Drip...

The roaches moved away from that spot on the ceiling but the water wouldn’t redirect. Water drops splashed on the bridge of her nose. They ran down her scratched cheeks into the mud that grew the glowing mushrooms. Circe found it easier to count the drips rather than try and move away. She couldn’t move.

Time’s passage slowed to a crawl. Limbs stiffened. Heart struggled to beat. A lung refused to fill. Tendrils pulled inwards to her mind. This feeling, this food from her frustration, became a unique flavor they longed to probe.

Eyes closed. Skin itched. Deep breaths through parched lips raised her chest. A slight hiss escaped the right side of her chest with every inward breath. Her arms were too heavy to scratch or even wipe her face. Her neck wouldn’t even turn to look at the clicking wall of insects protecting her.

“Thank you,” she managed.

Speaking exhausted her further. The dim golden glow of the mushroom caressed the moist wall overgrown with moss. The light gently highlighted the blood stains across her rags. A drop of water splashed against the bridge of Circe’s nose. Her face wrinkled. The foul odor disappeared. A sniff attempt revealed that her smashed nose remained blocked by clots. Her body trembled. Instinctively, she knew that death was the far worse fate in this world. A greater hell awaited her.

She wanted to touch her head, to comfort herself, but her heavy arms refused to move. Harsh gurgling whispers in the form of words could still form from her throat. A roach dropped down on her forehead. It would become purple when the time allotment finished. Something, from when sanity had overstretched, had allowed her to realize her power almost instantly, within seconds. But that something no longer worked. She was too busy dying to be insane.

Circe remembered her favorite fantasy romances. In those worlds, the heroine found a dashing man with astonishing abilities to partner with. Sometimes he’d save her. Other times she’d save him. They’d overcome the most daunting of challenges, defeat entire empires, slay pirates, squash long held hatred, end entire syndicates, and go off to be together happily. Those were such nice books. However, once the book closed, once the tablet powered off, she found herself back in some dingy café or her cold apartment. Alone. With only the roaches to keep her company.

Why did her life in this world have to have so many connections with her past life? Why couldn’t this world be an amazing adventure like her favorite fictions? What was the point of dying and being sent here, to be tortured and die again?

“You guys, thank you... but I’m not worth the effort.”

The breaths didn’t want to go in, even as she heaved.

Kathy stood over her with her hands gesturing as she stood knee deep in muck. Eyes closed. Circe found herself back at the library in Battery Park, or something like it. The walls were hazy. The books distorted and pulled out of the shelves. Giant roaches rested on the floor with their antennae flexing. Toilets replaced all the chairs; all of them overflowed with thick brown water. Circe hung upside down from the shelves. Blood pulsed in her head as she watched another version of herself stand across from Kathy with a plunger in her hand.

“I have a Master’s Degree in library science. I’m a qualified researcher. All I’ve been doing here is cleaning and putting books away. I’ve been here nearly a year and you won’t let me do anything else!”

“Sweetie, if I thought you were capable of anything else, you’d be doing it. C’mon, it just needs plunged. There’s no one else here and if I gotta call a plumber cause you refused to help, that’s gonna put us way over budget.”

“I’m not a toilet cleaner! I didn’t get hired as a maid! I’m not your errand girl either! I’m not doing it!”

“It’s called a job for a reason. How much do you like your job? Because, if you want to make problems, you’re not going to be a good fit for this establishment or many others in this city. Now be a team player and go do your part for our library, kay?”

Circe glared.

“Good. There’s a bucket in the broom closet. After you get it plunged, I want the mess cleaned up. Spotless.”

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Splorch! Splorch! Splorch! Splorch!

The muck in the library toilet looked so much like the floor of the cavern. The smell returned to her. Circe retched as she pushed the plunger. And finally, after watching herself work ceaselessly for fifteen minutes, the mess went down. Pure nausea. Then, on her hands and knees with the gloves still on her hands and chemicals stinging her eyes, she wiped the tile and the gritty porcelain to a spotless shine.

Circe watched her nauseated self. The double leaned back against the sink to admire a near spotless stall from the nightmare she had walked into. A heavyset man with sores on his face stumbled into the restroom. He always slept on the sofa towards the west window. He wore an oversized coat that smelled like whiskey and boiled eggs as he wobbled into the stall she had just cleaned.

Drip...

The drops fell a bit slower now. That memory was just another among many she wanted to forget. Kathy had used her mercilessly. Kathy deserved to be in this place. What little blood she could muster went to her cheeks. She coughed.

Plunging like that had to build up some muscle, so why was her strength capped at one? Eyes opened. The ghostly library of the past merged into this new reality.

“It’s all the same, nothing really changed. If you can’t do something, you can’t do it. Nothing’s going to change it. Nothing’s going to make it better. You’ll always be under someone else’s boot. And there’s no prince charming coming to save you.”

Time to do something about it.

Limbs wouldn’t move. Circe forgot she could barely breathe. Even if a prince charming came upon her now, he’d be more inclined to put her out of her misery. This was the reality nobody wanted to face: life’s total merciless unfairness. Nobody wants to hear about the losers. Piles of bones rested in the catacombs under Paris. Millions upon millions of remains of what used to be people. Nobody cared. They were all losers. Once you’re gone, or you’re almost gone, unless you’ve really done something amazing, you’re just another mark to be erased by history. And as the infinite eons pass, even those who left their mark would be erased into the infinite void. Everything eventually became forgotten.

And yet she wanted to be the hero. She wanted some time in the sun. She wanted to leave a mark on this world.

Instinctively, she knew that if she was strong, capable, powerful, and unbroken these thoughts wouldn’t be needed. Surely this greater hell was paranoia, there couldn’t be a place worse than this. Why did she want to keep living so badly? Why struggle so hard to live, when death would simply come by letting herself relax and fall into that transferring sleep?

It wasn’t for friends. Circe hadn’t made a single friend in school. They picked on her relentlessly. In college, she’d kept to herself. At work, her coworkers ignored her unless something wasn’t done. It felt like magnetic repulsion whenever something involved real people, the kind of people not on TV and in books.

This world, for one ever so brief moment, felt like a chance to change all of it. She had powers, no matter how ridiculous. She’d thought of ways they might be useful. Alfredo talked to her. Ebony saved her life. Neither of them needed to do that. Now all that effort they put in would be for nothing. She didn’t even know them. If circumstances had allowed, could they have been friends?

“I want to make friends like that.”

For an ever so brief moment Circe had felt victorious. She had felt happy. It had been snatched away so fast and everything she had left taken from her. Now she had nothing. Circe was dying. Heaviness smothered every breath.

Her grandmother hadn’t wanted to die either. Circe remembered the dripping tubes in that hospital room. The constant monotone chirp that hummed from the machine every thirty seconds infuriated her.

Drip...

It was so much like the water dripping on her broken nose. Infuriating. Her grandmother told her parents everything that needed done at her house for her return. As if she’d ever return. Nobody ever wanted to accept death until the last moment. Nothing could save her grandmother. Why should Circe think of herself as any better? And yet she laid back on the mushrooms and struggled to raise a finger. If she could just move an inch, raise a finger, curl a leg, then perhaps there was still hope. What were these useless pain inducing tendrils for if they couldn’t keep her fighting!?

“If I die, we’re going together, right? So why not heal me properly?”

They hissed at her words. At least she heard a hiss in her head. For all she knew, they could have a bunch of eggs inside her. Or she could be already minutes away from being a slithering mass of feral tendrils. How they worked, why they inflicted so much pain, why they held her together when injured, she didn’t really know. But she felt like they needed her as much as she hated and needed them.

Oh right, she’d been shot too! Not just the coins, but that guy with the gun. He decided to take shots at her without even knowing what was really going on. Typical. How had she not lost her sanity? Wait. No. Here she was going back to the past and hallucinating scenes, reliving bad memories, this couldn’t be called sanity. What did sanity even look like? Had she ever been sane? They did take her off the medication in college.

Wait, somebody sat next to her? Circe pushed her eyes to the left to see black fabric covering a thigh. Looking up, long white hair topped by the right horn. The tip of the tail rubbed gently at Circe’s burning scalp, yet the only reaction she could muster was a slight tension.

Azoria’s eyes glowed a gentle red like brake lights, “I really liked that part about the catacombs. Mind if we chat?”