It was dark. There was a wood stove in the corner, but everything else was blurry. It was so cold. Fire. I needed fire. My body drifted toward the cast iron monstrosity, and from atop it, I grabbed a box of matches with an intricate cross embossed on the cardboard. I tried to slide the box open, but I was shivering so badly that most of the contents fell on the floor. I picked one still in the box and held it as if my life depended on it—because it did.

The door of the stove was hard to open, and the hinges squeaked. Inside was clean, as if it had never been used. Still clutching the match, I struck it, but nothing happened. I tossed it into the stove and grabbed another, then another, and another. All had the same result.

When the box was empty, I crumpled it up and threw it across the room in frustration. I calmed myself and reached down to take matches from the dropped stock rolling away. A majority yielded nothing, but finally, sizzling flame and winding smoke arose from the last few tips I struck, but they fizzled shortly after putting them into the stove.

All I could think about was getting warm.

As if the chill came with me from the dream, my stomach was cold with emptiness. It felt like I was dying of thirst in an ocean. I knew that I shouldn’t drink the water, but I-I had to. I couldn’t resist taking a sip and relief washed over me immediately. I heard a gasp. My attempt to take another sip was thwarted by the surf surging away.

I was on my feet, but the arm wrapped around me for support was desperately trying to get free from my grip. I let go and pivoted to watch the man from the stall throw open the exit and rush out.

I giggled. “He didn’t even wash his hands.”

I turned back to lean on a sink. There was a window above it. I tried to look through it, but there was a smiling homeless man in the way.

He was pale with very light gray, almost white, eyes. Blood dribbled from his lips and down his chin. There was dirt mixed in with his ruffled black hair. The ensemble he wore was comprised of a loose tie and an untucked, torn dress shirt caked with grime and gore. It contributed to his unkempt, haggard appearance, but more than his clothes, his face told me his story.

Sorrow, longing, and pain were barely hidden behind a strained smile that looked like it had been held too long. The man’s ghoulish grin sank with a sudden realization. Restaurant bathrooms didn’t have windows above the sinks.

The sight of me brought clarity. Using the remainder of my scant energy, I condensed it into my head with the intent to fix the injury. After some time, my mind cleared completely.

Assessing the rest of my body, the amount of blood I threw up led me to believe my stomach was damaged. I could take breaths, but they were ragged and pained. I palpated ribs all the way down my torso. There seemed to be one broken and four cracked. There was also an aching pain in my legs with a spike and instability whenever I eased my weight off the sink. Fractured, possibly broken. I wiped blood away from my arm and felt around. Nothing broken and the bites were gone.

I gritted my teeth. My body wasted all my energy healing the bites but didn’t bother with the more serious damage. My brain was messed up and my stomach was filled with blood, but according to my subconscious, the itchy booboos took priority.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave or I’m calling the police,” a voice behind me warned. I turned to see a bald, heavyset man wearing an apron and underneath, a polo with the restaurant chain’s logo embroidered on it. “Oh my god! You’re covered in blood!”

“N-no, it’s not blood,” I replied weakly. “It’s—fruit punch.” His name tag read ‘Jeff - Manager’. I took my capacity to read as a sign that my brain was doing better.

“We don’t have fruit punch!” he said. “Tiffany! Call an ambulance… and the police!”

“What fast food joint doesn’t have fruit punch?” I asked. His face was a mix of shock and confusion, or something else.

He was blocking the exit so if I wanted to flee, I had to incapacitate him. I reached out to punch him, but a sharp pain in my legs caused me to stumble; they weren’t just fractured. I hit the floor hard.

A moment later, my head whipped back from a swift size 12 anti-slip shoe to the forehead. I could have done without that, but my fall was worth getting a face full of rubber. My hand had a firm grip around the manager’s ankle, and I slammed my consciousness into his soul.

Where the barrier into Shawn’s soul felt like bursting through a pane of glass, this guy’s had almost no resistance. It was like walking through a thick cloud.

There were lockers on both sides of me. Backpack toting teenagers swarmed the tiled hallway. I groaned. Internalized experiences from school were always super awkward. Rejection, being bullied, dropping the ball during a big game… prom; it was almost always embarrassing to watch and awful to feel.

My attention was drawn to a man closing a locker. He was wearing khakis, a black polo, and an apron with a nametag on it: ‘Jeff - Manager’. He walked past me.

I sighed as I trudged after him, but a beefcake in a letterman jacket came out of nowhere to push Jeff into a row of lockers and held him there. The freakishly large boy bore into the manager’s eyes with murderous intent.

“Stay away from Jessica; you know you have no chance with her,” the beast of a high school kid whispered emphatically.

“Get over her, Terry,” Jeff said. “She doesn’t love you anymore. She wants me now.”

“No. She won’t leave me. I know too much and if I can’t have her, no one can,” Terry said. He paused, then added, “I’ll talk.”

“Don’t be stupid! We’d be the talk of the school and probably dropped from the team,” Jeff whisper-yelled.

“What do I care? The coach chose you to start. You’d be front and center, and I would just fade into the background.” Terry grinned. The lights dimmed on the scene and everything froze. A spotlight fell on Jeff. “That idiot ruined everything.” The lights returned to normal.

A grin slowly appeared on my face. This wasn’t high school. It was a play.

With practiced control, unrusted by my adventure in Shawn’s soul, I conjured a theater seat with a drink in the cup holder. A bowl of popcorn appeared in my hands, and I plopped down, sat back, and started enjoying the show.

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Terry disappeared and we transitioned to a classroom. The teacher was writing something on the board, but it was gibberish. Jeff was sitting at a desk biting his nails, staring at nothing. A few of the students didn’t have faces, I guess he didn’t remember them.

The lights dimmed once more. “Terry made good on his threats. The police questioned us, and she was taken from me. I betrayed her, but she told me she still loved me. I should have listened. I should have just killed him. Then we could have been together.”

My grin widened as the plot thickened. Was he going to kill this Terry guy? Guns, knives, swords, landmines, and missiles started piling up next to Jeff and I almost fell out of my seat. I blinked it all away and held my breath. He still stared off into the distance and I let out a sigh of relief.

A wave of his guilt consumed me when he put his face in his hands. I felt kind of bad for the kid but managed to hold back tears where he bawled.

The soliloquy continued. “Everyone gossiped about it and at first, it only made Mom angry, but the embarrassment… If I had dealt with Terry, she wouldn’t have killed herself,” Jeff said between sobs.

The heartbreak emanating from him hit me like a school bus. This guy was reliving a tragedy and I was stuck feeling it with him. It was the worst part of these adventures, but I didn’t have a choice. Even if I were dying, I would never damage another soul.

Wait…the man from the bathroom. Had I—no, I couldn’t think about that now.

The lights brightened and a bell rang, signaling the continuation of the play. Students cleared everything from their desks, stuffing their belongings into book bags. The teacher spoke over the squeaking chairs as the class prepared to file out the door.

“The assignment will be collected on Friday and there will be a quiz on the material,” she said. Groans echoed throughout the room. “Jeff, stay. I need to speak with you after class.”

“Oooooo, someone’s in trouble,” a student said. Jeff’s anxiety flooded over me. He approached the teacher’s desk as the last of the students left the room. She joined him in front of it after closing the door.

Her brown hair was pulled into a tight bun. Thin glasses slid down the bridge of her nose which she promptly pushed back up. She wore a long, modest plaid skirt, but she had one too many buttons undone in the front, revealing cleavage that I wasn’t staring at. She pulled him close, but he resisted.

“We have to stop this, Jessica. Terry is getting jealous,” Jeff said, looking away from her hungry gaze.

“Oh my death!” I squealed, jumping up from my seat and throwing my popcorn into the air. Jeff started to turn toward me, but Jessica redirected his face toward hers.

“Don’t worry about Terry,” she said seductively. “I told you. I’m done with him. I only want you.” Her eyebrows bounced, and she tugged at his belt. I watched intently—for no other reason than I needed life juice—I mean energy.

“He threatened to talk to the police,” Jeff said, and her face darkened. She took a step back and crossed her arms. Her eyes shifted up and to the right. She paused for a long moment before she opened her stance and touched the side of Jeff’s face with a delicate hand.

“You have to get rid of him, that’s the only way we can be together.”

“Yes. This time, that’s exactly what I’ll do,” Jeff said.

This was where the story strayed from memory lane and onto the fantasy freeway constructed by his deepest desires. Thankfully, Jeff montaged through the passionless planning, weapon acquisition, and luring the victim into the woods. We skipped right to the climax.

I hastily hid behind a tree when we appeared in a forest. An inebriated Terry sat on a blanket next to Jessica holding a glass of wine and laughing. Jessica’s eyelids drooped enticingly as she caressed Terry’s chest. She turned and pulled a blindfold and a pair of a handcuffs from a picnic basket next to them. Kinky.

I waved away the theater seating and condiments. It was time to stop screwing around; I still hadn’t come up with a good role to jump into the story. I had to get energy to heal myself, but just being healthy wouldn’t do much if the police came to detain a crazy guy covered in blood. I needed power.

I was considering three options in Jeff’s fantasy. I could float out of Terry’s corpse playing the ghost-comes-back-to-haunt-you bit, show up as another of Jessica’s lovers, or arrive as a boy in blue to arrest Ms. Statutory-Rape. I hadn’t quite decided which would be best.

My guess was he would respond to the roles with fear, guilt, jealousy, or despair. I wasn’t sure where guilt or jealousy resided on the emotional wheel of elements, but I doubted the ghost routine would hold up to scrutiny and with how eager she’d been in the classroom, he might not believe his lady had a side piece either. Decision made. I’d make him feel down by impersonating a police officer, then I could get down with some earth magic.

Jeff jumped out from behind a tree like a monster at a haunted house. Leaves and twigs crunched underfoot as he stalked toward Terry. He brandished a wicked bowie knife while still sporting his manager garb. A fervor seeped out of him like miasma. A longing for vengeance was palpable in the air with a need to feel the light fade from Terry’s eyes.

Jeff pounced on the bound and defenseless Terry. The knife stabbed into the high schooler’s chest with a wet squish. Jeff plunged the knife into the body repeatedly. I barely managed to stop myself from joining the slaughter by shaking the overwhelming feelings out of my head.

Jessica cackled in the background. The victim squirmed and screamed for far too long and there was way too much blood. It was more like a scene from a movie than one based in reality.

Jeff panted and threw the blade off to the side then looked up. Jessica tore open the front of her blouse, buttons flying everywhere.

“Take me Jeff!” she said ravenously. Honestly, it was more weird than sexy, so I decided it was time for me to step onto the stage.

“Jeff,” I said with an official-sounding voice as I walked out from behind my tree curtain. My costume was a freshly pressed, blue uniform, with a heavy belt filled with various police gadgets. I had my wrists crossed like cops do at night in a television series, with a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other.

Jeff turned and spread his arms wide to shield Jessica. “Don’t come any closer!”

“There’s no point resisting. I got you red-handed.” I paused before continuing. “Look, Jeff. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. If you surrender peacefully, I’ll talk to the DA. I can get you both a reduced sentence and when this is all over, you can be together.”

A single drop of sweat fell from Jeff’s forehead. I could feel the effect of my words, the stress of walls closing in on him, but his mind hadn’t rejected my ruse. Jessica broke the tension.

“He’s right, Jeff,” she walked in front of him and touched his face. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I love you,” she soothed with a resigned smile. I held my breath, awaiting his response.

“I love you too, Jessica, but I don’t want us to be separated. Not again.”

“You know what they say: distance makes the heart grow fonder.” she chuckled. Absence. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I wasn’t about to correct her. I exhaled in relief when he sighed and nodded.

As I approached, I realized I didn’t have a partner to cuff her, so I – grew a third arm and grasped the handcuffs at my belt. The pair started kissing passionately, so they didn’t notice. I conjured a fourth arm so I could smack myself in the forehead.

A spotlight appeared behind me at the same time I returned to a normal two-armed human without a flashlight. Stopping behind her, Jessica crossed her wrists for me. I put my gun away then shook my head at myself. I could have done that in the first place instead of becoming a cop version of Shiva. While I cuffed her, Jeff spewed promises.

“I’ll call and write you every day. We can see each other again when we get out.”

Jessica acted like I was tearing her from his body on a molecular level. I continued my role with an official monotone, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you do not have one—" I paused. I couldn’t remember the rest of it. It had been a long time since I was last arrested by Detective Loves-To-Waste-My-Time-For-Petty-Revenge; what a cruel mother he had for naming him so.

Jessica squirmed in the handcuffs, and I tensed. Holding tight to her restraints and in an effort to cover my ignorance of police protocol, I coughed then turned to Jeff. “Umm…yeah. My partner will be over in a moment to arrest you.” My shoulders relaxed when her squirming stopped. Close one.

I led her away, but she looked back and smiled at Jeff. His longing penetrated my psyche, slowing my steps. I persevered, but almost faltered when Jessica spoke.

“I love you, Jeff,” she said fondly. He smiled back at her and waved.

I kept walking until Jessica and I were concealed by the trees. I patted her shoulder and she condensed into a sky-blue ball of light. I grasped it, but it wasn’t colored with despair. It was—love.

In front of me, a ripple in the air marked the boundary of Jeff’s soulscape. With energy in hand, I walked through it and out of Jeff’s mind.