There’s something electric coursing through my veins.  Blood, skin, bone: all of it linked with peculiar clarity to my thoughts, like I own myself again for the first time in longer than I can remember.  It’s a bizarre and almost entirely novel sensation to think there’s even the slimmest chance I could regain control of my own destiny and not have my every breath subject to the whims of a mad goddess.  Everything inside me feels aggressively, furiously, rebelliously alive even though the odds of ever seeing another sunset are just a tad more likely than winning the lottery twice in a row.  That, still, might even be a stretch.

                But stretches are all we’re going to get now, and somehow, I’m all right with that.  I know that whatever happens next will be because I chose it, not Julia, or whatever deaf, dumb, and blind higher beings may exist out there.  It’s calming like nothing else.  I know my heart should be pounding hard enough to power a freight train right now, but it’s not.  Instead I find the most unlikely kind of serenity in the waiting.  Fear and morbidity are still present in healthy doses, but all other feelings come second to the euphoric sensation of autonomy.

                Brian, Kelly, Goodwin, and I have been catching our breaths for the past hour behind a tall stack of fluffy bath towels in a hall closet, shrouded comfortably in darkness and downy air.  We haven’t had much light or clean air for the past day as we scurried through the dank walls, working to prepare for our shot in the dark.  Partway through, we had to pause just to ensure we didn’t crumple over from exhaustion, but luckily Goodwin came to the rescue with water siphoned from a loose pipe in the wall and powdered coffee beans he’d managed to swipe from behind the kitchen trash can.  It’s not much of a last meal, but it gave us the final push we needed.

                As we all sit on the tile floor, Kelly finds my hand and Brian’s, grasping them as tightly as she can manage despite fatigued muscles.  We squeeze back with just as much force, bowing our heads in the blackness.  We’re all we’ve got left, after all.  I can almost hear our heartbeats syncing, heaving at first from nerves and resignation, but at last slowing down far more than anyone in our positions should be capable of.  That’s as ready as we’re probably going to be.

                “Hey,” Goodwin whispers coolly.  He hasn’t done much talking since the ultimate decision was made, other than directing us through the plaster mazes of the house, and hearing him make a sound catches me by surprise.

                “Yeah?” Kelly says.

                “I meant what I said.”

                “Which part?” Brian drawls.

                “I am sorry,” he utters.  The words, broken and peeled back as they are, come off as more honest than anything he’s said to us in our short time together.  If we can believe nothing else that comes from this hollow creature’s mouth, I know we can believe these three painful little words.

                “We know,” Brian answers without resentment, and this, too, can be trusted.  The silence that follows brings the closest thing to peace I think we may ever receive again, and I relish it, in the back of my throat and on the tips of my fingers as I cling to my friends.  We’re perched on the end of our miniature universe and poised to topple into oblivion.

                I hear it now.  The familiar crackling of the speakers affixed to the wall, down the hall and high above our heads, and that godlike rumble preceding the words of someone who surely spawned from the complete opposite end of creation.

                “All right, little ones.  Listen up.  Wherever you are,” Julia sighs, her syllables softer than the day before.  “I’ve been patient with all of you.  Much more than you deserve.  But now you’re going to come back to me so I can put you where you belong.”

                Where she thinks we belong at this point is anyone’s guess, though we can probably rule out anything that averts torture of the most exquisite brand.  Still her tone betrays something else.  Kind, almost, and genuinely loving.  I haven’t heard her speak like that since the last time we shared an intimate moment together, when she seemed to believe it was just the pair of us in her vile makeshift world and no one else.

                “Listen to me,” she repeats, the familiar bite of her tone beginning to seep through the foggy audio.  “I know you must think I’m stupid for letting you all get away so easy.  But I’m not.  You all still belong to me, no matter how far you go.  Even if you went to the other side of the Earth.  You’d be mine.”

                I’m starting to recognize the voice again the further she goes.

                Not to mention the incurable god complex.

                “I told you what would happen if you don’t come.  And unless I have you all in front of me in the next ten minutes, I’m going to put Gina and baby Julia in my mouth,” Julia continues.  “I’m going to suck them.  Hard.  Over and over.  Until all the meat comes off their bones.”

                There’s our girl.  I was beginning to think we’d lost her.

                “They don’t have to mean anything to me.  Do you hear me?  I can get more of them anytime I want.  Just like you.  But I won’t, until you all understand that as much as I do,” Julia explains calmly.  “So when you come in to the room, you’re going to walk.  No surprises.  All at the same time.  And get down in front of me.  On your tiny little knees.  Like you’re meant to be.”

                Another muffled click brings an end to the transmission, and we’re left alone with a potentially mercifully short future laid out before us.

                Here we are, holding the last real decision of our lives in our feeble and potentially fallible grasp.  It feels weightier than I could’ve imagined, almost enough to force me to the ground, but Kelly’s hand keeps me up.  The caffeine pumping through my body doesn’t hurt, either.

                “There’s something you need to understand,” Goodwin says.  “If this works.  If we somehow can… you know….”

                “What?” Brian says.

                “…we can’t let people know.  Nobody.  Do you get that?” our haggard host grunts.  “If you want anything to come of getting out of this place, you have to stay silent.”

                “We know,” Kelly says with difficulty.

                “I’ll have to run again, for as long as I can go, anyway.  And Techilogic will keep you quiet too, however they have to,” he says.  “Don’t give them a reason to do it the hard way.”

                “I guess we cross that bridge if we come to it,” Brian says, oddly contented.

                “When,” corrects Kelly.  “When we come to it.”

                When.

                What a word.  Like we’ve got a future or something.  It’s incredibly difficult not to believe her.

                “When,” Brian agrees quietly.  He nods, thanking her for that unwavering spirit of hers.  “So everybody knows what they’re doing, then?”

                “Yep,” Kelly whispers.

                “Roger that,” Goodwin mumbles.  He leans in further, and I can feel his empty gaze affixed to my face.  “Kid?”

                “Absolutely,” I say.  Kelly’s grip tightens around my palm, and Brian’s hand reaches my shoulder.

                “Okay,” Goodwin says, rising steadily to his feet.  “Let’s get this show on the road.”

                Supporting one another’s weights, we follow suit, staggering up with surprising ease.  The ground feels lighter beneath my feet, as though I could leap a full foot into the air, which is pretty good for someone only standing at a matter of inches.

                “You’re gonna do it, Jack,” Brian reassures as we all march toward the crack under the door, where my destiny awaits so potently.  “You know the inside of her head.”

                “Just like we rehearsed it,” Kelly reminds me.

                “Right,” I say, chewing the words over in my head that I’ve been repeating all night to the pair of them in preparation.  Even with all that, I know nothing can fully ready me for what’s coming, but I swallow this shadow of a doubt.  There’s no room for that now.

                Crouching down, I begin to crawl into the light, already feeling more exposed than ever before as the hall light touches my skin, but still no more fear than before.

                “Jack,” Kelly whispers, stooping down next to me a final time before I can slip under the opening.

                “You’ll…” she continues, closing her eyes.  “You’ll be all right.”

                “Thanks,” I say.  “You will too.”  With a final glance at my friends I dart under the crack and pull myself up into the light of the grandiose hallway.

                Large even by the standards of a normal sized-human being, the carved ceiling and immaculately patterned ruby wallpaper stretching on for seeming miles everywhere my eyes can reach certainly makes for a fittingly decorative death march.

                The path to Julia’s room from here is fifteen feet at most, but even with a steady walking pace the oriental carpet seems to elongate with every step I take.  The white door where my fate awaits looms higher and higher: a wooden monolith, where I’m about to chitchat my way through our personal version of Judgment Day.

                Still my body remains free, uninhibited by terror or gravity even as I prepare to put myself directly back in snatching range of my psychotic captor and most likely ex-girlfriend.  I am the length of someone’s finger, but at this moment, with the air puffed up in my lungs and my arms still tingling with the comforting memory of my friend’s embrace, I feel confident enough to skip my way up into heaven and land a solid right hook on the face of whoever might be up there spectating.

                The carpet comes to an end, as does my robotic march, before the door offering a final blockade between me and the next life.  I always imagined there would be a glow, too, but I suppose it’s at least painted white, so that’s something.

                I lower myself onto my haunches, crawling to squeeze under the low-hanging crack of the door.  Feeling the scraggly floor skimming against my forearms and shins, the wood bumping against my back, I swallow a hard lump.  No matter what happens, no matter what she says or does or breaks in my body, this is the last time in my life I will willfully bow on my knees near Julia.

                As I re-enter the decadently adorned bedroom, immediately snapping back to my full meager height, my eyes sweep the space.  So much life was had and then taken away in this frilly prison, and I had started to imagine it as the outer limits of my world.  Now, it all feels much smaller than it used to, and coming from someone as short as I currently am, that’s saying something.  I know I need no longer confine myself to its constrictive surfaces.

                Of course I see her, too.  Our girl.  With her dark chocolate locks straightened, a new skirt hugging her toned thighs, and her bare toes pressed to the floor and painted a fresh sea blue to match her eyes, even I have to admit she looks noticeably radiant for an inhuman monster.  It occurs to me that she actually dressed up for this meeting as though going to church, even putting on make-up.  She’s seated on the end of her bed about ten feet away from me, facing the door but with her attention focused into the center of her pale palm, where Gina appears to be cradling a surprisingly quiet Faith.

                I restrain the fury at seeing my love and Brian’s child trapped in Julia’s mighty hand, instead allowing myself a peaceful smile.  Here goes nothing.  The words come easily into my throat and seem to fill the room with improbable volume as I bellow:

                “Good morning, Julia.”