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Is he even awake?
He must be. It’s so cold.
George woke disoriented, a foggy sense of self encompassing him. His memory feels detached. Who is he, really? He dragged a hand across his face, wondering if he could tell by touch whether this was reality or not. Chilly skin beneath fingers roughened by sword and bow callouses—no, it felt the same in both states. His hands have gotten dry. Silky skin by his neck, by his face—stubble beneath his fingers, but his hands—dry and worn.
“George? You up?” Sapnap questioned. “George?”
George kicked off the covers. Has he dreamt about Sapnap before? No. He doesn’t think he has. It could be real. George isn’t surprised Sapnap’s let himself in. His black hair waves around his face, the thick humid heat of the day leaving it a curtain. He’s standing near the door—everything seems so hazy. It was sharper when he dreamt—or was it the other way around? Were dreams hazy? “Sapnap?” George asked.
“Oh, good,” Sapnap said, beaming at him. He’s dressed and armored. His netherrite glints with enchantments. “I knew you’d be home, but sometimes you’re so out of it, George. I tried stopping by the other day to suggest you take a house in Kinoko, but…” Why doesn’t he finish the sentence? George knows what he means. A shrug. George swallowed dry air. His tongue felt off. When has he last ate? But he doesn’t feel hungry. “You were asleep.”
“Oh,” George said. And that’s that. This must be waking life—it had to be, right?
…
The closest he’s ever gotten to death is what he’s experienced in his sleep.
For most, that would mean nothing—nightmares of falling, nightmares of being hunted down and killed—for George, the first time it rubbed him wrong was the night Dream took his crown.
Death is not the end of a life, but the purgatory and memories superseding the living body that once roamed. It is a word. A concept.
It is Wilbur.
George wondered why death wrapped him in his embrace, when he was in possession of all his lives. He dreams of an in-between. A train station. There are trains elsewhere. In the land between servers, there’s trains. But those stations are crowded, the players packed together as doors endlessly close and open. They’re loud. George remembers the last one he rode on the back from championships, chatter and laughter echoing around and he knew—Dream’s eyes on his across on another seat—the unspoken feelings.
Back to the chaos, George? Will we speak again, or will you drift off?
But this station is deserted. The ticket booth is null, its glossy windows boarded over and its timetable scratched out. Even peaking through the boards, the ticket booth is nothing, but dark void inside. George wondered why he dreamt of train stations; he hasn’t left the server in so long. Maybe it’s wishful thinking. He wants to leave now.
He wants to feel Dream’s hand resting between his shoulder blades, a sideways smile and a soft assurance even if they’re on opposing teams of his friendship. Between events the way their legs touch. The way Sapnap plops down and for a moment, they’re free of the weight of who they should be.
It’d be easier. No conflicts he doesn’t want to be a part of. No guidelines, no laws, no rules that are being laid at his feet—George wants the clear skies and his sword sturdy in his hand, without fear of permanent retribution for swinging it. Blood is nothing to him. Death is for everyone else.
The ticket booth is beside a sign warping and twisting with words that he cannot read. It makes a faint humming noise. It is malfunctioning. Its green glow assaults his eyes until he moves them. It is not worth attempting to read.
A faint clipping noise. Cards. Being shuffled then laid out on a concrete floor. Rhythmic. Steady. George turns his head. Out of all the people to dream about, he doesn’t think Wilbur should be one. He wasn’t a figure for George’s waking mind either. He was a background noise for George. He sits ungracefully on the floor. Cards are laid out in front of him in a solitaire array that’s incomplete. The deck, even from where he stands, is old and rough. His eyes are heavy—the green light catches on the streaks of silver in his hair.
Sure, he’d been a pretty man. Before he’d properly joined the server, he’d been decent enough to even chat with. A lyricist. But then he’d been a little too set on his cause and George hadn’t cared for either side’s philosophies or battles. There was better things for him to do.
But it’s his dream. George walks over to him. He can’t hear his footsteps here. “Solitaire?” George judges.
If it’s possible to scare a dead man, he does. Wilbur flinches. A coil that’s tightly wound in his body springs free. Brown eyes shooting up. His hands with the cards still. A small tilt of the head. A question. “George?”
“You’re playing solitaire. Why?” George questions.
Wilbur looks at his cards, after a moment and a laugh that George can’t hear, he continues laying them out. One gloved hand comes up to scratch at his neck, and George is stricken with how bony and pale his fingers are. The green light from the malfunctioning screen gives him an ethereal glow. He’s phantom like. “Why not? I have a deck. I’m ghastly alone; set to sit at a train station for all eternity—I think it’s a rather fitting game,” Wilbur remarks.
“What even is this place?” George asks. He wishes he was wearing sleeves. The cold is beginning to bite at his arms. “It’s dreary. Dark.”
“My purgatory,” Wilbur says. He pauses, his fingers tapping on a card. Tip. Tap. Tip. Tap. Tip. A pause. The man leans back on his arms, fixing George with a quizzical, maddening stare. “Which is why I have to ask why you’re here?”
George shrugs. “I’m dreaming. Isn’t it my dream, so why are you here?” George questions. Wilbur tilts his head. Sighs. He sets the unused part of the deck down and begins arranging what cards he can.
“Or you died in your sleep.” When George doesn’t begin balling or arguing otherwise, Wilbur lets the silence between them grow. He leans forward again, his back hunched uncomfortably as he lays out his cards. “Dead people visit each other. Sometimes,” Wilbur says. He starts tapping again. Tip. Tap. Tap. Tip. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tip. Tap. Tip. Tap. Tap. “But you’re not dead, George.”
“No, I’m not,” George confirms.
“Stay that way,” Wilbur advises.
…
When George’s dream shifts and the cold air of the train station warms, and the glowing green screen finally fades, he feels someone watching him. Out of the corner of his eye he sees something inhuman. Its form shifts constantly, unsure. Its gaze does not fade until well after he’s awake. As he brushes his teeth at his sink, he can feel it somewhere out of sight.
…
Death is Schlatt.
Rotting. Festering. An old stain in someone’s home. Dog hair they find months after it’s burial. The birthday card they sent years ago.
It’s another dream. He’s stressed. It’s when Dream’s first imprisoned. Whenever he’s stressed about something, his dreams become more vibrant. He sleeps longer. Drawn into a world that isn’t his.
Unlike Wilbur, Schlatt’s purgatory seems to warp into the living world, but not quite. There’s a line. An area his ghost becomes off when it crosses. George sees it twice before he sees Schlatt within his purgatory. The first time George dreamt of it—it was empty. The second time, he followed a duck inside—long story short, the duck pecked him. The third—George’s ears are assaulted by over-exaggerated work out grunting.
It’s his dream, and he’s not listening to it.
“Shut up,” George says immediately.
A weight clatters. George wants to roll his eyes when he sees only ten pounds were added to the bar on either side, but he’s no more the gym buff. Up stands Schlatt, ruined suit on display. Beneath the once luxury, his mangled corpse of a human-sheep hybrid. “The fuck you doing here, George?” Unlike Wilbur, Schlatt’s eyes sparkle with a more apparent insanity. A glittering, menacing look to them that doesn’t hesitate to begin to unpeel George layer by layer.
If he’d been able to be hurt, maybe he’d feel unnerved standing in a room alone with Schlatt. But no one touches him.
“I don’t know,” George says. “I’m dreaming.”
A pause. An accusatory finger. He still has his booming voice, even if it comes from ruined cords. “No. No. No—I don’t like that. You weren’t invited. This is a member only gym, and you don’t have a card.” The absurdity is not new. George’s dreams always are this absurd. But it’s odd to have someone like Schlatt in them again.
“I’m a member of your cabinet, formerly,” George tries. Schlatt fixes him with a long look of scrutiny, but nods. With a grunt, Schlatt sits back down on the workout bench. Everything around them varies depending on Schlatt’s mood. Seconds ago when he was alert and manic, the gym equipment was clean and glittering. Metal rungs caught overhead light—but the moment he settles now, it takes on a grim era. The bars become dusty, cobwebs begin to fill the empty corners.
“So, how’d you die?” Schlatt questions.
“I haven’t,” George says. Schlatt stares at him long and hard. A cough and he reaches for a bottle that materializes out of thin air. At once Schlatt’s form shifts into his less morbid one. The only scar of his death is the permanent stain on his shirt and the glistening trail of spit running from the corner of his mouth.
“You can still see me?” Schlatt questions.
“Were you supposed to be invisible?” George asks.
“I am to the living, sweetheart,” Schlatt says, capping his bottle again. He snorts. Schlatt looks to the side, then with a sigh, back to George. For a moment he isn’t the confident Schlatt attempting to pretend he’s a president. He’s a scared dead man, who has been alone for so long. “It’s nice to talk to someone that’s not depressing immediately.”
George talks about nothing much with a dead man in his dream, only because there’s nothing better to do.
….
This time, he’s approached. His dream shifts, the cold air of death warming.
“George,” it says gingerly. Its voice isn’t right, but it’s a mimicry of Dream’s. And somehow. Despite its inhuman inflections. Despite its ear-piercing highs and unknowable lows, that alone draws him to stay asleep. George turns towards it.
“Who?” He asks.
“A god,” it answers. “You’re drawing my attention. You keep walking through my realm without permission. It’s rude.” It draws closer, so many hands flitting over him. None touching. It is examining him without it. There is a phantom feeling of many small pinpricks over his body. It is a numbness.
George scoffs. It’s his dream. Even if he knows by now something’s horribly wrong with his dreams. “I’m dreaming.”
“Are you?” A laugh. “Or are you dying?”
An uneasy feeling settles over him. “I have all my lives.”
“Do you have all your lives? Three isn’t a large number,” the god warns him. The god does touch him now, a hand on his cheek. It feels far too possessive for something so innocent. The touch does not feel new. It feels like a hand settling on an old book on a shelf, read many times and today might be another day one peruses it. It feels like the easiness you grab a shirt with. It feels like he is an object.
“Why?” George questions.
But he awakes. And the touch doesn’t fade, even after he scrubs his face.
…
It is far, far later, someone answers.
His dreams are so much more vibrant. Warm. There’s so little responsibility within them. The conflicts are no longer present. No one grabs his arm, asks him what he thinks of the situation. Dream deserves imprisonment, doesn’t he George? He doesn’t want to talk about it. What he did to Tommy in exile— George sharpens his sword louder, he doesn’t care—stop asking. You agree with us, right George? No, but he’s held his tongue for so long he isn’t sure it works.
In his dreams, the world is his domain. If he wants careless fun with his friends, it will give him it. If he wants to build, to spend his days erecting houses or planting gardens, it gives him it. If he wants to remember Dream’s smile as he lifts the mask or his laughter—it’s just as he remembers it. George wants to ignore the small detail that his dreams have catered to him more and more ever since XD’s ever-present touch has deepened beneath his skin. A tumor? A burn? A scar? No, it is a new part of him. It is metal grafted into his skin. The touch of the god never leaves him.
The only time the god’s touch left him was when death took the narrative.
George wasn’t sure what drew him from the warmth of his dreams, to the dark, cold of death. It lingered at the edges of the ubiquitous touch of XD. All he had to do was press pass the hands and slip into the deep pool at the edge of his mind.
Today, he followed a duck in his dream again, and it took him where it always did when he followed it. Past a prison. Past an arcade-casino. Into a gym. The duck fades when George follows it across a threshold, and he sees Schlatt in his ghostly form.
The blue sweater is the only true color here. Everything else is shades of monochrome. He’s figured by now the gym is in a state if disrepair, but Schlatt will project it isn’t when bothered. There is no weights. Schlatt can’t lift them. He seems hardly able to lift the bottle whenever George sits and listens to him ramble. The bottle swishes with yellow and he wants for a second to make a piss joke. He does.
Schlatt cracks a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “My old pal, George, come to give me a reprieve from the more needy visitors, eh?” A snort. Schlatt continues drinking the swill.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” George admits. Wilbur’s purgatory feels colder. The man’s a creeping plague. Wilbur’s voice feels infectious when he’s there. The one time he stayed to listen to a story from him—he felt something like madness begin to take hold of him, and he left wondering if he had friends. Schlatt is no saner, but he’s entertaining.
And George likes entertainment.
“Nor do I,” Schlatt smacks his lips. The bottle never empties, no matter how much he drinks from it. It’s constantly half-full. “I don’t deserve to be in this shit hole. No, no—actually, I do. I shouldn’t have given that damned book up.” Schlatt isn’t energized enough to ramble. His voice is somber and scratches at George’s neck from where he sits across the room.
“You read?” George humors.
A dry look. The ghost shifts closer, a hand hovering over his shoulder, but unable to touch him. It doesn’t pass through. There is a barrier between him and Schlatt. It makes George bolder than he should be some days. He’s taunted Wilbur. Wound him up and watched the ghost swing at him. He’s taunted Schlatt. The ghost tries to wait until he turns his head to swing. It never hits. The only one he hasn’t taunted is Mexican Dream, but the ghost wails loudly if he dodges a hug. Or if he doesn’t, and the ghost finds he can’t touch him.
But Schlatt never stops trying to assert some sort of dominance. A hand reaching to touch him, even if it can’t.
“Want to hear a ghost story, George?” Schlatt says. His voice is pitchy. He is several shades drunk. There is something ominous about it.
George sits on one of the workout benches. “Sure.”
“Once upon a time,” Schlatt opens, gesturing wide with his hand and bottle. “I played a game with someone really fucking down on their luck.” Their surroundings begin to melt. They are spectators to an event playing down below them. They sit on the railing of a second floor of a small bar and hotel.
This is why George likes to pass some of the time in his dreams with Schlatt. Whatever he rambles about, his memories encompass his purgatory. He is taken to a place that isn’t his, and a conflict already well-resolved.
The bar is something small and out of the place, only four tables and three booths. The memory Schlatt sits in a booth with a figure cloaked and hidden, a haze covering them. The lights are dingy. There’s a faint game of billiards being played that George cannot see, but can hear, because Schlatt never turned his head towards it in the memory. The setting is only as robust as Schlatt’s memory, and Schlatt’s memory has degraded. The entire place seems covered in a smoke that isn’t alone from the patrons there. The orange light does not cast either Schlatt or the figure in welcoming colors.
“They bet the last item they had on them. This book.” The figure pulls an oddly bound book from their robe and slides it onto the table. The Schlatt in the memory at the table below appraises it subtly. “They told me they’d lost everything. They looked it too. And they said they only wanted to pass on this book before they died.” The ghostly Schlatt fixes him with a dark look, taking a drink of his swill. “They were a fucking liar; it was lot more than that, George.”
This was is during Pogtopia based on how sickly Schlatt looks. The figure is hooded. Their face is obscured. But Schlatt’s is not. George turns his eyes to the other clothes of the figure, wondering if it’s someone he should know.
The figure looks in rags. The cloak is made up of scraps of material. Misery clings to them. Their hands are scarred and strangely gray. The ghostly Schlatt gestures to the scene playing below with the bottle before taking another swig. “This part, this part gets me.”
The living memory of Schlatt below wins. He takes the book without thought. His fingers grip its edges and tug it towards him, and he opens the front cover thoughtlessly.
The figure withdraws its hands from the table then, says, “You deserve what will happen to you, because you took it.”
“I beg your fucking pardon?” the old Schlatt questions. He is resting his palm on the first page of the book.
“That book was stolen from a god. Whether you use it after you read the rules is up to you,” the figure says. “But know by holding the book—you will never know death. You will never know peace, Schlatt.”
“What kind of sick sore loser are you?” Schlatt questions.
Beside him, the ghostly form of Schlatt takes another drink and turns to George, cracking a grin. For a moment his visage as a ghost has worsened into something grotesque—bugs crawling out between his blackening teeth, dark pits of eyes oozing oil—then his form shifts back. George just shakes his head as the scene below them fades and he’s sitting on the workout bench, the floor below dusty enough his shoes leave tracks as he traces them in circles.
“I got rid of that fucking book, and I still can’t know peace,” Schlatt tells him. He stands, crosses to the edge of his gym where the threshold pushes him back away from the world of the living, his form warping and twisting. He can see only Schlatt’s eyes clearly as he stares loathing at the edges of the world.
“What was the book?” George asks.
“Oh, you know, just your plain old book,” Schlatt lies. He swivels his head and fixes George with a wide, open grin. “Dream has that book now.”
“What does it do?” George questions. He stands, approaches Schlatt. He wants Schlatt to answer him, but he knows he won’t. Why would he? George is some of the only attention he gets.
Schlatt crosses the threshold, letting himself vanish entirely. He once told George it hurt when he did that—but whatever state Schlatt’s in, today, it is not a good one. He waits a few moments, before George closes his eyes. He runs a hand through his hair, and he wonders why now more than ever it’s beginning to feel so much realer.
…
This time XD just expectantly pulls on George’s soul. The god is never one for direct touch. He tugs George to him through something other, and it is clear he disapproves of George continuing to dip his toes into other’s purgatories. “I’m going to try and wake up,” George tells the god.
The god shakes his head. “No, George—as my best friend, I think you owe me a few more minutes,” XD pleads with him. George wants to tell the god off, but he is finding it so much harder to wake up these days.
Sleep seems to be entrapping him, winding around him. George just nods. A few more minutes won’t hurt.
…
He doesn’t mean to fall into purgatory again. Especially not Wilbur’s. But when he falls asleep, he feels—more tired. He can’t shake the sinking feeling as it pulls, as it pulls, and George free falls onto a train track, feeling bruised and hurt. The wood beneath his hands feels fresh and warm, as if a train has come through recently. He hauls himself up over the edge, back onto the platform and stares at the man sitting on the bench.
Wilbur.
He smokes something. It isn’t a cigarette. It’s a crack-pipe. It glows a sickly blue as he does. “Dear little George, it’s not good to be on the tracks for any amount of time. Another train might come through,” Wilbur taunts. George wonders if the dead man has begun to loathe him.
“I didn’t mean to come here,” George says. He brushes himself off and aims to close his eyes, to feel XD’s welcoming warmth that will tug him from the cold of death—but there is no hands today. Only an eerie absence. The permanent touch of the god’s hand on his cheek feels cold and he places his hand over it, hoping to feel the strange connection.
Nothing.
It unnerves him, but he doesn’t tell the king of manipulation, the siren himself. Wilbur cups his hand around the crack-pipe as he takes a hit. Huffs. “Funny, you’re here.”
There’s a bait there. It’s dangling clear and easy and George knows it’d be a fool’s errand to take it. The siren song Wilbur slurs and slathers over any good common sense should not be heard. But he bites, and feels hooks digging into his lips and chin.
“Why?” George asks.
Wilbur laughs. He shakes a hand, as if burned by the pipe but continues to press his lips to it. He takes a hit before he moves it away from his mouth. He holds it delicately in his hand, staring at the burning blue light at the end. “George, George, George, you’re so used to being given things freely. I want something first,” Wilbur sickeningly tells him. Those eyes are dark and haunting, and George tightens his fingers into fists.
“What?” George snaps.
Wilbur smiles at him. A false mirth. He pats the bench next to him and George draws himself up. It won’t give him more height or confidence, but he strides as if he isn’t bothered and does not flinch away from the lack of space. Even, even if for one, terrifying second, Wilbur’s hand does not feel like it’s touching his knee—before something stops it. It’s his imagination the hand is closer than it’s ever been able to be before.
Wilbur offers the pipe to George who declines it. They sit there for a moment, in faux companiable silence.
“Tell me one little thing, George,” Wilbur says holding the pipe to the side. “Does it go both ways?”
“What?” George questions, and Wilbur reaches for his face. Again, it feels far too close, even as he can’t touch George. The pipe feels not blistering hot—but freezing, even if it can’t touch him. The air warps with how cold it is, how it makes his skin feel tight and frozen.
“The value you put on Dream; is it returned?” A quirk of Wilbur’s lips down. A grimace, as if he really cares. “Or are you just a toy, George. You’re everyone’s favorite image. An icon. But beneath that no one values you, do they?” George leans away. It is cowardly, but he cannot stand Wilbur’s voice. When Wilbur sees he’s ruffled, he takes a hit off the pipe again. “George, come now? That’s an easy truth to tell me. Especially, since I know why you’re here today.”
The bench feels so cold. George wants warmth. He wants the flower garden XD insists on upkeeping in his dreams. He wants to feel his blankets. He wants to remember warm water running over his face and arms. The sun. Purgatory always feels cold, even when he wears sweaters to bed.
“No, it isn’t returned,” George snaps. A cold insecurity begins to wrap around him. He doesn’t like that he tells Wilbur this. Wilbur, who will take this, and he will use it. But George is lying to him.
Because he has to believe he is. Otherwise. He is not Tommy. He is not one of Wilbur’s followers. He doesn’t want Wilbur in his head.
But it might be too late, because Wilbur laughs. Long and hard. His voice begins to crack and die out as he continues. “Oh, George,” Wilbur mocks, not able to do Dream’s voice, but he knows George will know what he means. “Dream’s being very naughty. He’s terribly awful, isn’t he?” Wilbur leans against the bench seat. “No attachments, but old godly magic knows better. Doesn’t it? A life for a life, it’s a shame he didn’t read the foreword.”
George has never been more glad to feel a pull on his soul that’s rough and pulls him so quickly, so frighteningly hard from the cold of purgatory that his skin feels like it’s on fire when he feels his dream shift. XD’s hands do settle on him. Two of them do, at least. He is gripping George’s shoulders, and the touch begins to seep beneath his skin, embedding itself there.
George doesn’t know why he’s crying. But he stops. He isn’t controlled by emotion.
Something is terribly wrong. XD cups his face again, a third hand falling over where he’s been held before and his head is tilted up into the godly face. The ‘XD’ is the only thing clear amid wings, rings and eyes. “George,” the voice says adoringly. “You’re here now. You’re safe.”
George nods. The god just continues to hold him. It distracts him with an entertaining dream, but also a quieter one. Just him and the god. There’s so much warmth. The hot spring. The comfortable blankets. The cats that curl up against him. It feels like an apology.
…
When George does wake, his skin is beginning to feel so cold. But where the god touched him, it’s warm.
…
But it happens again. This time, something catches him.
It feels like he is sinking beneath the waves in an ocean. It’s so cold, but he can’t swim up. There’s something wrapped around his ankle pulling and sucking him beneath the waves. The cold is all encompassing and George begins to scream—but warm hands grab him.
XD just beams at him and presses something warm and frothy in a mug into his hands. The sun is vibrant and comforting in his dream. “George!”
“XD!” George greets, matching the god’s enthusiasm as he shakes off the wariness for a moment he was falling into purgatory. He doesn’t want to listen to Wilbur’s cold voice or Schlatt’s unhinged mania. He wants this retreat. It’s why he crawls back into bed after he eats these days. He likes the escape.
Despite the god’s warmth, despite the god’s easy distraction, he cannot hold George’s attention—George finds a cold pool in the middle of his dream. It is a deep blue. It is where it shouldn’t be. It is in the center of the community house as he likes it—the old one. And it is impossibly deep.
Someone stands next to it. He is glad it isn’t the crueler dead. It is Mexican Dream.
“Jorge,” he murmurs. “You need to—I have something to tell you. The other guy here doesn’t like me, but I have to tell you.”
“This isn’t a trap, right?” George asks, staring into the pool. Mexican Dream had been friendly enough, but death has ruined some men. Mexican Dream shakes his head and offers a shawled arm.
“We can hold hands, mi amigo, if you’d like—a trust fall?” Mexican Dream says, and George grips his arm. He doesn’t know if he fully trusts anyone, but he steps into the pool and plummets. It feels like a water slide. Fast. Bubbles rushing past his head and when the coldness has seeped into his bones it lets out.
They are standing in a mimicry of the server. George hasn’t walked around it in so long, so this might be what it looks like, but he doesn’t like it. His dreamed version is better. Mexican Dream stands next to him, and retakes George’s arm. He guides George, apologetic, if not wary.
“I’m sorry I have to be the one to tell you, but we’re such good friends, aren’t we?”
“We are,” George lies. He does not think of anyone outside of a rare few, and Mexican Dream is not one.
He takes him to a grave. It’s Wilbur’s. A memorial more than a proper burial. A warning to any to come next. This place is dangerous, stay away.
And beside it, is a single wither flower, winding its way up from the ground, thorns dripping with black. Mexican Dream fiddles with his shawl, his head down. “Two people. Two whole people. Two lives,” Mexican Dream says.
“What?” George isn’t sure he wants to understand. But he doesn’t have long. XD has sensed his absence and attempts to pull him back. The hands feel needy, but he finds he needs them too. And for a moment, George sees eerily—people pass. But they do not stop and look at him or Mexcian Dream.
It is as if they are the ghosts.
And he sees who they are. Tommy and…Wilbur.
“Two lives. The book, Jorge. The book takes the lives of—”
George is pulled back. XD is hovering over the pool, looking at it with disapproval. George feels water dripping from his hair, from his clothes. He is soaked. When XD offers him a warm blanket he takes it and drapes it around himself, shaking.
“I thought I got rid of them all,” XD says. “You’re cold, George.”
“I am,” George says.
“It’s okay,” XD tells him. “You’re safe.”
But George wonders if that’s true. “Am I dying, XD?” George asks. The god cups his cheek once more, tilting his head up into its many eyes. Something akin to a pressure on his forehead. It is a kiss. The god does not touch him with a mouth. The god does not have a mouth. Then another pressure, like a kiss on his cheek.
“You’re safe, George. I have you,” the god says.
But George’s eyes return to the pool, even as the god has sealed it over. It is just another plank of wood. There is no pool. But. There had been. And George thinks back and finds that there’s always been some question about how alive he is.
How alive is he? How awake is he?
Is he already dead?
…
And George has woken up several times since then, but today when Mexican Dream invades the waking world, he wonders—if he is waking up. The colors—that’s the only difference. The colors of purgatory are always muted, but his dreams are far more vibrant—and that extends to anyone from purgatory.
To see Mexican Dream as dull—he had to be awake. He had to be.
Didn’t he?
But Dream has a book.
George stands in front of the prison portal, Sapnap and Mexican Dream on the other side. He stares into the vortex in front of him, and wonders if he can guess the foreword of the book. The warning.
A life for a life. Those lives didn’t come from a merciful god, who showers George in attention as if George is a pet he’s been given. They came from someone else. Whoever held the book, gave up what they loved to use it. It made sense Schlatt, a man who loved nothing but himself, would find death holding onto the book.
But Dream. Godly magic doesn’t lie.
Are his lives—or should he say life—his own anymore?
George swallows. The answer is ‘no.’ And the maddening thing is, he thinks, staring at the swirling portal, he’s powerless to stop Dream. To warn Dream to stop. He wonders if Dream could. Or is the book destined to ruin all who hold it even if they let it go, pass it on before their end. At least, George thinks, rubbing his bare arms, the permanent chill beginning to be something he was accustomed to, it’s warm in his dreams.