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.

  “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!”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “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?”

  I shloop away again.

  “What good’s a hussy over a dream?” My tentacles curl like clenched fists. “Move.”

  “You’d hit a girl?”

  Again with the eyes. That’s the only trick these broads can pull.

  “No. I’d throw you.”

  “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. I shloop. Then, I realize: the broad’s holding on!

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

  I rip 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: move, hussy.”

  “So, you would hit a girl!” Her eyes well with tears. “Typical man! No! A monster! You’re just a monster!”

  “And I’d do again!”

  She quits with the crocodile act and laughs like a wicked witch.

  “Hahaha! You’re one step closer, Jackie. One day. One day, this all ends. You rule the stars. You rule me. Your queen. Ever loyal. Ever true. Isn’t that what you always wanted: a dame who stays and loves you to the end of time?”

  “Sweetheart, I put that dreams like that down like a rapid dog and buried them twice as deep when—” I shake myself like a wet dog. “Stars? Queen? What do you even mean, lady?” I point to the model. “This! This or nothing, now! No broad’s gonna block me!”

  ‘She’s on our side, Jackie.’

  Not you again!

  ‘Let her have you.’

  Get out! Get out!

  ‘All she wants is you!’

  “Listen to him, Jackie.” She bites her finger, then runs it down her—

  I look away.

  “He only wants what’s best for a monster like you. Such a handsome fiend you are.”

  “You’re as cracked. Cracked as dry clay.”

  “If you won’t stay willingly, Jackie,” she says, playing innocent like it’s the name for a game of cards. She points her hands at me. They flip down like trap doors, transforming her arms into—

  Guns?

  “I’ll just have to hold you at gunpoint.” Even with two guns, she’s still playing cards. I hate fake innocence.

  Guns.

  “Peh,” I snort. “This is my mind, sweetheart. In here, I call the shots, and the shots—”

  Pew!

  A blue-white bolt flies from the barrel of her left arm. Snaps through one of my tendrils. A neon green spray of blood.

  “Gah! What the hell?”

  The house shakes again.

  “Let it fall,” she says like a cold empress. “Let this paltry shack crumble. Let our master devour you. Become what you were meant to be. Become—”

  She’s yacking, and I’m shlooping. Fast as I can down the next hallway.

  She screams a wicked laugh behind me. I turn an eye or two to look. There she is already. She points her arms. She shoots.

  The rounds come at me like a swarm of hornets, white-hot, relentless hate. I duck and dodge. They whiz by, humming with malice.

  I weave over and under fallen beams. No quarter. No cover. The white shots snap through the wood with all the force of shotgun slugs.

  My tendril leaking bad, I twist it into a knot and pull it tight, 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 this house, or is there something else going on?

  No time for questions, Jack. This broad’s trying to kill you! Hah. Not the first time. Might even say it’s how I get by at this point, I think, remembering Laura Softson and her stupid game that caught me up in all this.

  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, Jackie,” she says, still an icy cold empress this time.

  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 works.

  “Go sell your crazy next door, sweetheart!” I yell as I knot up my other tendril. “I hear they’re always looking for a good time.”

  Like a whisper once again, she’s here. Beside me with eyes as tender as every dame who ever told me I was tall, dark, or handsome. She runs her porcelain fingers across my purple hide again, cold as a Russian grave.

  “Give in,” she whispers. “The world hates you. Hate it back, and don’t think twice about it.”

  How is she inside my head?

  “All you need is me.” She leans against me. “That little café’s just a pipe dream keeping you from what you’re meant to be.”

  Is she ghost or machine?

  “That’s it, Jackie.” She pets me like a dumb dog. “Just wait. Let our master have 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 cracks from my brain, a blinding and brutal flash that hits her square. She wails with the agony of a banshee. Flames bloom beneath her feet, searing my flesh before I can shloop away.

  Still holding the café model, I shake off the hurt and scram with gritting teeth.

  “Don’t look so shocked, dollface. All I said is we don’t want any.”

  My pace has dropped to a crawl, but I’m still going. Still shlooping forward.

  The winds of change must have blown enough; the house of cards isn’t so crumbly anymore. Even the voice’s black tendrils took a hint and beat it.

  “Incredible,” she says, anguish hanging on her voice like clothes on a rack. “You’ve already discovered named techniques. You really are a handsome fiend.”

  “The whole hussy act really isn’t gonna work on me. Like I said: get a coat on.”

  Named techniques? More space stuff to ask Dave about. Maybe he’ll actually know something about this time.

  Come on, you stupid purple body. Heal already. Why couldn’t I have imagined myself not getting burned?

  Things get familiar: I’m in the same hall I raced through with Teddy. Eyes blurry, I blink hard.

  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 nightmare. A house of chains wants you dead. Maybe it wants to be dead, too.

  Never thought about what a house wants before. I let the dumb idea make me laugh a little to try and forget the pain. All of it.

  ‘Escape the prison. Yes! Join us. We’ll show you true freedom. Freedom beyond the walls of the cage you call a universe. Do what thou wilt, Jackie! That’s all that matters.’

  I see the door, wide open with the ether’s glow pouring in like daylight. The door where I met my 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.