Layer 01: An Angel, Starlit Darkly

It burns.

Anger... Everyone knows it's no good to act out of anger. We're taught from an early age, all of us, never to become angry people. Whether it's a matter of expressing pain before it sharpens so acutely or simply denying an unjust reality in the name of keeping the peace, everyone knows anger as a negative emotion. It shouldn't even need to be said.

Being the little rebel I always was, I'd never been able to just accept that. Of course not. "Who benefits, if I'm at peace now?" That was my right-hand response. None of the adults in my life had ever been able to answer it satisfactorily. (I wish they had.)

It was a boiling August evening. The sun had set but it didn't matter. If anything... the inky night held the heat in. It was a heavy blanket, weighted with shadows. Bugs hummed their itchy hums, my skin prickled like I'd been laying on grass—I hadn't been. There wasn't even enough grass around to lay on, just dry tan strands through the asphalt, but it didn't matter. It was one of those nostalgia-filled nights. I'd never run through a dying summer's night with neighbor friends, never even had friends as a kid really, but this air planted the seed of such a false memory... (Funny how that works, isn't it?)

It didn't seem particularly funny. Nothing did. All sensation that night could be boiled down to this stabbing pain that seemed to emanate from the inner center of my forehead, some freakish horn struggling towards birth. That's stupid. It's no crystallization of my turmoil, it was just an ordinary stress headache. But it felt... mythic. Like the aura off a migraine.

I used to get migraines, my stomach would turn and I'd get to rest my preternaturally aching bones. I wasn't a sickly child, but I couldn't be described as "strong" either. Certainly not "athletic". I don't actually remember how I looked, only what I saw. Auras, as aforementioned. Everything touched by light gave off this greenish heatless fire, the light off an oil slick but bone-dry as anything airborne. My grandmother called it "angel blood", which always pissed me off, like it was some kind of gift. She never got the way it hurt to see, the way it baked the back of my eyes, the way it felt like growing crystals on my optic nerves...

I haven't felt that sort of headache in a while. Lately it's all, well, what I reasonably know to be stress or tension or some other natural affliction of maturity... I can't help but feel it's the opposite. Call me crazy or latently religious or childish, in my superstition, I think it's a punishment. Some sort of curse. The universe wants me dead for my sickening anger, I've seethed and swallowed down so much that it's calcifying. Maybe that's just the price I pay for dealing with it but not stemming the flow.

My life is pretty easy, though. Punch-in-punch-out-from-home-from-the-computer. Trade and flip and pour attentive psyches as the money demands. A client of mine—my employer's— said he's starting a revolution. I said that's not my business. He said something about getting rid of my anger and my horn, making my body immaculate and my soul perfect; I wrote him off as a lunatic buying attention he couldn't get anywhere else.

Hot nights like this, one after another all in a row... well, you know how it goes. Get yourself a nice cold drink to keep you sane in the heat, the heat of a late night, the heat off the screen to boot, and the next night maybe it doesn't last so long. A week passes and you're knocking' back the guaranteed pair a night like work is some goddamn party. Give it a month, find yourself in August, it's so damn hot and the nutters are out in such force and suddenly you find yourself staggering around outside of the barely-conditioned air, in the raw heat, in the unfiltered night of heavy inky blankets, and it feels like a horn is about to burst from your forehead.

I listlessly traced a bony kernel in the center of my forehead. Softly picking at it, I suppose, only my fingerprints for a chisel. I felt like I was already on fire. There was a blush about—not just my face, my arms, down to my fingertips even, a terrible warmth. I felt like could turn a corner and see some broad-shouldered beast, mantle aflame, towering like an angel out of sleep, and I wouldn't even blink. I'd get no such relief, though. I knew things like that don't happen; bubbles don't break so easily. I'd wander this maze of concrete and asphalt and heat, and never meet another soul. I'd fester like this, a sac of emotions unfelt to the world, until I'd swell and burst and no one would even see.

Not yet though. For the moment, and the following, and the foreseeable future—I'd stride, silent, a man possessed or a moth with a fire inside. I would not cry and I would not cry out.

There was something metal, cold and heavy, in my pocket. I only noticed because my own skin was so hot, it... Like a magnet, it stuck, through cloth. I felt cosmic.

Help me.

The man's body was almost absurdly alcohol-based, by weight, at this point.

Help me.

"He's a regular powderkeg," they all said. From youth, his temper had gotten him in trouble. He was world-dregs, on his last leg, in exile.

Help me.

More like a tinderbox than a person. Better to burn out than to explode.

Help me.

He drew the lighter closer and closer with a drifting fascination. The flame and the moth switched places that day; the flame drew lazy, cautious loops about the fascinated moth.

Help me.

The pale yellow flame split into twin supernovas in his unmoving eyes.

Help me.

Transfixed, dead while breathing.

I need pyromancy. I need control.

And thou shalt have it. So spoke a voice in scarlet.

Those angel eyes and serpent's mouth spit fire and smoke, each, respectively. He did not grow wings but he felt feathery for an instant, a blazing instant, before everything went white and his flesh became like fire. Like a dragon he spat smoke. Like an angel he was a flying fire. Like any fire, he gave off heat. Like all heat, he was dying with a purpose; like Allangels, he was dying for a cause.

Rejoice in your new found control.

I shall.

Put it to good use.

It is willed.

Layer 02: Deathly Consciousness

I blinked and it was like I woke up. My eyes seemed to crunch. I had not slept but now Alice was up and out of bed and nowhere to be seen... Maybe I'd pulled another all-nighter on accident. I'd love to say I was researching a case or working on something but really, no, I was reading. About historically prominent works of fiction I should have experienced already. Not just the books you read in school that I never read but games and movies and comics; frivolous pictures that are still worth it. A part of me despised the idea of giving frivolity the time of day, which sounds ridiculous looking about the Reactor. One wall just, covered in shelf after shelf of mostly comics, a bit of literature, and little else. Wires and drives and a mess about a lone laptop, for "work purposes," jury-rigged into a cinema and multi-tap game console. I hated admitting how many handheld game consoles and physical copies of software I'd acquired to boot. I was just as indulgent as I would have hated to be, in that cold spartan room with nothing but meds and hate. It was a bitter existence, then; am I any sweeter now? Certainly I'm warmer, all the paper holds in the heat, but days go by where I don't work and I just drown myself. Drown, or displace the drowning.

The door opened heavily; Alice was Salamander in the silver fire of midday.

"You're still awake? Geez..."

"I could have slept while you were gone, you know."

"I was only gone for a minute."

"And you're surprised I'm not asleep already?"

"'You look like you haven't slept in weeks.' Hey, I got you something." Alice offered me a tall pink can. "They had this new energy drink, I thought you might like it. Strawberry flavor... fits your image, I suppose."

"How so? I'm not that cutesy, am I?"

"Strawberries are a member of the rose family... I figured you'd appreciate that."

"Thorns are too obvious. I think I'm more poisoned, like nightshade... this isn't poisoned, is it?"

"It's still sealed."

"Just checking. Thank you."

"For not poisoning it?"

"For thinking of me."

"It's not a big deal or anything." Alice blushed; I could have made some joke about the cliche situation but—it would have been weak, even to me. Better to let the moment pass.

"Listen, when you crash from that thing—"she flicked the can in my hand—"get some sleep. Take the bed, I'll poke around the shadow side, don't worry about me. Just... rest. Ok?"

"I'll try." I gave my best attempt at a smile; it felt weak even to me. Everything I do, I do weakly.

Alice folded herself into my shadow, I inundated myself with the concerns of the world. Hours passed like minutes; I accomplished nothing. At a certain point, I was no longer reading, but performing the act of consuming language. If someone were watching, I would appear to be intently focusing, while in actuality my attention was primarily on appearing alert. I was aware of this fact, and yet unable to re-associate the words in front of my face with their actual meaning. I tried—it felt terrible to stare, witless, at this information. But I could not discern meaning while appearing so raptly attentive. And to who?

Alice was right. I needed to sleep.

The street was, as ever, pale gray, dryly hot to the eye. Looking at it, standing on it—the metallic heat was apparent; even through thick boots, it seemed to squeal.

In this parched expanse, there was a single point of contrast, a fluttering oasis, a rest for the eyes and the rapidly boil-feeling brain. A single mocking (somehow, mocking) butterfly. It spun and danced in lazy circles, between the boundaries of empty floating and true flight. In place.

It fled instantly at approach, but another appeared instantly, as if from a fog. That was when Alistair realized—they must have been dreaming. But the discordant shimmer about the butterflies' paths, like a drainside rainbow, oil and sun and rain and water all mixed up into some hypnotic sludge... it all seemed so real.

Alright. If I'm asleep, but I feel like I'm awake, then I'll act like I am. Just in case. Deal?

Alistair continued their ardent stride, sparking with every step. They were an unwavering ghost in a faltering machine, led on by butterflies that would never end.

Alistair's shadow was, as ever, a scarred thing; a close sky, like a rooftop view, pockmarked by stars. Less a black than a deep blue or indeed, a purple, a nighttime cloud. The epitome of gloom, I thought. Fog in the dark. How hopeless. (I realize this sounds cruel enough for delusion; I mean it with all the affection in the world. I don't judge Alistair for their dark proclivities—but I do notice them, of course I do, I'm there.)

Shadowdiving was always like this; a hellish hike of metaconsciousness. With nothing else to focus on but swirling attempts, like galaxies, to care, living lives brief as stars—one's surroundings become a mirror of sorts. It's like art. What you take from the work is equal parts inherent to the piece and projected from the viewer.

Alistair mewled slightly and thrashed about in that old office chair of theirs; the swivel threatened to disintegrate into screws.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"'I cried out...'" I whispered to myself. "You cry out in your sleep, all your feelings exposed."

I wasn't sure where all this came from. Alistair was not a particularly beautiful dreamer. Not the sort to inspire quotation. Maybe it was the unconscious suffering about them; the grimly pursed grimace, skull-like. "Alistair, are you alive in those bones?" I think I asked myself, again, more than I asked them.

Regardless, my only response came in the form of—a flutter. A flutter of a dusty hairstrand, unwashed in the stale indoor wind, the old fan regurgitating air. Almost a lazy staple of the noir office.

In another life, someone would have knocked on the door to this room-like-a-closed-circle (it would be heavy with smoke, not computerized heat) and beg Alistair for their tough-guy help. Likely some femme fatale type, deep red on her lips and alcohol on her breath. Or maybe some waifish ghastly maiden fit for a ghost story.

I realized with a start this would likely be my role, and shoved my genre wanderings to the side, shuddering.

Alistair needs me more than I need them, I think. No one's coming in the Juno Reactor, anyway; it's a more closed circle than most. It's like... those shops you always read about. The ones that only show up when you need them most and want them least? I guess no one's needed us so badly since the Manticore incident—even then. Even then no one needed us so badly as to physically visit. It's all over the internet now, it all coagulates there I mean.

The days of drifting into an office are gone, I realized, and surprised myself with how little I missed the prospect.

Like all paths, the butterfly-lined one came to a head. It ended at a squat square warehouse of sand-tan stone shaped like a frozen sea—a storm-borne turbulence frozen in stone. The corner of the warehouse could not be traced with the eye, for its multitude of overlapping shapes; pressing one's cheek to the wall in hopeful approach of a monolithic impression was equally useless. The stone seemed to shift in place.

Walking along the edge, tracing the labyrinthine wall with a threadlike hand in search of a door, was equally arduous. The roguish "currents" could shred soft-enough palms. Anyone weak enough to be desperate for stability would be wounded. And maybe it was just the overwhelmingly variable texture of the bricks, shattered and stuck together; but this otherwise plainly rectangular building came across almost circular. It wasn't big enough to hold the supermassive curvature of a planet. Between the crags in the brick and the nooks in the wall, though, there was always some sort of corner ahead.

And when there's a corner, there could be a person behind it; where there's a person, there could be ill intent.

The dreamer floated on, unperturbed in lucidity. Indigo shadowchild, you hold a weightless strength. Alistair, you stand without a spine.

No one was waiting behind the first bend. Nor the second, nor the third, or fourth, or fifth. The absence of a watcher disguised the absence of a door, such that one sufficiently paranoid might forget what they were searching for.

The porous rock grew hot to the touch, like it was reverting to the core stuff of Earth. The air—baked pale—felt chilled by comparison. The phrase "We're not fighting ghosts," sprang to mind, independent of context—it just sounded right.

I was in a state of vague wakefulness. I could feel a cold pinch deep in my gut—any exposed skin stuck to the (faux?) leather chair—the notion that I had disobeyed a gentle request. A rolling guilt, or some similar stone in the stomach. A familiar motion, repetitive, approaching stillness, that cradled a growing wakefulness.

My guts felt hot and swollen like some churned-out computer left on for too long... the hot silicon under my skin threatened to consume me. It wasn't a fever, it was too dry, it was the sensation of hot metal under the skin. And yet, despite the dryness, it was a living heat, a contradictory ache, an engine alive with the power of a thousand... not horses but beasts of some description. Echoing heavysteps, a two-legged tiger in boots, pacing around upstairs. Some beast breathing in dry. Heaving pants, like it's killing itself to stay in pursuit, vomiting hot on the back of a panicked neck. That living threat feels alive, between me and my skin. Cat-and-mouse, on fire, in the body.

How disgusting... A lovely first thought in the morning. (Morning, right? Upon waking, at any rate.) The sensation deserved worse. I looked over listlessly; the chair creaked, my stomach ached. Alice was curled up—darkly, somehow, shielded—the ache went away, the heat remained.

Hey, Alistair, I wanted to say. You can tell me. Whatever happened, let it out to me.

I wanted to cry out—in response to their aimless groans: Cry out to me!

I wanted to cry out, in general. It's—this whole situation—it sit so perfectly around my throat.

Someone needs to scream out, or say something. Break this tension.

Cries are locked inside, as words escape me.

"Spontaneous Human Combustion," Alistair said to no one in particular. "You heard of it?"

That was directed at me. "Sure I have. You know I know this stuff too, you know..." I trailed off with a smile. It's no big deal. Sometimes I think Alistair is so internally focused that they lose touch with what's common knowledge.

"So there's been a rash of it lately. Some people suspect foul play—of a magickal variety."

"What about you?"

"I don't know. Nothing seems real anymore. People going up in smoke doesn't seem that extraordinary... Sometimes I think..." They did that odd gesture again—pinching their eyes and shaking their head, as if fanning away smoke with their lank hair. "It doesn't matter. The human body is a system full of potential energy, flesh is fragile. Fragile furnaces can go up in smoke so easily." They stared off with eyes near-glassy.

So cold. So blunt, like the stone on the edge of a cliff. Please don't leap. My jaw remained locked despite my concern. What happened to you?

My head was saturated with something like bleeding TV static. I knew I shouldn't just accept this; I felt helpless. Something was probably going on, and I should want to hollow myself out if that would stop it. That's what it should take for me to call myself human.

But I couldn't really move, either. Like trying to hold water in a cracked glass—it was hopeless. I was vaguely aware that I was staring at the top of my wrist, past it to the surface of my desk, past the edge of my desk to the rug, past the edge of the rug to the floor, and then back again, without moving my eyes. This is staring into space. The few feet between my viewpoint and the floor were each spaces oceanic in scope and worlds apart in texture. It was like staring down a hallway, or a road, or an alleyway in a dream.

Time passed—that's all I could say for sure. I muttered some vagueness about reading something lately before I aimed for sleep, but I don't think Alice heard me.

I took a deep breath. "These spontaneous combustion cases don't feel right. I mean, it feels wrong to accept them, morally speaking. I owe it to the world to set this right." Alice looked a little confused—I opened my mouth to explain—but she cut me off with a single, sharp, bobbing nod. Her hair flew about her, covered her face, and for a second I was flooded with this terrible, terrible feeling.

The seventh case of human combustion was like any other, save for the auspicious numbering. It's auspice and superstition that make the rules for angels, even gutter angels, though. They say a tool needs a hundred years of use to become alive? By similar rules, a trash fire needs to claim seven lives to gain form.

Layer 03: Fire Wars

Some terrible chill flooded my gut. Sour. It rose like smoke; the taste, I mean. My insides are so sour. If it's what's on the inside that counts, I'm permafrost in a bog, I'm a glass of cyanide on ice. I'm probably diabolic. If I'd been born sooner I'd have been burned as a witch; if I'd been born even earlier I'd have been divine. As it is, I exist too late...

Or so I think, on lonely early mornings. I hadn't yet slept; Alice was off in her own Wonderland. I wished I could join her. In rest, I mean, my own, parallel.

Parchment smell of old paperbacks. Pages loose like moth wings. Something fluttered; the room was cold from an overeager air conditioner.

"Why do I bother..."

"Why do you bother?"

"I'm... I'm sorry?"

"No, I am, that came out wrong. I mean, why... do this?"

"Oh. Oh, that's simple really. Proof I exist. Everyone needs a purpose, and mine better not be selfish at this point. If I can prove I existed by helping someone, then that's good; if I can prove my existence by saving someone, then that's even better."

"Hence, the heroics act."

"Don't call it an act. You and I, we're making things a little easier, right?"

"I guess so." Alice paused. "You don't have any ideals, though? No aspirations of being 'justice's ally' or anything?"

"'Course not. It would be nice, but..." I trailed off. "I guess I can't trust things like that."

I fell silent, almost-forcefully recalling the way I found out about the combustion string... That stray message on the Necronomicon fora. The address was so jumbled... numbers in threes in place of letters, it's funny: I can't even remember it. But the content of the message, I'll never forget.

Once upon a time, there were humans, but that was the past. Now there is only one; a lone girl at the end of the world. One day she will die, and humanity will go extinct. That day may be tomorrow or a hundred years from now. Today she is humanity itself, and lives with her whole lonely life ahead.

A rash of posts went up on the homepage, but subsided within the hour. The message was sent en (relative) mass, to, likely, about 15 percent of the users.

When I first found "my copy," I was underwhelmed. It was the kind of cold pitch one might find on the Necronomicon's more creatively aligned boards; well, the ones undedicated to hoaxes. The ones who admit they're writing fiction. Not really at home in messages... I went to delete it, but paused. The story had very little substance, but I had taken a liking to its method of delivery. There seemed something very human about needing to say this something to... anyone. Needing it to be heard. Using some non-malicious sort of spam to send a story about humanity's dying days... My curiosity was piqued.

I sent that abominable string of numbers a reply. I think I was the only one to do so. I certainly felt like the only one to get a response.

The discovery of fire is often thought of as the moment when humanity, first was. In a sense fire is what makes us human. Why does it seem so alien? Angels are on fire. Prometheus endured the eagle for our flames. How is fire so alien and holy and yet so human?

It's not the fire itself, it's the act of controlling it that is so human.

Fire killed the dinosaurs. It's not a human invention. Torches, and hearths, and campfires, those are human. Fire—the inferno—it's just as natural as a hurricane. Uncontrolled fire is a disaster.

We witness, now, a fire spiraling out of control. One man was sublimated into his burgeoning horn. Then another, and then a couple, walking at night, locked horns into sparks. Certainly there have been more. Six? We stand before the seventh, some point of no return...

Should you choose to intervene, or let the hurricane weather its course, I wish you well.

I felt terror bloat me inside and shrink my skin. I felt like I was becoming gristly, shrinking down and withering until only my evil parts are left. And I'm not really sure why.

A part of me thinks I was too attached to the mysticism of fire, or the image of light, or the idea of the stars. The idea of being someone who contemplates the stars. "Actually appreciating the night sky," well, that was a generous sin to sentence me with. It implies some loving humanity I'm not sure if I have anymore.

Regardless, lights still affected me deeply. My eyes were sensitive even before years of darkness; now they're rimmed in red, then a blackish yellow, over and over again. If you stroke my cheek just right, all the fatigue would pop off my face like it's spring-loaded. We could look at the rings of Saturn stained the colors of sleeplessness and bruises... "We could." Only a hypothetical we, of course, I couldn't celebrate alone...

Celebrate what?

Alistair looked so terribly despondent. "Why do I bother?"

I needled them, for some stupid reason. "Why do you bother?" I almost spat it, and surprised myself. I can't stand self-pity on other people; I know we all need to indulge in it. Even—especially—me. I shouldn't have been so angry...

Alistair looked, for their part, a little taken aback. "I'm... I'm sorry?"

"No, I am; that came out wrong." Internally, I sighed in resignment. "I mean, why... do this?"

That sharp glass shine came back into their eyes. "Oh. Oh, that's simple really. Proof I exist. Everyone needs a purpose, and mine better not be selfish at this point. If I can prove I existed by helping someone, then that's good; if I can prove my existence by saving someone, then that's even better."

I nodded, to subtly cut them off. "Hence the heroics act." God, I hope that didn't sound too judgmental, I thought.

"Don't call it an act..." They wore a hurt look. "You and I, we're making things a little easier, right?"

"I guess so." I guess so... "But—"my voice broke here, exposing my wariness— "You don't have any ideals, right?" Too worried-sounding. "No aspirations of being 'justice's ally' or anything?"

"Of course not... it'd be nice, but..." Their words ground to a babbling halt. "Guess I can't trust things like that."

It was useless talking with Alistair when they got like this. I slid sirenlike, into their restless shadow.

Before me, in the world of silhouettes and dreams, there was a stone building. Endless, like a warehouse; but perfectly featureless. "The Flat Field." Nephilim-vast. The surface gleamed, and went on forever, a mirror. I went on forever too, in its surface. My feet traced its base, my reflection stretched on forever, from a point approaching its out-of-sight end. I walked on. My endurance was oddly endless, as if greedy to fill me with nothing. Even in this stifling heat... It shouldn't be so warm already, I vaguely registered, but there was nothing to be done.

Obviously I had failed to account for something. The shadow side was never so limited as this. Maybe I'd hit the side of my head on the... calling the entrance to the night dimension a "moon pool" seemed too flip. Besides, this was shadow, not water; this was sheer gloom. My "gloom pool" pulled me into a nightmare.

From a certain point of view, the warehouse is just a hardlight shadow. It was one of those thoughts that feels like a foreign object, almost requiring an apology. No, that's stupid. Obviously it's stone.

In a dream, though?

Arguing with oneself is always a wonderful sign. I don't know what I was expecting—maybe to silence my optimistic side—but I attempted to enter the "shadowy" warehouse.

The air was black and hummed. These two facts seemed to be related, as if the atmosphere were inundated with a buzzing sort of soot. But wet. Like flakes off a stale scrape. Some vague shade loomed before me, stony in the blood-black. The air buzzed with a coppery scent. It was thick with lightning, but thunder would never come. The electrical tension would never burst. The cables are managed too perfectly, I thought, though I'm not sure why... The fog cleared a bit and the stone took shape.

I might as well have not moved at all. I had completed a cycle of sorts, with my single step, and now found myself before a matte-black rectangle, razor-thin and angled at the sky. Heightwise, it was as limitless as... as its caster.

Something told me this was, somehow, the shadow cast by that impossible wall; the one that itself seemed like the shadow of a dream.

I suddenly felt very sick. I shouldn't be looking at this. A sharp pain rang through my cheek; as if on instinct, I was gnawing myself awake. But I was conscious, too terribly conscious; there would be no waking up. How do I get... out? Up? From the Shadow Side? I couldn't remember. For all the times I'd wanted to return before, it had just... happened. I'd been hoisted from the water by my ankle, by the scruff of the neck, as if with the click of a lioness's motherly tongue. And I'd collapse, quaking. Even that was so much. And now I was down here, alone, in the guts of blood and gloom; staring down a box that looks like God, alone.