first chain, carved into her left shoulder, was a commanding wrought iron, black, with a rough-hewn texture, with links the size of man's fist, its sheer weight demanded honesty and respect. The hook at the end was, of course, of appreciable size, but paled in comparison to the chains themselves, and it seemed to rely on its strength of character and construction to drag her down.

Maria drew a deep breath, reminded herself that her strength must now be her own, and stepped forward. The wrought iron chain finally ripped out, shaking the earth beneath as it crumbled to the floor.

The second hook was a wretched creature, with ridges and spikes built into its hook that sent cold shockwaves of sharp pain through her body every time she so much as shifted her weight back and forth. The chain was unassuming, as generic as could be, nothing more complicated than anything one could by at a hardware store, but the hook's wicked edges seemed to find new ways to hurt her, dissuading even the slightest step out of line.

Maria grit her teeth, reminded herself that she could no longer walk the same path, and took another step forward. The wretched hook gored itself out of her spine, bits of organs and muscle catching against its prickled design, the organic pieces making an audible splatter as they spilled onto the sidewalk below.

Embedded in the dead center of her lower back, the third restraint was a tiny, quiet contraption, its hook a tiny colorful plastic loop, no bigger than an earring, the chain itself a tiny, flexible linkage of fake gold, almost passing for a necklace. It could take any shape in her hands, crumple itself up and down, its only real power in pity, begging for her to justify its own existence.

Maria exhaled, a tiny sob choking out the end of her breath, and reminded herself that this journey was for her, and her alone.

She stepped forward, and the tiny plastic hook flicked out of her back, bounced against the sidewalk exactly once, and lay down at the edge of the sidewalk alongside a single drop of blood.

She tried not to look back at it, but couldn't help but steal a glance as she approached the car in the driveway. The door was already opened, the car already started. It was far too late to go back for it–and she finally managed to tear away her own gaze as she slipped on her black overcoat.

The polyester stung a little against her shredded skin.

"Maria…?" The door to the front of the house swung open, a tall, barrel-chested shadow stepping out. "Maria!" The shadow's expressionless face turned towards her, jumped back in shock, then broke into a full-on sprint towards her.

"You can't stop me!" She called out, her voice breaking. "…not this time…" Her hand shifted the transmission into reverse, and the car began to roll down the driveway, itself leaving a tiny trail of oil behind as it slid backwards.

"Baby, please!" The shadow wailed, its smokey hands grabbing at the open window. "This isn't you. You don't have to do this!"

"This is me." She spat under her breath, then grabbed the shadow's hand. "This is the most me that I've ever been." The black, cloudy fingers slipped out of her sweat-coated palms, and she adjusted her hands back to the steering wheel.

The car reached the bottom of the driveway, and Maria pressed the gas pedal, a burst of distance and asphalt now standing between her and the shadow, which held its head in shock.

She gave it the last look she knew she'd ever give that sorry shadow–and as it looked up, and weakly reached out one last hand.

"Baby. Come back. Look, you're bleeding all over. Let me help. Let me make this better." Its words were broken up by a vague, static screeching noise.

Maria shifted the transmission into drive. "I'm sorry." She bit her lip, gradually applying pressure until it split open and she could taste the blood mix with saliva and spill all over the inside of her jaw. "I'm going to the Beyond."

The wheels of the sedan screeched as she floored the pedal. Behind, in the rearview mirror, she saw the shadow drop to its hands and knees, before she fixed her eyes forward, and reassured herself that she would never have to look back, again.

The neighborhood was quiet. Not a single house light was turned on. Maria's mind floated in a disassociated haze, her focus just out of her own grasp, the continuous running flash of the streetlights the only piece of reality that still grounded her to herself. The gaping wounds on her back were silent, throbbing only on occasion as the car ran over a pothole or met a slight dip.

As she drove, the houses grew to new heights and sprouted new rooms, and occasionally a strip mall would flash by the window, the flickering neon like tiny fireworks in the monotony of the suburbs. The suburbs then blended into the downtown without much fanfare–the buildings were slightly taller, slightly more avant-garde, and bore unique fixtures and statues out in front.

Maria breathed a sigh of relief as she approached the highest elevation point in the city, a tiny hill bearing only a tiny office building for a local marketing firm, and an unpainted parking lot that was always empty at this time of night. During her time in high school, everybody knew this particular lot, back then only a flat surface of dirt and tiny rocks, as the local Make-Out Point, until, of course, one girl who had a police officer for a father happened to get caught here, at which point their always seemed to be a uniform or two hanging around the roads that traveled up to the so-called Point until enough teenagers were scared away that a new Point would've had to be found–not that Maria even cared by that point, having dropped out before the second term of her senior year–and the former Point remained thusly abandoned until said young upstart local marketing firm decided to breathe new, proper life into it.

Something like a cigarette would've been nice as she sat on top of the still-running car's hood and stared out over the few, vague lights of city. Her hands were much too fidgety, grinding her red-paint-chipped fingernails against the metal. It was a terrible noise, but it was one of the only things that could keep her mind focused enough to remember to stop her hands from scratching the itches that accompanied the forming clots on her back.

Gingerly, she reached a hand behind herself and pressed the back of her palm against the outside of her polyester coat, feeling a hint of warm wetness as she applied a faint amount of pressure, then brought it back forward, and examined the little splotches and stains over her knuckles, holding it up to the light of the city. She squinted her eyes and cradled her elbow in her palm.

Was blood always this dark? Was it just the light?

"Oh hey! You must be Roland's cousin, right? Come on in!" A cheery, slightly slurred voice, belonging to a blonde with cheeks flushed well past human capability, echoed into Maria's ears.

"Roland? I… I can't say I know a–" Maria blinked, tearing her eyes off her hand. "Er, sorry. Where am I?"

"Jeeeesus," A tall stranger with a square jaw and a red cap appeared behind the blonde, wearing a tank top with straps so thin that one was already slipping off his muscled shoulder. "Think she already hit Roland's stash? That fuckin' bastard. I knew he was holding out on us."

"I'm sorry–what are you guys doing up here?" Maria blinked at a pace that seemed, to her own self, all too rapid. Her surroundings melted.

"Yeah, she's twisted as balls." The tall stranger coughed, pushing out air that smelled like death and flowers, and leaned against a pillar of air. "Look, can you talk to Roland for us? I'm not trying to fiend or nothin', but if he isn't gonna start passing out shit, we're probably gonna have to dip here sooner or later…"

"Oh. Of course, of course." Maria sneezed as she inhaled the stranger's foul smoke. "Where's he at?"

"Just upstairs," the blonde nodded. "You wanna clean yourself up, first? You look like shit. Hope that means it's good. Bathroom's on the right."

"Yeah, yeah," Maria sniffed, dragging her forearm across her nose as she shuffled inside. The house in front of her manifested more clearly now as she moved forward–an ostensibly upper-middle class home. The kind that had four-to-five bedrooms, a dedicated study, and the kind of kitchen that probably had a pizza oven built-in–a feature she wasn't able to personally confirm, as she only caught a glimpse of the kitchen as she squeezed through the crowd of sticky young adults that littered the pathway to the powder room on the first floor.

She delicately closed the door behind her–after all, she was a guest in this house–noting how the jazzy chords of the music reduced themselves to rhythmic thumping through the thin wood of the walls, the tulip-shaped glass lightbulbs vibrating in tandem with each pulse, and her eyes flicked downwards to right above the sink.

Her reflection stared back in the mirror. Her pupils were enormously dilated, having consumed the colors of her iris, now edging dangerously into the sclera. The open wounds on her back had now seeped through the overcoat, now barely visible even from the front, merely providing a darker outline around her figure, the very tail ends starting to drip a little.

None of these details bothered her too much–until she noticed her mouth was frozen agape, drool pooling at the corners of her lips. She tried to force her mouth closed, but her jaws continued to force themselves open like springs on pliers. She flexed the muscles continually, shifting her jaw back and forth, trying to find the right angle at which the springs would give, and she could finally close her mouth, but her reflection just stared back, still agape, still clueless.

A fist pounded at the top of the door, just above her head.

"Hey! C'mon! Some of us gotta go here!" A coarse voice shouted through the walls.

Maria turned the handle and stumbled out onto the party floor. "…'m sorry… I can't… I can't…" she mumbled, not even making eye contact with the assailant, and staggered around, holding herself by pressing a hand onto the backs of the dancing strangers as she maneuvered twoards the center of the house.

"Hey, you okay?" The assailant had followed her, booming straight above her hunched form, then cutting off her path forward and standing in front of her.

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Maria felt sweat bead all around the back of her neck. "I'm fine… I'm fine… I'm going to see Roland."

"Oh sick!" The assailant cheered, then grabbed her hand and raised it in the air. "Hey everyone! She's going to go talk to Roland!"

The crowd roared back a cheer, briefly drowning the throbbing music, and the closest strangers took turns patting her on the back, as Maria felt her face pale while she forced a dead-fish smile.

She turned around to face the other side of the room–a stairway spiraled up before her, with wood on the edges and a tan carpet. The tufts of the carpet were unruffled and shimmering clean, save for one set of dark bootprints that belied a wide step in ascension. Maria gulped and began to ascend, herself.

At the top, a set of french doors presented themselves, adorned with gold leaf decorations, creating an intricate pattern depicting koi as they swam in an elliptical infinite. Maria turned the handle, and stepped inside.

A large, olive-skinned man in a dark Hawaiian-print floral button-down sat in a tall, maroon, upholstered chair in the middle of the room, lit by soft orange lights. His head turned to look up at Maria, the folds of his temple reaching up to the top of his shaved bald head, which itself seemed to be muscled. Even as he sat down, Maria was able to peg him as some ambiguous height above six-foot-five, and probably close to three-hundred pounds.

"Ah. Isabel." He leaned back, his shadow pulling back to reveal a small table supporting a tea set and a plate of tiny, decorate cookies. "I was wondering when you'd get here."

Maria swallowed. "Me too," she replied, unsure why. "They were hounding me downstairs. Said that you're holding out on them."

"Ha. Of course." Roland shook his head and chuckled. "Have a seat on the bed, won't you?"

On the other side of the tea set lay a king-sized mattress with a mahogany headdress and a lush purple comforter. Maria hesitated for a moment–she wasn't exactly keen about bleeding on the host's furniture, but as she felt her legs ache, her body grow weak, and her head grow ever fuzzier from the blood loss, she plopped down on the very edge of the bed, and exhaled.

"So… um, are you going to give them some of… whatever you have?" Maria asked, nervously pulling and grabbing at her own fingers, unable to make eye contact.

Roland smiled. "No. Not yet. Maybe not ever for some of them." From the porcelain kettle, he poured a small cup adjacent to his own, and offered it to Maria, who gingerly accepted. "But they must continue asking. That's the whole point."

"Why don't any of them come up here? Couldn't they ask you themselves?" Maria took a sip of the tea–it was warm, which felt nice on her insides, but utterly flavorless.

"I assume they are afraid. A shame." He sighed and leaned back. "It makes sense. Not all of them are related, as we are, Isabel."

"Ah, about, that." Maria set down her tea and leaned forward. She felt the wounds on her back open up with the stretching motion. "I'm… not Isabel. Sorry. I think they just think I am. I'm really not sure how I got here, but I'm pretty sure I'm not your cousin."

"That's okay." Roland popped a cookie into his mouth, chewed twice, and swallowed. "I'm not really Roland. At least, not tonight."

"Er… excuse me?"

"I believe we've met before, Maria. Though you may not remember the name I used at the time." He wiped the crumbs of the cookie against a cloth napkin, which he delicately set down on the table. "It's a special night for you, though, so you may call me Levi, if you wish. So long as you allow me to continue to call you Isabel."

"Alright… Levi it is." Isabel coughed into her hand. "…could I ask you a few questions?"

"Absolutely," he smiled, showing off a row of pearly white teeth, save for a single gold canine. "If we couldn't talk, there would be no reason for me to be here."

"Well, er, you see, this has been a rather strange night." Isabel started, tripping over her words as she tried to piece together her experience. "Ever since I freed myself from the hooks, I haven't been able to piece much of where I am, or what I'm doing, or even really who I am."

Levi gave an upwards nod. "Ah, yes, I was wondering what the blood was about. I imagine you're aware that you're going to bleed out and die from that very soon, no?"

Isabel nodded. "Yes. I knew that when I chose to unhook them." She sighed, feeling the throbbing pain grow ever more prominent in her back. "It wasn't a decision I took lightly."

"I'm amazed that you've made it this far, already." Holding his face in his massive palm, Levi tilted his head. "Most people in your situation never remove the hooks. Most claim they try, but really, most are quite comfortable once they get used to them."

"It's not so hard." Isabel donned a faint smile. "You just have to pull hard enough, and keep pulling. Even when you think you should stop. Even when everybody tells you to stop."

"You seem proud of yourself." Levi grimaced. "And as overjoyed as I am to finally get to speak to you, I'm sure you know that what you've done… it isn't something to be proud of."

Isabel took another sip. "…maybe. I have to see how far I get first, though. Hence why I must ask you some questions."

Leaning back in his chair, Levi crossed his tree-trunk legs, and, reaching into his pocket, pulled out a large cigar. "Fire away."

Isabel crossed her own legs. "Is this a dream? Or a drug trip? Or some kind of brain rush hallucination that humans get before they die?"

"No."

Isabel furrowed her brow. "You're sure this isn't an illusion of some kind?"

"I'm quite sure it's not." Levi flicked the lighter. "Well, not anymore than anything else. After all, who ever actually sees the real world, and not just collections of symbols and patterns? Who ever sees a stop sign and sees its shape, its bright color, its construction, the way it exists and connects to the constructed world around it? Don't most see the stop sign and merely see a symbol for pressing the brakes and rolling through unless there's a police officer nearby?" He chuckled to himself.

"That's not really an answer."

"…and that wasn't really a question."

"Then how did I get here? How are we talking? How do you know me? Why did the people at the party think I was your cousin?" Isabel's voice fell to a whisper. "…why was my husband a shadow?"

"…I can't say." Levi puffed once on his cigar, chivalrously blowing the smoke away from her direction. "Could be anything. You are losing a lot of blood. You clearly have stopped taking some medication that you're usually supposed to take. And, most dangerously of all, you removed the hooks."

"That doesn't explain anything." Isabel huffed.

"Doesn't it? Do you really need an explanation? Are you that worried about how you got here–or can you just sit here, appreciate that we've finally met again, and have a real conversation with me?" Levi ashed his cigar in the tray nearby.

Isabel eyed the still-mostly-full cigar. "…you barely smoked any of that. Kinda wasteful."

"Ah, but it is my weakness. Smoking isn't great for me–or anyone, I suppose–so I just like to get a taste before my lungs kill me." Levi smiled, his face softening into a pensive look. "Do you have any other questions, while we're here?"

"Yeah." Isabel bit her lip, the same spot where she had torn into it, and felt the spike of pain rush up again to her face, tightening her focus. "Do you know how to get to the Beyond?"

"…no." Levi sighed. "I've heard about it for centuries, now. And I've been trying–if it does exist, it's only Reality that I haven't been able to live in, yet. Dozens of humans have claimed to have touched it–and, who knows, maybe it is where you all go when you die."

Isabel shook her head, and placed the cup of tea down on the table. "It's real. Abuela saw it before she passed–she told all of us. Said it had a liminality that escaped imagination. The space in between where we are, where we come from, and where we go… a perfect, unrestrained joy…"

"Then I'm sure you know what I want from it." Levi stood up and paced around the room, cracking his knuckles. "Isabel… I… I believe we can help each other." He reached into his pockets and pulled out a metal container, roughly the shape of a can of sardines. As he pulled off the lid, Isabel spied a row of adhesive bandages, their color a soft purple just above black in the dim light. Levi scraped one single bandage out with his finger.

"What… is that?" Isabel leaned in, the wounds on her back stretching even further open.

"Unfortunately, your language is an inadequate medium, as always…" Levi clicked his tongue. "I did come up with a name for it that I quite liked, but I am unable to say it with this mouth. However, my friends in the South have given it a human name that'll do well enough for now… Cesalt."

She felt a strange attraction towards the purple strips–as she approached, she noticed that they were coated in a strange, slimy substance. "And this will help me finally reach the Beyond?"

Levi shrugged, then exhaled. "Maybe. It's my best attempt, for now. If someone like you, who could unhook herself, were to use one of these, it might just work. You might just reach the Beyond, and take me along with you."

"Will I die?"

He gave a half-smile. "Hopefully not before you reach it. But, Isabel, my dear cousin…" he leaned in, flicking the bandage in between his fingers, "…you were already dead before you came here." With those whispered words, he pressed the bandage onto the top of her hand, where it covered the flecks of blood across her knuckles.

Isabel closed her eyes. "I know," she whispered back.

When she opened her eyes, she was at the bottom of the stairs again, and the throbbing in her back had disappeared. The blurred faces of the partygoers stared at her, the music still thumping despite their silence.

"Hey!" The square-jawed stranger in the red cap spoke first. "Well? Did Roland give you some of the stuff?"

She walked forward three steps, the crowd clearing a path and filling in behind her. She could feel their eyes pressing into her back.

"Oh my god… is she–?"

"Christ, she's bleeding all over!" One panicked onlooker cried. "Somebody call an ambulance!"

"God, what did he do to you…?" The square-jawed stranger placed a hand to his forehead.

Maria gave a wry smile. Of course, now they noticed her wounds–it wasn't enough before, when she was merely a messenger, now they cared about her well-being, since she now had what everyone wanted…

"Wait–on her hand! Look!" The blonde girl pointed at Maria's arm. She rushed to the front of the crowd, swiped a finger over the slimy top surface of the bandage, and stuck that finger in her mouth. "O-o-oh my goddddd…" she moaned, then turned to the rest of the crowd. "Guys, that's it. It's right there."

The warmth had begun to tingle up from Maria's hand up into her shoulder. The effects must be slower via patch than orally, she figured, but even she couldn't deny how good her arm was already feeling. She had never noticed how heavy her arms were, until now, when that arm felt like it was floating, weightless at her side, a part of her but never holding her back.

Dozens of the crowd members began pulling the same move, rushing up to her side, tracing the surface of the bandage, tasting it, moaning, and collapsing on the floor with heavy breaths. In doing so, Maria continued to walk forward, unabated, each of her assaulters falling to the ground as she strode towards the door.

The weightlessness had spread to her collarbone, now, and was billowing down through the rest of her insides. She felt herself a pillar of smoke, ethereal, endless, expanding, produced by some flaming source but free from it entirely. Her own breath grew ragged, but her confident stride became a light jog, and by the time she reached the open exit of the house, her weightless legs had broken into a reckless sprint.

The voices from the party fell silent in the distance, and now all Maria could see were the blurring lights of the stores around. The entire night, she had felt like she had practically teleported from one location to another, and now, she saw every single molecule in gorgeous, revealed detail. The cracks in the sidewalk. The flicker rate of the streetlamp. And the sparkle of the ocean, a mere few hundred meters away.

Oh, how it sparkled.

Maria kicked off her shoes as she approached the beach, and they flew out from under her feet and dropped, abandoned right before the sand started. She looked back for one instant to appreciate the mental photograph–her white Converse, aged from years of love, polluting the grass in front of the coast–before she resumed her sprint towards the sparkling heaven before her.

Every part of her body felt warm now, like every single blood vessel was working in concert to pump boiling water in her veins, but not in any unpleasant way–like she was the very unflavored tea she had been drinking in Roland's chamber, her soul merely the kettle.

Yet, a thought gripped her mind, in the liminality of everything–what if she were to be both the heat on the inside, and feel the cooling rush of the seawater on the outside? She could feel the boiling blood drip and fleck out her exposed back, which had surely become a shredded mess after everything tonight, and prepared herself for the ultimate bliss.

Her toes touched the water. Their heat dissipated into the infinite aquatic expanse. Her skin became the liminality itself, a barrier between the powerful, churning, burning heat of her body, and the cold, simple motion of the waves. She got deeper and deeper, feeling even her own soul dissolve like powder into the water as she got up to her chest.

The pain in her back had completely vanished. Maria saw herself lay floating out at sea, head barely above water.

She was nearly there. She knew it. She would get there. But the cold had to reach her soul.

Maria exhaled, pushed her arms up, and forced her head under the water.

The cold liquid rushed down in through her mouth, past the sore muscles in her windpipe, and she felt the seawater spill into her lungs. The blood from her back leaked around in billowing black clouds, obscuring her vision, and she closed her eyes. Her lungs tightened, some instinctual reaction, but she forced her body to relax, and she lay there in that endless, suspended eternity, and decided she would enjoy this beautiful moment, for as long as it could last.

It felt so good to be free.