I trudged through the water to the living room. No noise. Not a heartbeat.

I went to check the girl's room. Listened close. Cracked open her door. Nothing. She was sound asleep in the dark when I heard her shuffle and rise up. "What is it?" She said. I had woken her. I was surprised she could be so lifeless when the whole house was knee deep in water. Then again the bed top was high and dry. I said nothing and stepped away.

I listened to hear for a stranger. A trespasser. A man who should have been dead in a coffin or alive and still on Earth. I checked the kitchen. I checked the living room. My room. The bathrooms. Even stepped out to the farmhouse attached around back where all the crops laid. Still no movement. No undead corpse with a gun.

I walked back to the living room, and stopped. I was lost in thought. I questioned myself. My surroundings. This place. I didn't know where I was anymore. I couldn't tell the difference between a minute and an hour ago. Time seemed to melt upon itself like a snake bent up in knots. I looked up as though to envision the stars above. Then I remembered the stars reflected in the watery ground outside. Were the stars up or were they down? Was I on Earth or on Mars? Was there a girl here or was I alone? I couldn't trust myself. I couldn't trust my own mind. I couldn't feel my own body anymore as my mind lifted me out of it, circling around like a ghost, traversing the universe in search of where and when I truly existed. Where could I be? When was I? No one could help me. My mind was a maze of infinite space.

My search cut short as I heard tha creak of the guestroom door. My mental work cut as I saw the lights turn on. I was looking dow. My body at the center of he flooded living room. My felegs under the surface of the clear water.

"Why aren't you sleeping?" She asked.

I looked at the water for sometime. I felt the urge to hide my confusion. I said something else that was the least of my worries. Something that really wasn't on my mind. I didn't want to pledge my insanity. She was a stranger. She couldn't help me. So I just said, still staring down, chin in hand, "I don't know what I'm going to do about this water."

There was silence. I could sense her thinking. Then she said it. Something that truly horrified me. With no remorse, quite blankly, she said, "What water?"

My eyes shut hard. I knew it. I wasn't when and where I thought I was. I was scared. Horrified. But then I thought to myself another possiblity. My eyes turned. My face lifted. I looked to her. That girl with the beautiful face. So innocent looking. But now I had terror in me. Maybe I was wrong to distrust myself. I'd known myself longer than I'd known anyone. I studied her body, tried to decipher the microexpressions of her face, tried to reel in the light of her eyes and find the truth in them. I couldn't find anything. And so I suspected. . . that she was lying.

I said, "You can't see this water? All this water all around us?"

She looks. Almost smiles but it breaks out of serious concern. Possibly feigned. "What water?" She repeated.

I just stared at her. Real hard. I then dipped down as demonstation and swirled my hand around the rippling surface. "You don't see this? You don't feel this?"

"What are you doing?" She said.

I considered splashing her endlessly until she drank it. See if she got wet. Splash her until she drowned in her lies. But no. I suspected this for a long time. Ever since the day I landed here and started digging graves, I questioned my reality. If I splashed her and she flinched or got wet, that wouldn't prove she was a lyer. That only prove that she was as real as the water I was splashing her with. If I were hallucinating with one, then I was hallucinating the other. And I didn't want to fight her. Real or not. She was my only companion.

I lifted my hand to my face. Felt the water drip down my eyebrows, my cheeks, my chin, my neck, my chest, my heart. I was hallucinating.

She looked worried and sad for me. "Don't worry," she said. It looked as though her big eyes were wet and about to produce tears of empathy.

"No," I said, "the water feels so real, and so do you. I think you're a hallucination too."

She saw how upset I was and so decided to comfort me. "And what if I am?" She said. "Then I am a blessing of your mind."

I looked into her eyes. Pleading that she would not confess to being fake. That would only make it so.

"There is a sea out there," I pressed.

"You miss the life source of your planet," she rationalized.

"I dig coffins. And there's something wrong with them. I don't know what's real anymore." My body began to shake in confusion.

Finally, she trudged through the water. She crossed the living room, and came to me. The warmth of her body was so intense I could feel my body heating from her emanating aura. The chill in the air was dissipating. The water under my knees faded from my senses as the water warmed.

"You don't know." She said.

It was a simple statement. But it was true. So I nodded. Plead my ignorance. I know nothing.

She said, "Not knowing can be a real luxury. When what's real and what's not seem indeterminable, you gain the power to choose what is real and what is not. And it'll make no difference. If you don't want to see death, don't go to the coffins. If you want to see life, you swim in the sea. And if you want to be lonely, then you run to the mountains. But if you want to find love--" she stopped, and looked in my eyes, "then. . . there's me."

"Are you real?" I asked.

That's when her tears escaped. "My heart is. I want to be."

"Why are you here?" I said. I had to believe she was at least in part a slice of reality. She had to come from somewhere. "What is a beautiful girl like you sent here for?"

That touched her. She blushed and broke into a momentary smile. Then thought of the answer and became serious again. "That is for another time. If you believe I am real, I will be."

"How can I trust you are not lying to me about the water? You think I don't know what's real and what's not?"

"THere is no water. But you can believe it if you want."

"Am I even on Mars? I don't know where I am anymore."

She looked sympathetic. "Yes, you are on Mars."

"Please tell me why you're here."

She thought for a moment. As though considering to tell the truth or not. She took a moment before gazing at me with the utmost sincerity that could melt a bed of ice. She told me the truth. And it wasn't what I expected. "To make love to you. The company is sorry."

I wasn't sure how to react. Both sentences were significant in their own way. But neither seemed to belong together. I was unsure what the first sentence "To make love to you," insinuated. But I knew exactly what she meant by "The company is sorry." I realized the company I worked for, the company that caused me to come to Mars in the first place, had left me on purpose. The company had left me on Mars not by accident like I had imagined all this time, but because they wanted to. That is why the company is sorry. I felt an intense heatwave. My body was on fire. Now that I knew the last sentence, I then considered what she meant by "To make love to you." The interconnectedness of the two sentences might have meant that the company was sorry and thus sent her to apologize. But not with your regular words. I asked her what I thought.

"Are you a prostitute?" I meant the question. And I was prepared for her to be as hurt as I was by it.

I was surprised though, when she laughed. "No," she giggled.

I didn't laugh back. I was determined to figure out just who the hell she was. "Are you a criminal?"

I was surprised again when she seemed hurt by this accusation. "No," she said.

I went on. "Are you going to give me companionship and then go back to Earth? I can't handle that sort of abandonment. You coming and leaving is more cruel than no one ever coming to see me here at all. I'd rather have gone on alone. . ." My words trailed off. I was so hurt. My mind and heart felt the torment of the potential loss in the case that she may be here only temporarily.

She seemed surprised by my worry. "No, you don't understand," she said. "I'm never going back. I'm here to stay."

I stopped my bellowing and looked up at her now, in nothing short of awe. A calm came over my chest. Something warm, where my heart was. The words "I'm here to stay" touched me deeply.

"In fact, you get to go home," she said, "if you don't wish to stay with me." She frowned.

I was lost for words. I was so floored by what she said that I jumped to hug her. I hugged her long and hard. I could feel her thinking though. She wasn't hugging me back. Her body was a statue.

She said, "Do you want to leave so badly still? Even when I'm here to accompany you now?"

I pulled back. Tears brewing in my eyes to share my heart's desire. I nodded. Yes, absolutely. I didn't just want to go home. I needed to.

She pulled back. Hurt, she cried. "No," she whispered, shaking her head in disbelief, "they were right. The company was right."

"Right about what?"

But she didn't answer my question. There was desperation in her voice. "I bet I could convince you to love me, and we'd be together on this planet."

"Who. . ." I began.

But she knew what I was about to ask. "The company. They said they would give me a one way ticket here. They granted me a chance of a real family."

I was confused. "Why would you want that? Why not have that on Earth?"

It seemed she simply couldn't answer. I was confused but I began to wonder if she had some dirty little secret.

Nothing was said but I knew one thing for sure. "I have to go home."

She touched her chest as if I'd just punched her. "I understand," she said.

I was suddenly concerned. "Can you be here by yourself?"

"It's better than Earth."

I was stunned. "No, it's not."

"Yes, it is," she assured me. "For me it is. They don't want me there."

"How could they not want you there?"

She went weak and that's when I saw a single tear fall over her cheek. She dug her nails into her hand, nervously. She simply stated, "No one wants me there." Her eyes, wet, looked bigger and brighter. Her cheeks, wet too from the tears, made her look more beautiful than I'd ever thought a woman could be. She seemed so defenseless. So lonely. I realized I related to her more than anyone in the entire universe. This place on Mars was a rare suffering no one besides us had ever experienced. She was about to say something more when suddenly my body took autonomy and sent me toward her. I kissed her. I kissed her long and hard. I don't know how it happened. It just did. When my body finally chose to pull back, she looked at me and an enormous smile broke out of her lips. I noticed her two giant dimples.

She kissed me back and jumped with her legs around my waist. Nothing made any sense anymore as my mind took the backseat in the automobile of my reality. My body took the wheel with its eyes shut tight with sudden dumb bliss, and my legs began to trudge through the water. I carried her to her room. Still kissing. I hit the lights.