It was as if Molly’s nightmare, the frozen world that she was forced to return to now and again, had been reversed. This world, the world beyond the door, was one of a bruised purple sky and a burning taste that lingered on the roof of her mouth.

Green specks dotted the atmosphere. They floated in the still air like pollen, carrying this world’s magick straight from the yellow flowers set in rolling, vibrant green grass under Molly’s feet. Each flower huffed up green magick dust before erupting in heatless flames.

The first time one ignited, it had been so close to Molly’s leg that she had expected flames to lick her skin, but they hadn’t. They just caressed her leg like a cat’s tail before they extinguished themselves, leaving the flower without a single burn on its petals. Yellow petals contrasted intensely against the shimmering purple sky as the dust particles formed their own kind of starry night.

The grass beneath her shoes shifted, swaying to a halt. Once bladed and flat, each strand of grass now stood rounded and full. Yet the flowers remained the same.

As Molly took another step, she realized the texture was different. It was less natural, no longer fresh, yet something new. Something synthetic.

She bent down to touch a blade. Its gummed surface gripped at her skin. It was rubber now, or something close enough to it, suspended taut, refusing to bend.

Molly continued to walk. Her numb mind made her feel as if she were in a dream, yet her burning lungs and coursing blood made her feel alive. Looking back from where she had come, she found that she was a decent way from the door at a soft decline. With the door up on a hill, she felt as if it was promising that, if she wanted to return to it, she would easily be able to find it again.

There was a lake to her right on which large square chunks of ice floated in a syrupy kind of water. A few glossed over, momentarily becoming smooth like glass before they began to sink. The sinister feel reminded her of the place her tortured mind went to.

Goosebumps prickled Molly’s skin, warning her to go in a different direction. She headed toward a cluster of trees close by. Some were dead and glistening black against the bruised purple sky, the branches stretching crookedly upward looked like stone with green leaves of frozen gems.

When Molly reached the trees, the black metal called to her, singing a familiar song to the pumping in her veins, drawing her to it. Wanting her hand and the metal bark to connect and become one as if to grant her its magick.

She reached her hand out, and the bark greeted her skin with a sizzle and a scalding burn. She instinctively pulled away as searing blisters appeared on her hand.

Hot tears burned down her cheeks as she looked up to the green leaves. She noticed they were now hard thin slits of rock sprouting from a deep brown creviced boulder, each standing erect toward the moonless sky.

Her breaths were ragged and pain pulsed from her palm and fingers as she bent them and watched them crack and bleed. Her heart was rushing in her ears. Each thump was a timer running out.

She needed to leave.

She needed to get to that door.

She knew nothing about this place. It was filled with mystical magick that was not for her. She wasn’t sure it was for anyone. She wasn’t sure how Namu could train in this place.

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Prepared to run, prepared to try to find a way out of that room and through that wall, she went to wrap her hand in her shirt but then stopped. The fabric did not meet soft flesh but instead a firm casting like stone.

Suddenly, her hand was too heavy.

Her arm fell to her side as though weights had been hooked into her skin, and she almost toppled over.

She looked down to see her arm and hand shifting, turning into that same solid alloy that made up the black metal trees. She watched in horror as the material climbed up her arm, hardening around her skin before it climbed higher.

A faint warning ticked that there was no turning back.

She tried to run, but she fell.

Her feet were turning too. Trapped in heated, heavy, smooth stone with no pores to breathe. She could hear the cracking and crinkling as the metal cocoon that wanted to mold her worked up her legs, over her shoulders, and then around her chest, making it hard to expand her lungs.

Then, she tasted her metallic fate as it worked over her lips, which she had clamped shut.

The last smell she inhaled was the igniting flowers that sprinkled dust into the sky before the metal worked up over her eyes before she could blink.

It was forcing her to look out. Forcing her to see the world she would be cut off from. The world that kept her inside. Kept her there.

She could breathe, and she could move her eyes to see. The metal that layered her skin, keeping her in place, was warm. It wasn’t sweltering inside.

She couldn’t help but think it was better than drowning in the freezing purple lake.

She saw rather than felt the rubber grass shift again to its flimsy green. How many days would it take her to die here? How many times would she be forced to watch and see the grass change?

Molly wondered if Ova would look for her. If she would ask Lily where she was. Or if Lily would come looking for her. If Namu would know where to find her. If anyone was her friend and would actually care.

Or if everyone would eventually forget about her like she was sure her friends had back home. It was funny because she had always been scared to lose herself, yet now she was lost. She was living her biggest fear. All because someone had asked her to sneak into a boy’s room. All because Molly couldn’t help but be a follower.

Something she had been her entire life.

She didn’t know how to live any other way.

Without following. Without having guidance, she didn’t know how to make friends. She didn’t know how not to scare people away. She didn’t know how not to act weird or push people out. All because of the spirits that had constantly attacked her life.

Something heavy was on the outside of her metal skin that made her eyes flicker back and forth. It was climbing up her torso to her shoulder and then to the top of her head.

Another one was on her leg.

The torture of not knowing what was crawling on her sent nails down the insides of her mind, making her want to scream and squirm, but she couldn’t. Her eyes strained, begging and needing to know what was crawling all over her layer of metal skin.

Then she saw it. At first, there was one head as big as three of her fingers put together. It was white and wide, slightly cute. Then three heads were peeking out from over her forehead down into her eyes. They stared at her with hungry black eyes, then began to crawl down her face, momentarily blacking out her vision. It was one creature. One creature with a white body that could easily sit in the palm of her hand and three heads floating on three thin necks. The creature made its way to her arm. She watched it sit there until one head bent down and went through Molly’s paralyzed metal skin like a ghost.

There was a moment of pain, a pinch just like when the spirit sprites dug their fingers into her. She tried to scream as her soul sank inside her and pulled away.

Another head joined the first one to dig in. Soon all three were digging into her, somehow able to slip inside her metal skin to her real skin and then inside that to what should be her soul.

But they came up angry. Vicious. The two eyes on each of their heads grew ravenous when they turned to her before she felt them crawling all over her again.

Then a few more creatures landed on her and started digging. Started pinching.

She wished she could scream.

But she couldn’t. She was forced to stare at a petrified tree. Its life was trapped forever, withering and quivering inside, just like hers, as the white creatures ransacked and ravaged, trying to get at her soul.