It had been months since I had managed a lucid dream, let alone go out of body. So often things remained straightforward, so rare was it that things would happen in a fashion fitting that which was out of the ordinary. I'd float down the streets aimlessly and watch night strollers, the homeless, the seekers of evening thrills. I tried long ago to shake them, to let them know I was there, all to no avail. They didn't see me. Sometimes a child would be up at night and seem to see me a moment, before going on their way. I stopped trying. It just scared the children and frustrated me.

Sometime, not quite in the beginning, but right after I had gotten the knack, things would get pretty wacky on my journeys. Yet lately I had felt blocked. I did not go to the usual limbos, the dark caves of the subconscious, the other astral realms that sat like layers of an onion next to our physical plane. No Mephisto, nothing out of the ordinary. Just night streets and asphalt, one after another, girders melting in moonlight.

Tonight the road took a bend, concrete shiny under a fresh coat of rainwater, sparkling in a streetlamp. The dotted yellow line raised one inch after another into the starry sky, through a cherry tree, over a roof into infinity. I walked on the dashes and up the slope to see where it led.

It meandered through darkness awhile, but then I saw them--the all-to-familiar stones that circled the shrine. I never remembered the shrine in my waking life, but in my sleep it called to me from different places. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. The poles lined up around the central spiral, their various puzzles and riddles emblazoned on them in Mephisto's native language. Sometimes I'd solve one riddle, find one key, but over the years I had learned that getting one right in one dream was not enough. It was necessary to solve them all in one sitting, or the puzzle changed. I didn't know why I was solving the puzzle, I just knew it was important. This was the most lucidity I had managed to date. Only this time did I recognize the source of the inscriptions, the fact that I had seen them before.

I climbed with my astral body, up the central column. I knew it would do me no good, as all the answers were inside. At the top, though, was another enigma.

Mephisto sat right in the center of the column, cross-legged. Whisps of hair and clothing rippled in the wind. His eyes were closed, an eternal smile on his face. The only color was in his hair. Every garment was desaturated, grey.

I sat across from him, feeling myself becoming more solid in a manner befitting this world. His presence lent me a new sort of substance.

As I crossed my own legs, he opened his eyes and looked at me. The sound of cellos seemed to strum from the shadows. I felt my head unraveling.

Suddenly the column began to rise into the sky, so fast I lost all sense of motion. The stars flickered out. "Where are you taking me?"

"You're only going to die a little. Don't worry." His eyes were black pools of oil, deep and serious. The smile played on his face, but a somber repose had captured the rest of his being. His presense was electric, and I vaguely remembered having been alive once, and wanting him like I did now. Except then I had not been in the presence of his true being, in the presence of his full magnetism.

"I-I shouldn't go."

"No, you shouldn't." He said it as if it was my last opportunity to back out. There was a fear in his own eyes, and I felt them creep into me. If I said no, we would both be free. If I said yes, we were going to face the veil together, and hopefully see beyond it.

"I haven't solved the puzzle, yet," I argued. Suddenly I remembered it was important.

"There's no time. She's onto us."

"I thought that there was nothing but time."

"In my world, yes. Not in yours. In your world, there is nothing but an infinity of endings. And she'll find us in one of them."

"Who is she?"

"She's like me, except she thinks she's not. Kind of like you." I suddenly began to wonder why it was Mephisto was grey, why he was sitting so still. I reached my hand out toward him, and I found his fingers with my own. I touched them, the cool, smooth skin, the motionless muscle and bone that did not reach back to return the gesture. I looked up at his face, composed, holding back longing with the help of closed eyelids and taut muscles.

As I touched his skin, knowledge passed between us. I realized that all of his lessons, all the coincidences that had brought me to Cain, every little synchronicity that had passed over my lifetime was him at work. Mephisto at first, in a womblike state, weaving his fine threads of influence into the earthly realms, bringing himself to life through the power of imagination. One little baby girl, one mind still fresh and smooth like a pebble, and a little thread of the veil sits across in a spiral shape, a purple streak of electricity forming thought, forming the first vestiges of memory and sight. This baby girl imagines colors and shapes, growing older, and then she sees the monster in her closet. It is a tiny man with a large white head and red hair, a gleaming smile. Where did this monster come from? She remembers vaguely another face like this, but no source comes to mind.

But now she does. The baby girl, all grown up, remembers the precise moment, the years peeling away, her life flashing before her eyes as she passes through the veil. Mephisto watches her with devout attention.

She sees that day with crystal clarity. She is on the bus with her mother, asleep. Dreaming of spirals, as she always does. Suddenly she opens her eyes, and she is in the lap of a strange young man with a gleaming smile. He is holding her aloft as her mother fumbles for the stroller under the seat. There is a sort of madness in his eyes, a sad longing for something. He looks at her as if she represents something he will never have, and thus must be consumed. Before anymore time passes, her mother has collected the stroller, and collects her daughter, suddenly frightened by the young man and his awkward assistance.

The man is dressed strangely, in a blue jacket and a red shirt, his red hair wild and unkempt, a notebook in his pocket. He is on his way to a show, he is on his way with a young woman. Suddenly the little girl breaks out into tears, the full force of the experience resting upon her just as she's heading out the door with her mother. She looks back through her tears and sees the young man sit down just as awkwardly as he got up, his smile larger, overcompensating, trying to make up for the fright. He waves goodbye, then drops his pen on the floor. He picks it up and looks at her from his downturned head, his brows villanous and more terrifying with the motion.

Cain was a handsome young man. More vibrant despite his sadness, full of color. Even in those days he blacked out, lost track of himself. The medicine didn't cure the blackouts, but it did decrease their frequency. They were usually short, inconsequential. But there were moments when he'd find himself in the middle of an action he did not remember beginning. Like narcolepsy, except someone else took over the reigns when he left.

When Kaitlyn touched Cain that very first moment, their fates had been tied together. He became the source of her nightmares, and the seed for Mephisto. A little imagination was all the demon had needed to birth himself into the human realms, to escape his exile. It took the right minds to make it work. It took years and years of patience. And now he was himself, yet a self that was no longer independent, but hopelessly entwined in these two souls.

"You're him," I stuttered.

"No, I'm not. I'm me."

"You are a seed."

"No, I am the plant."

"You've manipulated me."

"You cannot manipulate yourself. You've followed willingly. The choices were there."

"You used me."

"You used me. We all use one another. I taught you."

"You molded me. You made me your toy."

"No. I wanted to make you something more. Someone more."

"You've taken my life from me."

"Life is a choice, Kaitlyn. And there are choices yet ahead of you. You cannot choose your story. But you can choose the path you take through it."

"What choices do I have left? What is there that's left? I'm dying. You've brought me here to die."

"Choose me, Kaitlyn."

"What?"

"Choose me. If we travel the veil together, we can have a new life there. New choices."

There was hope in his eyes. The deep longing was for me. Yet, there was something more to it, something under the surface. I trusted him, I didn't trust him. He was everything to me, yet he had made me nothing.

What was everything to nothing?

"What do I have to do?"

"Just hold my hand." I looked down, and his spindly fingers unraveled themselves, like the gnarled branches of a tree opening up to the sun. My hand was millimeters from his own, trembling. Slowly I placed it in his. It felt like home, in the uncomfortable way that home had for me.

Then he reached with his other hand to grab mine. In the distance I saw plumes and feathers rising up toward the heavens, a white face of utter beauty looming, drawing nearer. I knew instantly that it was the moth queen Oleandora. Our act of union had sent a cry out across the planes, as the unspeakable happened. A demon was not to extend a hand to a mortal. I had never been sure of why this was, but I had remembered since I was a young girl, Mephisto refusing to hold my hand due to this rule.

"We are breaking all the rules, tonight," he said with a smirk.

He disentangled one hand and raised it toward my forehead. "Long ago, you asked me to teach you everything I knew. Remember?"

I nodded. I remembered it like it was yesterday. The orange fires of Miranoth had fluttered behind me like blooms on the back of a wild beast. I was entranced by the image, determined to know more of this place where a body was nothing more than a sack of potatoes.

"Remember, then, Kaitlyn, that you are the one who asked me to do this."

"Why, will something terrible happen?"

"Too late for questions, now."

As he touched my forehead, a searing pain ran all throughout my body. Everything shook in heat waves on my periphery, the knowledge of all the cosmos spinning inward and decloaking, layer upon layer dismantling before my eyes into the core of nothingness. In the center was Mephisto's face, his eyes drawn in excitement and worry, and even love. As I felt myself become more like him, I felt I could understand him more and more. The pain was a metaphysical one, and therefore deeper and more horrendous than any pain I had ever experienced. Screaming would have done no good, but I know I heard someone scream. Perhaps it was Oleandora, screaming that things should stop, that our treason was a horrible folly.

Despite my pain I had felt fairly sure, until the moment I saw into the very core of Mephisto. His face stripped away and I saw his true being. Not visually frightening, it was pure and thick, something larger and more infinite than I could ever be. I felt small next to him, out of place, unsure.

It was at that moment that I pulled away. I lifted my hand from his, and he could do nothing but let go.

His hand was limp, but his face was full of betrayal. The smile dissipated. He was like a puppet without a hand. "What have you done? You were supposed to take me with you."

He began to lose form. He drifted into nothing. A knife drilled into my temples, and I rose my hand to inspect. Two horns had grown from the sides of my head. Long, red hair came down my shoulders in locks. Somehow I knew Mephisto was not dead, but was gone somewhere it would take a very long time from which to retrieve him.

I screamed. I cried. The little girl on the bus returned. She wasn't crying because the demon boy had frightened her. She cried because she didn't want him to leave.

Kaitlyn's body woke up with a sharp start, in the wet grass off some sidewalk, late at night, where the road had begun. An arm stirred her body, it was attached to a familiar person, but no longer was she attached to a familiar person. She got up, I got up, face to face with Cain. He looked different, paler in the moonlight, the hint of a terrible smirk taking over his entire face, frightening and beautiful at once.

He spoke, but I hadn't heard him well. I shook my head.

"Are you alright, I said?"

I raised my hand to my head. No horns. At least, no physical ones. There was a sort of surging energy pulsating from where they would be.

"And what did you do to your hair?"

A dropped my head forward. It was the same hair as usual, except it was a vivid red. Kaitlyn was here, but she wasn't. To my very core, I felt different. Every solid object undulated in the streetlight, as if it were not truly solid. The only solid matter was Cain. At least, the man who used to be Cain.

This time, Mephisto wasn't taking up temporary residence. He had merged with Cain when I broke our union. It wasn't just that I had broken the chain, but that I had not been ready for the transformation. I had not yet solved the riddles. The riddles might have prepared me. Mephisto's impatience had ruined us all.

"Do you know what's happened, Cain?" I looked at him, every petty human moment we had shared falling into a weak light, as if it no longer could possibly matter.

He smiled at me darkly. "Of course I do. How do you think I found you?"

He steadied me with one hand. I walked at his side. Where would I go? What did home mean for a body when the light of dreams had been cast harshly upon reality?

"I'm lost, Cain. Please take me with you."

"Don't worry, Kaitlyn. We'll pick up the pieces together." His words comfort