The house shakes down to its bones with a rumble that rattles down to my teeth.

  What the heck is that?

  Dust sifts from the ceiling. The naked, hanging bulb swings. Its yellow light wrestles with shadows.

  How is there an earthquake in my head?

  The figurines jitter on the shelves, teetering like fools toward the edge.

  Whatever. I’ll just imagine it away.

  A beam drops into the room, smashing racks and models on its way down, tossing splinters up as it crashes.

  No dice! Time to scram!

  I snatch up the model café, light as a dream, and I shloop to the door. The bulb pops behind me, glass tinkling like shattered hopes. I rip the door open and slam it behind me as I shloop on through to the other side.

  A deep, wicked laugh rolls up the stairwell. Deep. Cruel. All too familiar.

  I don’t wait.

  I shloop up the stairs, hauling tail like a meat wagon, sure hoping I don’t need one. Boards snap under my tendrils. Rotten hunks collapse into darkness.

  Not an earthquake, I realize. Stops me dead halfway up the stairs. I look over my shoulder, proverbially, down into the orphean black of the stairwell.

  A haunted house of cards and the winds of change are blowing. The house—my could-bes, my might’ve-beens—this is their swan song, their long goodbye off into the big sleep.

  ‘Which way then, Jackie?’

  The only way is up.

  ‘What’s got you so sure now?’

  Commitment’s a sharp blade. She carves off the fat and leaves you bleeding choices.

  I let an eye look down at the model café. Another eye looks up at the top of the stairwell.

  This thing is up. So, that’s where I’m—

  Another beam crashes through the walls and on the steps behind me. Riddles my skin with goose pimples as I flinch in shock.

  Who builds a place like this?! Go, Jack! Go! Get a move on!

  [ YOU’RE GONNA CARRY THAT WEIGHT. ]

  Shlooping through cobwebs and around overturned, broken furniture, I make my way to the foyer as best as I can figure it, slipping and sliding around corners and down hallways, kicking up a trail of dust as I race through the maze of my mind.

  Beams fall and crush the halls behind me. Then, in front of me. I shloop through them, slick as a fish through weeds. Women wail behind closed doors like banshees grieving in the night.

  ‘Hurry, Jackie. Hahaha!’

  That laugh again, slick as oil, cold as frostbite.

  Shut! Up!

  ‘Shloop, shloop! As fast as you can! You’ll never catch me; I’m the Tentacle-Man!’

  When I get out of here, I’m shlooping back into that lake, and I’m going to kill you!

  ‘Hahaha! You’re so full of piss and vinegar, Jackie. Keep that up. We like that about you.’

  A T-intersection. Ghoulish bats whip right, wings flitting above my head, rushing down the collapsing hall and turning right.

  Do I follow?

  To the left, a spectral spider. Big as a pony. White as bleached bones. All eight of his eyes glint with shock and hunger. He starts a mad scramble for me.

  I follow the bats—

  ‘Keep shlooping, Jackie.’

  —shlooping through busted beams—

  ‘We’re out here.’

  —dust catching my eyes—

  We’re waiting for you.’

  —I drive on, half-blind.

  ‘Hungry for you.’

  Rubble slams down, choking the hall. Dead-ended. I look up. There’s enough space to shloop up to the next floor. I look behind me. The spider weaves through the broken beams and fallen debris.

  “Take what you can, Jack!” I yell, shlooping up. “I’m not letting that thing near me!”

  Black tendrils tear through the walls, floor, and ceiling, snatching at me. Snatching at the café.

  I weave like a halfback threading holes in the defense, the café swaddled in my tendrils. Dauntless. Rushing. Charging. I refuse to lie down and die. I refuse to lay down the dream.

  I hit a parlor. A broad’s standing in there. She’s gorgeous as the summer moon, as spectral as a winter breeze.

  “Why, Jack?”

  Her gold spun flutters on a secret breeze. She lowers her chin, her porcelain face. Chest rises as she holds her hands behind her back. Her lips pout gently, and she tops it all off with eyes that’d make a puppy dog cry.

  “Don’t you want me?”

  Moonbeams pass through her white slip, thin enough to make a priest blush.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Want you? I don’t even know you!” I yell, whipping a tentacle down to vault myself over her. “Get a coat, hussy!”

  Mid-air, a black tendril swats me down. I hit the wood floor with a wet slap and dry oof!

  She saunters over. Looks down on me with her porcelain face, perfect and cold. Her slip whispers bad choices to me.

  “I could be your everything, Jack. Don’t you want everything?”

  “I told you: I don’t even know you!”

  “Oh, we’ve met.” Her voice is liquid silk pouring into whatever this body’s got for ears—“We’ve met before, and we’ll meet again.”—and I couldn’t care less.

  “You’re with him!”

  “You’ll see.” She giggles like she thinks it’s cute. “Soon. Just wait.”

  The world shakes around us.

  “No.”

  “Come on, Jack. Stay with me. He promised you to me.”

  She runs her fingers, then her hand, across my purple skin.

  “Bad deal, dollface.” I shloop back. You keep your distance in this line of work. “I’m here to scram.”

  I heft the model café.

  “See this? That’s my future. That’s my café, and I’ll build this dream with my own tendrils.”

  Like a whisper through time, she’s next to me again. She gazes into one of my eyes, hers as rich as sapphires. I feel her cold body against my hot hide. She runs a porcelain hand across me. Lips as red as bloody roses, she says:

  “Oh, Jack. What good is a dream against the hands of fate and destiny?”

  “Lady, if you puff on a pipe, you’re bound to get smoke. You don’t want this smoke.” My tentacles curl like clenched fists.

  “Are you threatening to hit a girl?”

  “No. I’m threatening to throw you out of my way and into a wall.”

  “I can’t let you pass, Jack.”

  “That’s it.” I snag her around the waist and toss her to the side. As she sails across the room, I start shlooping forward. Then I realize: she hasn’t let go.

  When she lands with all the grace of an alley cat, she yanks my tentacle like the string of a yo-yo.

  I sail through the air like a line drive, curling my tendrils tight, and blam!

  “Cannonball!”

  Surprised, she pulls her arms into a guard at the last second, sliding across the floor under the force of my attack.

  “I told you: you don’t want this smoke, doll face.”

  “So, you would hit a woman.”

  “What?! You yanked me into you! I was just flying through the air in an uncontrolled manner. More like falling, really.”

  “You’re one step closer, Jack. One day. One day this struggle will be over, and you’ll go on to rule the universe. There, I’ll be at your side. Ever loyal. Ever faithful. Isn’t that what you always wanted: a woman who would never betray you.”

  “Sweetheart, that dream died a long time ago when my ex-wife stabbed her talons in my back. Look at this!” I point to the model. “I told you: this is my dream now, and there’s no way I’m letting some broad stand in my way.”

  ‘When will you understand? She’s on your side, Jack. She’s with us, as soon you will be too.’

  I told you to get out of my head.

  “Listen to him. He only wants what’s best for a monster like you. Such a handsome creature you are.”

  “Now you’re really not making sense.”

  “If you won’t stay willingly, Jack,” she says as she points her hands at me. They fold down like trap doors, opening her forearms up, transforming them into…

  Guns?!

  “I’ll just have to hold you at gunpoint.”

  Guns.

  “Peh,” I snort at her. “What good will that do? This is my mind you’re inside. I control—”

  Pew! A single white-blue blast flies from the barrel of her left arm. The snaps through one of my outstretched tendrils, releasing a green spray of blood.

  “Gah! What the hell?”

  The house shakes again.

  “Let it come. Let this paltry shack crumble. Let our master devour you. Become what you were meant to be. Become—”

  I shloop off as fast as I can down the next hallway.

  “Hey!” I hear her scream behind me.

  I turn an eye or two to look behind me. There she is, pointing her arms.

  She shoots.

  I bob and weave between the flurry of rounds, swinging over and under fallen beams. They offer no cover: the white shots burst through them with the force of shotgun slugs.

  I twist my shot off tendril into a knot and pull it tight to staunch the bleeding, gritting my teeth through the pain.

  Why can’t I just imagine a new one? Why can’t I imagine anything anymore? I’ve lost control. Is it because I’m in here or is there something else going on? No time for questions, Jack. This broad’s trying to kill you! Not the first time a broad’s tried to kill me, though. You might even say it’s how I get by.

  Pew! Another white-blue slug rips through a tendril, cutting it off at the end.

  “Hey! That hurts, lady!”

  “I can hurt you so much more, Jack.”

  I leap over an upside-down table and flip it up as a cover.

  Come on. Block her shots. Hold!

  I feel the white-blue slugs slam into it like hammers trying to pound nails.

  It worked.

  “Look, I’m not buying what you’re selling. Maybe try the neighbors. I hear they’re always looking for a good time. Maybe go hurt them.”

  Suddenly, she’s on the other side of the table with me. She runs her porcelain fingers across my purple hide.

  “Give in. Waste no more time. Realize what you’re truly meant to be. That silly café is just a distraction.”

  How is she inside my head? She’s some kind of robot.

  “That’s it, Jack. Just wait. Let our master consume you.”

  Robots can’t come in here. Maybe she’s just part robot.

  “Let it all collapse, and from the rubble…”

  If she is, I bet a good bolt of lightning would fry her.

  “…you will rise…”

  Lightning. Lightning. Lightning!

  “…as something new.”

  “White Lightning Strike!”

  A white bolt bursts down from the ceiling, striking the robot broad in a bright, blinding flash. She wails with the agony of a banshee. Fire erupts beneath her feet, burning me.

  Shaking off the pain, I shloop away, still holding the café model. Gritting my teeth, I leave the robot-broad to smolder. My pace has dropped to a crawl, but the house or palace or whatever you want to call this nonsensical maze of hallways, dust, and cobwebs ceases to collapse. The beams aren’t falling anymore. The tendrils are gone.

  “Incredible,” she calls with anguish hanging on her voice like clothes on a rack. “You’ve already discovered named techniques.”

  Great. More space stuff to ask Dave about. Maybe he’ll actually know something about this one. Come on, you stupid purple body. Heal already. Why couldn’t I have imagined myself not getting burned?

  I’m in the same hall I raced through with Teddy. I blink away bleary eyes.

  This is it, Jack. This is what it’s going to be like trying to escape the prison you’ve built for yourself. That’s what this place is: a prison. The future can be a dream, but you’ve built a house of chains. That house wants you dead. Maybe it wants to be dead itself.

  Never thought about what a house wants before.

  ‘Escape the prison. You’re exactly right. Join us. We’ll show you true freedom. Freedom beyond the walls of the cage you call a universe.’

  And there it is before me: the open door in the foyer where I met the boy. My son. Sorry, Teddy. Sorry, Reagan. Sorry, Missy. I’ve racked up too many debts, and now it’s time to pay. You’ll never get the chance to live. Never have the chance to be.

  You don’t deserve that. Everyone deserves a chance to live. I think. Maybe. I don’t know, but either way: I’m sorry. Sorry for who I was. I’m not going to be sorry for who I’ll be though.

  I shloop forward and out the door.