Please don't be a cigarette...

Ty leaned forward from his canvas chair and squinted at the debris beneath the balcony rail. The moon was full, but didn't cast enough light to identify the trash.

"Don't make me stand," he pleaded with the potential butt. "Not after a thirteen-hour shift."

Ty sighed. He pushed himself from his favorite chair and winced as his knees clicked into place. He opened the balcony door, slipped his hand inside to turn on the lights—

"Doin' okay, baby-pie?" Lizzy asked from her usual spot on the sofa.

"Doin' great," he replied through the crack. He flipped the switch and quickly closed the door.

Please don't be a cigarette...

After months of night sweats, heart palpitations, and the inexplicable combo of hunger and weight loss, he simply didn't have the energy to fight. Twenty-eight years old and I'm out of energy...

He stooped. He winced. And his fear was confirmed.

The ashes were smeared in an arc toward the balcony ledge as if the butt had been kicked... but instead of falling to the bushes below, it got stuck beneath the railing.

He strained to remember the last time they had friends over. Friday night. Did any of them smoke? No.

He smushed the butt between his fingers. Lizzy's brand.

Despite the ache in his back, he pushed open the door and stepped in front of the TV.

"What's up, baby-pie?" Lizzy asked, scratching her thigh through his pajama pants and straining to see around him.

He spoke calmly between grit teeth. "I'm not pouring concrete for ninety hours a week so you can throw money away on cigs."

She narrowed her lying eyes. "Cigs?"

He held up the butt.

"Can't be mine, babe. I haven't—"

"Where did it come from?"

"I don't know. Can you move so I can watch my show?"

"Not until we—"

"I said it's not mine!" she blurted. "Why the hell do you care so much?"

Ty bit his tongue, then spoke with every ounce of kindness he could muster. "It's not that you smoke, Liz, it's that you lie. I wouldn't be pissed if you said, 'Hey Ty, I made a mistake.' Hell, you could even say, 'Hey Ty, I know you don't like it, but I want to start smoking again.' I could deal with that. But what I can't deal with is never trusting a goddamn word my wife says."

"It's my fault you don't trust anybody?"

"You, Lizzy. I don't trust you."

"And you're never gonna trust me again, huh? No matter what I do?"

"Not if I keep finding—"

"I didn't fucking smoke!"

"I won't find mouthwash if I search your car?"

"You want me to lie to you? You want me to tell you I smoked one fucking cigarette?"

"I want you to tell me the truth."

Lizzy's fingernails scratched what was left of her eyebrows.

"Don't start that... please... not tonight."

"Is that what you're expecting? Did you find that cigarette and just know I'd start pulling my hair? Didja ever think it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, Ty?"

"I don't know what that means..."

Lizzy's chest began to spasm with rapid breaths. It was all downhill from here. "You make me do it, you know." She stood. "You're the reason I do it."

"What do I make you do?"

"You make me lie." Her nails caught a single eyebrow, pinched, and plucked.

"Damnit, Lizzy..."

"You try so fucking hard to control me—"

"I don't control you."

"Bull shit!" she screamed loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

"Calm down—"

"I hate this!" Her knuckles whitened as she clenched her hair. "I hate you!"

It was over. Ty lunged, pulled Lizzy's arms away from her head, and unwound the hair from her fists. She flailed her torso, battered him with her shoulders, and fled to the bathroom.

He caught his foot in the door before she could slam it.

She was already scrambling to open the pills. He grabbed her wrist just in time, pried her fingers from the bottle, and turned his head when she screamed, not words, but ear-shattering nonsense with enough fear that it would obligate any bystanders to call the cops.

"Lizzy—" he tried.

She whirled, planted her palms against his chest, shoved him out of the bathroom, and locked the door.

"Fuck!"

The creek of the shower handles. Water splashing from the faucet.

Ty hobbled to the kitchen, tossed the pills on the cabinets, and snatched a butter knife from the drawer. "This fucking spiral," he said aloud. "How is this happening again?" Hands trembling, he pressed the knife to the lock... then he shook his head, gasped, paced back to the kitchen, and wiped his tears. "Is this really my life? Am I really debating if I should pull my wife from the tub?"

Bowls from Friday's party were piled so high in the sink that they leaned left. Fruit flies dangled in the stench of wet food.

I tried to make it work, Lizzy. I read books. I went to counseling. I shared my feelings. But this can't be my life... pouring concrete and coming home to... this.

Deep down, he knew he was making her worse.

The sound of gurgling screams brought him back to the bathroom door. Butter knife in the lock—click!—and it opened.

Lizzy was laying face up in the tub with her mouth and nose under the gushing faucet.

Ty's feet splashed as he hooked his wife's shoulders and hoisted her up while being careful not to hit her face on the metal.

"Let me go!" She thrashed. "I fucking hate you!"

Lizzy's final shove wouldn't have fazed Ty a month ago, but tonight it sent him stumbling backwards through the open door. His legs gave out and he collapsed with a slap and thunk on the apartment floor.

"Oh no..." she murmured from the bathroom. "Ty?" She bolted to his side and landed on her knees. "Ty!"

"I just... I lost my balance..."

The wells in her eyes released a different brand of tear as her hair dripped to his chest. "I didn't mean to..."

In another apartment, a neighbor screamed. It was a man's voice, raspy, and it didn't stop.

"I'm sorry, baby-pie," she cried. "I did it, okay? I made another mistake and I told another lie! But I love you, Ty!"

The pain dislodged from his knees and unraveled into the rest of his bones. He released a howl that jarred his wife and merged with the unrelenting scream from next door.

Lizzy's voice was a clamor. "Jeff? Baby? What the hell's going on?"

"Who's... screaming?" he managed. "Who's... Jeff?"

She didn't answer. Her eyes shifted to his arm. "Baby?" she said. "Ty?"

"What is it?"

"Your arms!"

It took tremendous effort to raise his arm enough to see the bulge emerging above his elbow. "What the f—" The obscenity was cut short as the bulge hatched like a living egg with scrambling red legs, clipping fangs, and finally, a full-grown spider. As the creature scuttled toward his wrist, Ty could see his rotten muscle soaked in blood like an old sponge.

Lizzy shrieked and fell back.

his chest wretched. the apartment disappeared, but the distant scream followed him to the white. ty rolled his head, searching for his wife in the flickering white.

Back in the living room. The rest of the spiders had broken through his skin leaving holes throughout his body like an infested block of swiss cheese.

Lizzy's tearful face; one hand against his cheek; sobbing on the phone. "My husband!" she said. "He needs help!"

Jon tried to say he loved her too, that he was sorry for getting angry about the cigarette, that he remembered the good times, the reasons he married her. But his throat burned and his lungs rattled as if he hadn't spoken in years.

another flicker. back to the white.

there were others, he remembered. brandon; car crash at fifteen. alan; heart attack at fifty-four. nick; cancer at eighty.

the spiders were gone but his body was riddled with holes. the neighbor's scream grew louder.

an invisible force grappled ty's throat and pulled him through the pure white floor like a stillborn tangled in its cord.

The scream reached it's apex in both volume and terror. The cold caress of reality; the irrepressible smell of something dead. The man pried open his eyelids and—fully awake—realized the scream belonged to him.

Year 434

Ty (Brandon, Jeff, Jon, Christian, Alan, Andy) forced his mouth shut to kill the scream, then fell into nightmarish silence. His lungs were cushions for pins.

The pain wasn't confined to his chest, but coated every appendage, muscle, bone, vein, and capillary. The mattress chafed his ass like a barbwire quilt. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't will away the pain.

Lizzy, he thought as the sorrow of clashing worlds swallowed him whole. Who am I?

His eyes adjusted slowly to the meager light from tinted windows. When he could finally detect the movement of his hand in front of his face, he checked his arm. The spider holes had been replaced with flesh that looked like it was scrubbed with steel wool. Dragging his fingertips from knee to crotch, his thigh rippled like a pineapple.

He was naked. Shivering.

Moldy tubes corkscrewed from his stomach.

"Help!" he tried to scream, but the sound scraped against his vocal chords and broke from his lips as a pathetic whimper. His chest heaved but he couldn't vomit.

He rolled his head right, squinted, and saw rows of feet poking from rollaway partitions. He looked left and saw a sleeping woman... a wife?

Words... they weren't thinking like they were supposed to, but rose aimlessly through his brain like bubbles in molasses.

Lizzy... Diane... Haley... Crystal...

Whoever she was, he had to get her attention.

Attempts to shout only ended in more dry heaves. He would have to move her.

Ignoring the pain in his palms and fatigue in his fingers, he gripped both moldy tubes, twisted them unlocked, and felt a slithering sensation in his gut as he pulled them out.

He planted his hands on the bed and they squished in a puddle of sweat and hair. Stiff joints refused to cooperate with his attempts to sit upright, and even the slightest movement snapped new pain through his knees.

One... two... three! With every ounce of strength he catapulted his body to the floor. Fighting the agony, he crawled three feet through reams of his own hair until he reached the woman's tubes. He clasped the rubber with boney fingers and pulled her like Quasimodo in the bell tower.

Just as his arms fell slack with exhaustion, the woman shifted.

Hannah! he remembered. "Hannaaah!" he cried. Then he broke into another fit of hacking.

With a single, terrified gasp, the woman sucked from the room every last drop of stale air.

Is she awake?

Her lungs released the oxygen back to the room in a slow, labored heave.

"Help me..." he moaned.

A face peeked from the edge of the bed, eyes blinking in the lack of light, skin pale, but not chafed like his.

"Hannah..." he managed again, lifting his arm to her face.

But the woman didn't move.

* * *

dante's inferno; gustave doré's depiction of damned souls drowning in the river styx and clambering for the safety of the boat.

there's only one soul, hannah thought, staring at the caveman below. where are the rest?

supreme lethargy gripped her body as she tried again to visit doré's artwork. but she was still here, trapped in whatever dim reality she had accidentally conjured.

"hannah..." croaked the soul.

it knows my name.

"help!" it cried. the man's eyes were the only part of its body that seemed real. the rest was excrement from a zombie nightmare; a beard so straight and grey that it had to be fake, forehead wrinkles like valleys of burnt flesh, and arms raised like dead tree branches engraved with a spiral of faded tribal marks.

she tried to ask, "what's wrong with you?" but only made it to the second word before her own voice startled her with a static quality that left her syllables dragging through the air so slowly that she didn't think they'd ever reach the man's ears.

as she gazed into his pretty green eyes, a trove began to unlock in her mind with a series of clicks and whirs.

it's jon.

"it's jon!" she thought again, but this time the words were blurting from her lips and pummeling through the heavy air. "where are we?" she asked.

his eyelids responded with a slow collapse. every muscle buckled at once and he slumped to the floor with a puff of dust.

"hey!" she said. "don't go to sleep!"

it took focus and determination to sit upright. somehow, the motion created a dull ache on the side of her head, and she realized her hair was caught between her hand and the mattress. she readjusted, then applied a peculiar type of coordination to swing her legs off the edge of the bed.

something jerked her stomach. she looked down and found the tubes protruding from the cave beneath her ribs...

And she knew where she was; the fortieth floor of the Living Enterprises tower.

It took two full minutes for Hannah to bridge the gap between knowing her reality and understanding the implications. Tears formed in the wells of her eyes.

When she saw Jon's grotesque appearance in light of her new epiphany, she gasped.

An unidentifiable instinct (that prelude to panic) urged Hannah to find a solution to Jon's problem. She unplugged the tubes from her stomach, extended her legs, and pressed her toes to the cold steel... then her heel... then her arch. When she trusted her calves, she tiptoed around Jon, rolled away the patrician, and locked her arms around his ribs. He was burning up.

With a force of labor she hadn't felt in centuries, she dragged his sleeping body backwards through the other residents. If I pull too hard he's going to peel apart.

She edged sideways toward the door, then bumped something with her foot. It was a cardboard box about eight inches long on all sides. The words, "For Jonny," were scribbled with marker on the flaps.

She kicked the box under her bed and lugged Jon to the door. It didn't open.

She shot the door a quick glance and imagined it sliding to the side. It didn't budge.

Assuming it relied on old-fashioned motion detection, she let go of Jon's shoulder and waved her hand like an idiot. Still nothing.

Finally, she released the body gently to the ground, pressed her palms against the metal, and manually slid the door open. A gust of depressurized air belched a plume of dust into the corridor and tugged at Hannah's waist-length hair.

A dull yellow light emanated from the baseboards to create an illuminated pathway through the hall. With short, rapid steps, Hannah dragged the naked man on a sled of his own hair.

They turned right at the T. Her heel bumped something and she tumbled back, dropping Jon's shoulder just in time to catch herself on the corner of the wall. It was a leg. Twisting her neck a little further, she saw the rest of the slouching body, eyes open, head slumped, an unlit pendant fixed to its chest. She nudged the proxy's legs, then maneuvered Jon around its body.

The elevators were out of commission. Damnit.

Another twist in the hall, another hundred steps, and they reached a panel that blended seamlessly with the wall. She slid it open and looked into the stairwell.

"Okay, sweetheart," she said with a gulp. "I'll do this as gently as possible." She dragged him onto the grate, then bent forward to hoist him to the first step without scraping his back against the metal. She stepped again, then pulled again. Then stepped again, and pulled.

When she reached the first platform, she laid Jon flat, fell against the wall, and dropped to his side. "You're gonna have to wait here, my love." She ran her hand in a delicate arc from his cheek to his beard. "Let me catch my breath, then I'll find help."

Echoes of metallic footfalls ricocheted throughout the shaft. Hannah followed the sound, then saw black shoes and ragged cuffs dashing down the overhead steps.

The man approached. He was a proxy—a replica of Honbako Zokusuke—and his pendant was grey. "My name is Emmanuel 165," he said, tugging his frayed lapel with pride. "I'm here to help."