The door, a solid board of oak, is heavier than I remember. Heavy as a coffin lid. Heavy as guilt. Heavy as the burden of freedom. I push, and nothing gives. I press my whole tentacular body against its rough, worn surface: the thing barely budges.

  Maybe I’m just weaker.

  The nerves in my scorched purple hide have started to scream, unleashed from the cold, numb shock of the char and adrenaline. The knots I had tied staunched the bleeding from my tendrils, but the stubs still howl with hot agony.

  No. Beaten, burned, bloody, and heartbroken, I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. Real strength is understanding the weight you carry, the weight of your responsibility.

  I’ve made it this far. I’ve made it through the vast emptiness of space, through the horrors of the psychic woods and their haunted cabin.

  Full of holes and lead, I made it to the lake where I beat this slimy bastard once already. And through the inside of my own mind, I rebuilt that massive door. I watched Sigrid and her team fight through Hell, and I’ve seen the consequences of my actions play out in front of my own eyes. I’ve made it out of another death trap, finding myself once again on the edge of death. I don’t care. I’ve made it this far. I look down at the café model. I’m never going to stop.

  I shove my scorched bulk against the door, the vestibule to my next phase in life. Tendrils strain. Flesh sweats. Nerves scream. All that, and I know I’m alive. And I love it.

  The door creaks. It gives. It swings right open, and brighter, more vivid and alive than ever before, I see the golden ether of my mindscape still swirling with red and blue mingling into purple. Familiar as an old scar.

  Strange to see something so foreign and mystical and think, ‘Glad to be back.’ After that nightmare house, it’s almost like I’m home. But … that? What the hell is that?

  A black doorway gapes and looms before the ruins of the crumbling palace. The dozens of thick, black tendrils reaching out tangle through the windows and walls of the palace.

  Thousands of glowing eyes—red, yellow, blue, and green—glare at me from the darkness, glowing with violent mania.

  Wild maws grin so wide they look like they’d eat a bowl of scat and ask for seconds. Their dagger teeth tell me they might prefer flesh, even if it’s purple.

  Amidst the horror of that instant, a gentle, warm psychic breeze blows across my slimy skin, offering a morsel of comfort. I grab a lit cigarette from the air, taking what I can get.

  Take what I can get. That’s how I get by.

  “Mwa-ha-ha-ha!” booms a wicked laugh, resounding over the crumbling palace, shattering the quiet and curdling the air.

  “Ruined a perfectly good smoke break…”

  “Jackie,” he calls from the black portal. “Welcome to fate.”

  His eyes, his mouths, and his laugh are manic, but his words are as slow and somber as a funeral procession. Only issue: nobody had died.

  “You were wrought for ruin. You were wrought to become us, to be the beast that swallows the night. Forget the diner! Hate! You were made to hate!

  “All your life I’ve been there in the shadows of your mind, teaching, shaping, forming you for greatness! I saw it in you; the monster that could break creation. All your malice, the gift your putrid life has given you, needs is power.

  “I am that power, Jackie. Be the monster you were born to be. Devour the night, Jackie. Join with us!”

  “Are you done, asshole? I’m not joining your stupid tentacle cult. I don’t want your monster crown.”

  “It’s not a crown I offer you, but godhood! The transcendence of space and time! Might enough to end all things!”

  “I don’t want that either.” I look down at the model and clutch it tight. “I want to be a man. If I can. At least inside.” I look back at the thousands of glaring eyes. “I want to live the life I’ve been given with undying gratitude.”

  An inky black tendril shoots at me with all the vengeance of a viper.

  “Kyyyrie eleeeison!” cries a familiar voice. The voice of a friend.

  Before I can blink, a silver flash erupts— Dave, blazing like an angel of war, smashes the limb aside with a flick of his fist, parrying death as easily as a master pugilist parries his newest student.

  “You’ll keep your slimy arms to yourself,” says Dave like a hero from a dream. He returns to his sacred chanting, a warcry for a holy battle: “Kyrie eleison.”

  He floats in the ether as if standing in solemn prayer with his palms together, but his body is no monk’s.

  He’s different now.

  The muscles of his marble limbs and back are hardened and toned like a titan’s. A warrior mightier than the gods of Olympus in their marble glory.

  A strongman’s dream.

  The dark stubble, thicker than a bear’s fur, clings to his iron jaw. The man could crush Rome in all its might with that jaw alone.

  “You don’t remember, do you Dave?” says the wicked voice. “Or maybe it hasn’t happened for you yet.”

  Holding two fingers up to the monstrosity leaking through the portal, he says, “It’s not your time.”

  “Mwa-ha-ha-ha! You remember something! But still you forget: I am beyond time, you lost slave. Return to your master and eat from his hand like the stray you are.”

  How can something be ‘beyond time’?

  “You would know if you’d join me, Jack.”

  “Damn. I forgot you’re in my thoughts.”

  “What answers has this slave given you? I will give you them all and more.”

  “Deceiver!” says Dave with all the conviction of a choir of martyrs. “You’ll give him nothing and take everything, just like your master, the Father of Lies.”

  “I have no master. I serve no one!”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Hey, Dave,” I say. “That’s enough jawing, don’t you think?” I toss my cigarette butt to the side, stretching my tendrils as I shloop forward. “This ink-soaked octopus doesn’t know when to shut his yaps. I say we shut’em for him. Send him on with his way to Hell, or wherever it is abominations like him belong.”

  Looking over his shoulder, Dave throws me another one of his signature smiles.

  “I think you’ve got the right idea, Jack. Let’s show him how you plan on getting by from now on.” Then revelations hits him like a bolt of lightning. “What happened to you? You’re all charred and cut up.”

  “I made lightning. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m a burned ball of purple pasta. I’m as okay as it gets. Now, let’s give the king of squids over there a life lesson or two from the school of hard knocks.”

  Dave flashes a thumbs up and launches through the air like a comet, a hero from the pulp pages of a comic book. I shloop after him like spaghetti in a food fight.

  The squid-king swipes at Dave, his massive inky tendril as quick and violent as a bullwhip, but the marble man bats it away with the sign of the cross and a burst of silver light. With more crosses, he bats away more tendrils. I freeze, struck with heavenly awe.

  Incredible. Bizarre, but incredible.

  “When peace flows through you as a river, nothing can harm you.” His voice echoes with strength and resolve. “This is the invincible might of Heaven, the holy gift of ceaseless prayer! Kyrie eleison!”

  “Then,” says the monstrocity in the dark, “you have remembered.”

  What?

  “Yes. I remember now: the day you struck me down from Heaven.”

  What?!

  “How does it feel to know you created your own demise?”

  “You made your decisions. Kyrie eleison. You chose your own path.”

  “You started me down this road. I merely followed where it led. I should thank you.”

  “You should repent!”

  “Repentance is for the weak!”

  “Truly. Kyrie eleison. All the more reason yours is of utmost pertinence,” says Dave, his arms out as wide as a martyr’s on a cross. He alights in a brilliant force of shining rays that hammer my eyes closed. “Kyrie eleison! Your subservience to your passions has crippled you! Repent, lost one! Be free from the Hell you’ve made for yourself! Kyrie eleison!”

  A thousand maws with their needly teeth open to howl in agony, sending a roar of hate and fury forth from the black portal. The long, wicked arms of the beast recoil like dying serpents.

  “Your words are nonsense!” spits the monstrosity. “Sorsha! Rise, you wretched banshee!”

  A crackle snaps behind me. Black electric bolts dance about the ruins. His tangling tendrils writhe. Sorsha soars from the rubble like a rocket, shooting high into the ether. The black electric webs flicker across her charred skin, the porcelain white knitting itself whole.

  She’s recovering!

  “Destroy his model!” yells the monstrosity. “Crush his dreams to dust!”

  “Try it.” I snatch another cigarette from the ether as I clutch the café tight.

  “Why, Jack?” Sorsha’s voice is as soft and sincere as a knife wrapped in silk. As she points her gun-arm at me, she really means those words. “Why must you torture yourself so?”

  “To exist is to suffer,” I say, blowing a cloud of smoke. “To suffer is the chance to grow. I want to be more than I am. I’m not interested in this game of ending it all.”

  “All the suffering across all the galaxies of creation: you could end it all in a moment if you’d just join us!”

  “Look, I don’t get all this crazy space-time stuff you’re talking about. My brain’s sore as it is. All I know is this guy sounds like Death. Me? I want to sound like life, the whisper in your ear that tells you love, tells you to strive, tells you to be all you can be.”

  “You’re an idiot! It’s pointless!”

  I shrug.

  “So’s burning the whole thing down. I’ll take my chances with the other road.” I take another long drag. “You don’t have to fight me, you know.”

  “What?!”

  “I’ll need help running this place. You’d make a fine waitress. Could be fun.”

  “Fun! In this existence?” she charges her gun. “You just don’t understand! I’ll show you what real torment is then!”

  “Suit yourself,” I say, tossing my cigarette butt before I rush through the ether toward her.

  She opens fire. The blasts look as slow to me as baseballs tossed in the backyard.

  I slip around the white-blue rounds of energy, holding the model safe and tight in my tendrils.

  “But to truly live,” I continue, “is to face that suffering with love and dignity. I will truly live, Sorsha! I will not yield to death!”

  Her woebegone eyes flash wide like my words struck her across the face. Her flaxen hair blows gently in the ether. She furrows her brow with iron resolve and transforms both of her arms into blades of white-blue light. She dashes forward to kill me.

  We meet above the ruins, clashing in a storm of blows. With instinct, my tendrils fill with psychic energy. A pink glow. Sparks fly. Our psychic energies scream with each clash.

  I’m parrying her, I think, watching the sparks fly. She can’t cut through me. I just have to pummel this robo-ghost-broad until she yields!

  Again and again, I strike her, but neither of our assaults yields any harm against the other.

  Ah, what the heck: let’s try it again.

  “White Lightning Strike!”

  A bolt of white lightning falls from above and—

  Sorsha catches the electric doom on the blade of her right arm, drawing it in.

  “You caught me off guard once,” she says as she dashes up and away, pointing her blade at me as it crackles with my white lightning. “Never again. Named technique: Runic Reflection!”

  In a bright flash, the lighting jumps from her blade to me. I explode in a hellish burst. I can feel my flesh peeling back from the shock and immolation of the attack.

  Boy, this hurts! Hurts a lot… Is it safe though?

  Blinded by pain, I can still feel a tentacle wrapped around the model. I can also feel chunks of flesh missing from my face.

  Sleepy.

  ‘Yes!’

  Why does a tentacle monster need to sleep?

  “Jack!”

  Everything turns red.

  “Raaagh! Get! Out! Of my! Head!”

  “Kill, Jack!” cries the monstrosity. “Let the rage fill you! Kill her! Become the monster you were meant to be.”

  “No, Jack!” cries Dave. “Use it. Do not let your passion master you. You’re no slave. You’re a free man!”

  “Kill her?” asks Sorsha to no one in particular.

  I suck in the ether like a whale trying to drink the ocean. As my body feeds off the psychic energy, swelling to gigantic proportions, the red fury saturates my mind and vision.

  Don’t be a slave, Jack.

  I look down at the model in one of my tendrils. The red fury abates slightly.

  Remember the dream. Live for it.

  A static hiss floods my brain. Words no longer contain my thoughts; I am driving the machine of instinct, steering haphazardly by raw conviction. It is a sensation words fail to describe.

  I grab Sorsha. I throw her to the dark portal. She disappears into the sea of eyes and maws.

  Next, I grapple the monstrosity, tangling my tendrils with his like two octopi locked in mortal combat.

  “Mwa-ha-ha-ha!” His wicked laugh paralyzes me with fear, like a deer in headlights. “Yes! Come! Challenge me, and I’ll show you real strength. I’ll make you hunger for power, for freedom like you’ve never hungered for it before. The slave never knows he’s starving until he leaves the cave and sees the master’s table.”

  I feel my flesh tearing as he pulls on my tendrils, and the revelation that he’s going to tear them off floods my brain like a red ocean. The dam of reason breaks within me.