They were so self-absorbed. I wasn’t here for them, and I wasn’t here to become a Grim Reaper. I was here because… Because what?
I wanted to save the world from monsters.
Maybe I was the one who was self-absorbed.
I was poking the last pieces of a generous slice of cheesecake around my plate when Aunt Katia materialized out of thin air. She looked transparent at first, then little by little, she gained substance. I dropped my fork. I jumped off the bar stool in my open-space kitchen and hugged her.
“Oh my God, finally,” she whispered in my hair.
I squeezed her for dear life.
“I missed you so much. Where were you? I needed you, I didn’t know how to reach you,” I said as I clung to her.
“Honey, I was here all along. When you didn’t come to visit me, I came to see you. Imagine my shock when I found you at the Karmic Asylum! I tried to talk to you, but they had already pumped you full of meds, and you simply couldn’t see me, hear me, you couldn’t even sense my presence. I touched your face, your hair… I pinched you! Oh my God, I tried everything! It was as if I didn’t exist. I visited you almost every day, watched over you…”
I pulled away, holding her at arm’s length. “Did anyone see you?”
“No. I only came to see you in your room, and usually at night. You couldn’t sleep. If those meds had at least helped you sleep, but you spent most of your nights tossing and turning or staring at the ceiling. You’d only fall asleep in the morning, and then they’d wake you up to take your meds before breakfast. It was horrible! Unspeakable! I couldn’t understand why you couldn’t sleep, because I peeked in the other rooms, and most of the patients had no issues sleeping. I thought it might have had something to do with your being a dream jumper. The potions they made you drink inhibited your natural talent to dream and travel, so they also messed up your sleep. I asked around back at home, but no one could confirm that to me. You’re the first human in history to have been put in the Karmic Asylum.”
I laughed bitterly. “Wow. I always seem to be the first to do the stupidest, craziest things. I should be breaking some supernatural world record soon.”
She didn’t find that funny. She took my face between her hands and looked me in the eyes. Sky-blue met sky-blue. She was only my aunt, but we looked so similar that one could’ve thought we were mother and daughter.
“Are you alright?”
“I can see you, so yes. I still can’t dream jump, though. And I can’t teleport either.”
She nodded. “They had you on some pretty strong stuff. It will take time for your system to recover fully.”
“I took Akkadia Aeterna. I thought it would fix everything, but it didn’t.”
“How much did you take?”
“Just one stem… I only have one left, so…”
“You should have taken more.” She pulled me in again and kissed my forehead.
I didn’t want to tell her that I’d given some of my Akkadia Aeterna to Adrian for his daughter. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t have understood, because Aunt Katia was such a good, kind woman. But it was a long story that I didn’t feel like getting into now. I would’ve had to also tell her about Adrian and what had happened between us, and I wasn’t ready yet.
We sat at the bar, and I fixed us both some drinks.
“Yoli, what happened? They all say you tried to take your own life, but I know you. You’d never do such a thing. I want to know the truth, and I don’t care how ugly it is.”
I laughed. “What can be uglier than trying to take my own life?”
“You didn’t. But something tried to make you do it, something or someone pushed you to the edge.”
I nodded. I sipped my gin and tonic and thought for a minute. How could I phrase it so she’d understand?
“I jumped to the universe of the cosmic beings.”
“Okay…”
“A few times. I don’t know how many. I lost count at some point. I couldn’t find the flower the first time, so I tried again. Failed. Then tried again and again, thinking that if I just persevered…”
“Did you land on the point of neutrality first?”
“Yes!”
“Describe it to me.”
I furrowed my brows. Since I’d taken Akkadia Aeterna, my memories had come back to me, but describing the universe of the Great Old Ones was just as difficult as ever. Details shifted as I thought about them, words escaped me. It had been a sensory experience more than anything, so trying to assign adjectives to what I saw, heard, felt… was almost futile.
“I think it was like an island in the ocean. There was this dark fog surrounding me, I couldn’t see much. I was alone, and it felt like… no matter how much I tried to get a grasp of the place, I couldn’t. I did what you told me, grounded myself, imagined roots growing into the soil beneath me, and when I felt comfortable enough, I jumped into the network of the cosmic spawns.”
“But did you feel safe? Did you feel at peace, and like nothing could ever hurt you?”
“Not particularly…”
“How did you feel?”
“I felt like…” I tried to remember. It took me a few seconds. “I don’t know. I felt like I’d lost my connection with my physical self. I felt like I was there and there alone. When I dream travel, I’m always aware of both my bodies: the etheric one and the physical one. But when I reached the point of neutrality, I felt like… that was it. That was me, I was there, and the body I’d left behind in my dimension had nothing to do with me anymore. I don’t know how to explain it.” I chuckled because what I was about to say was going to sound stupid. “I couldn’t feel myself breathing in this dimension. My chest rising and falling, my eyes moving under my lids. I’d asked someone to watch over me as I attempted the jump, and I knew he was still there, but I couldn’t sense his presence. I remember this thought crossing my mind… I was Yolanda, the person who was standing on that island of fog, not the mass of skin, muscle, and bone I’d left behind.”
“Disconnect.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s what you felt.” She leaned over the bar and took my hands in hers.
“Yolanda, that wasn’t the point of neutrality.”
“What?”
“That must have been just another dimension in the network of the cosmic spawns. And when you jumped, you didn’t jump from the point of neutrality to one of their worlds, but from one of their worlds to another. You never found the point of neutrality, and therefore you lost pieces of yourself. Every time you dream traveled to their network, you lost more and more pieces of your own soul.”
“But how? I did everything right. I did everything you told me.” I pulled out the map she’d drawn for me and placed my finger on the X that marked the point of neutrality. “I jumped here. Okay? I focused on this exact place, and I jumped here.”