by MARY KIORPES HAYDEN

Lily leaned into the mirror, angling her right eyebrow just above the curve of the gold frame.  Tweezers plucked at thick hairs that stubbornly grew outside her sculpted brow lines.  She struggled with one that evaded the tiny metal jaws, and just couldn't let it go until she nicked herself and winced from the sting. 

Warm breath puffed against her neck as Warin's face moved into the mirror's view, pushing hers out of scope.   "Why do you do that, Lily?" he asked, in a cynical tone.  "Why such a ritual every day and every night?  Do you really think anyone can see you?"

She pressed him out of the way, and pulled the slim bottle of concealer from the shallow drawer that held her precious beauty supplies.  "Concealer," she thought, with bitterness.  "The true meaning of ironic."  A few drops fell onto her fingertip, and she dabbed the pale shade of beige over her too ivory skin.  One or two more drops and all were positioned purposefully and reexamined like a painter before beginning the real detail work of her precious art.   She stroked the silky liquid spots in fine sweeps over her neck and across her cheeks, feeling the glow of frustration add a pink richness to the counterfeit sheen. 

"Are you ignoring me, Lily?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Intense hatred comes to mind." 

He smiled. 

She winced. 

"No one can see you, Lily--they never will.  You can make yourself as beautiful as the divine Lady Light, and they still won't see you.  And you can't leave here anyway." 

"And why can you see me, Warin?  Why can you touch me?" 

"I can see you, sweetheart, because it's part of the deal I've made.  I have to keep your remains undamaged."

The mascara wand made a sucking sound as it exited its silver tube, and clumps of velvety goop began to sweep over her lashes in deliberate strokes, thinning into a creamy blanket of black.

"'My remains undamaged' . . . how morbid. 

"Did you gamble me here, Warin?  Was it your disgusting deal?"

"No I didn't, love--I sold you--part of you, that is.  There's a big difference."

"What did you sell me for, Warin?  You took my essence and gave it to who--for what?"

She dropped the wand, her hand shaking, and her composure crumbling.  "Where's my blush?" she whispered.  "Where is it?"  The drawer rattled as Lily pushed and probed with long fingers until she touched the simple case that held the powder blush.  A fluffy brush found her hand and she swirled its soft bristles over the worn, cosmetic surface, then touched over her cheeks in upright sweeps. 

"I'm not your servant, or your property, Warin.  You had no right to trade me."

"Yes I did, Lily love.  The dark laws state that I have the right to trade or deal you into the shadows, if it meets my needs.   Your essence is sweet and sensual, Lily--they love it." 

"It's my essence!  Mine!  The dark laws are arcane and illegal.  And you’re a criminal now."

He curled a strand of her hair around his finger, and leaned in close to her face, sharing the mirror, once more.   She shuddered with disgust knowing that he's the only thing of the true world that she can touch any longer.  Him and this room--this small space.  Anywhere outside of here leaves her a nonentity--not seen, not heard, not felt, and probably dead.   A ghost.  In order for her essence to survive, the remainder of her must continue to exist.  And this place was the dimensional safe house for the rest of her.

"Well--I suppose I am, but a rich criminal then.  You've been bottled, my lovely wife.  Bottled and sold for profit.  A lot of profit.  Men and women alike are using you, and in quite flattering numbers.  Yours is the most demanded and expensive of all the lots.  Top of the line!  And I hold the rights." 

Warin spun a triumphant little spin on his heel, and left the space that held her splintered life-force trapped.   She watched as he opened the door that she would never be able to use, and looked out the window into a black shadow of nothing. 

A thick sigh escaped Lily as she turned back to her mirror, pulled the cap off the liner pencil, and etched a fine red line over the perimeter of her pretty lips.  A shiny gloss and rose lipstick smoothed the crayon effect from the pencil, and she stared at the results of her labor in the mirror's concave glass.   She chewed the inside of her bottom lip, just enough to push a thought through a stubborn synapse.

Warin was going to pay for this.

* * * * *

If deals were made--then others knew she was here.  How he pilfered the ancient rights to her bloodline, she didn't know.  Those things were past ages' discretions--not matters of present day life.  The shadow priests must still exist then, practicing the old magic and essence-bleeding rituals. 

            Warin must have found the priests, and married her just for profit's sake.  Maybe he was a shadow priest.  But maybes don't matter anyway; wondering why only tends to paralyze the person who can't understand the motives of barren souled fools.

            When did he have her essence bled out?  Why can't she remember it?  She probed what she'd learned from her studies of the ancient ways and remembered history expounding the ritual as a traumatic and tortuous ordeal.  The leeching a part of one's soul and placing it in a magic distillery of sorts.  But instead of heating a liquid until its more unstable elements become vapor, then cooling the vapor to recoup those elements in liquid form by condensation, the essence is captured and bombarded by magic particles of dark light.  The result is a chain reaction that peels out the passions of the person's inner radiance, with the higher, volatile energies becoming the catalyst, allowing only that which can be separated and made into liquid to be bottled--almost as a liquid light.  And the touch of that light can be very intoxicating, or tranquilizing.  

Even addicting. 

* * * *

With the corner of a tissue, Lily dabbed away the tears that formed in her eyes. She wasn't going to ruin her makeup, nor would she let the horrible sadness that stabbed inside distract her.  A now frequent and familiar feeling of being drained took over, and gave her no option but to lay down.  She assumed this was a symptom of her new condition, of no longer being whole.

Lily slept in restless bouts, dreaming in visions that gave her more questions.  She woke with the memory of a woman with long, dark hair holding a large, crystal bowl, staring intensely into its contents--a viscous sapphire-blue fluid--and spilling it purposefully in slow, braided streams.  It poured into a vat of some sort, with the bubbles dancing and dissolving from each new spill, and the bowl never went empty.

      Then, this strange lady glanced up at Lily, and told her to drink.  "Drink or be swallowed," she said.

            Shudder. 

Lily wrapped her arms around her chest and pushed the chill down with her already stuffed emotions. 

"Drink or be swallowed," she mumbled.

Isn't that what was already happening?  Strangers were swallowing her essence--rubbing it, drinking it, soaking in it, making love in it.  They were swallowing and defiling her over and over.  Confronting this truth brought bile up her throat that burned on its way.  Her stomach protested and her head pounded. 

"Drink or be swallowed," repeated the brown-haired lady, who this time was standing in front of Lily, right in this room. 

And she wasn't asleep this time.

* * * * *

"What?" Lily said, wondering if this was her mind taking a sharp detour from a very bad reality.  The shock of another person being there made her jump. 

"I only have a moment--listen to me--listen well," the stranger said.  "I'm Anna.  I've also been bled for my essence--and there are more of us.  The dimensional 'rooms' where the shadow priests have sent us are somehow overlapping with each other.  We're able to touch and communicate for brief moments.  We have to find a way to touch our essences, to drink them back into our souls, or be swallowed into these spaces.  There is a brief timeframe where we can become whole again--after that, the separation remains permanent."

Anna's image was shifting, becoming dimmer.

"One of us will be back," she said.  "But you need to find the weakened site in your room where the structure of this dimension stretches or tears.  Once you find it--you should find us."

And Anna was gone.

            "Okay," Lily said.  "Okay."  A terrified tremble threatened to seize her and crumble what little sanity remained.  So she moved to the spot that offered her the most comfort, sat in the chair at the vanity that held her makeup mirror and turned on the light.  Pulling a cotton swab from a gold dish shaped like a seashell, she wiped a black smudge from the corner of her eye, and squinted as she repaired the slight damage done from her nap to her cosmetic work of art.   Not quite convinced that what she just saw was real, Lily chose to think on it for the moment.   She closed her eyes and searched for a reason not to believe--and there really wasn't one.  She accepted her reality just moments ago and couldn't turn to denial without condemning herself to this new hell.  The words of this new lady made her realize the possible forever of her situation.

"Well, I suppose I need to figure out how to find a hole in my Universe--don't I?"

* * * * *

            Lily's hands felt their way over the walls, the furniture, the floor, and the ceiling.  She touched the curtains, the mirror, the doors, and the windows.  But she knew that reaching for something tangible wasn't how to find what she was looking for.  She swiped at the air and tried to locate a solid spot of invisible nothing.  What Lily had to touch wasn't really there--at least, not with this traditional set of senses.

            She closed her eyes--she had to feel a rip in this space--as well as see it.  And she had to listen and allow her core being to find what was out of balance with the rest.  A touch of panic edged inside her for the moment--was she was swiping at dreams?  Was this an irrational trap set by a desperate mind? 

"No--I can't let go of this now . . . not now."  Lily squelched the anxiety like swallowing a pill that was too big to fit down her throat, and decided to let the unreal feel true just for this moment, and give it a chance to prove itself otherwise.

Eyes closed again, as she heard her heart beating.  Ta-thump, ta-thump, ta-thump.  She stood and cocked her head to the side, listening maybe for an echo?  Ta-thump, ta-thump, ta-thump.  She calmed, and still listened, ta-thump, ta-thump, ta-thump.  Lily allowed the quiet to soothe and move her to where the core of her being resided, shifting into a meditative state.  A new set of eyes shifted to replace her outward sight, and those eyes revealed the many intricate layers of light and energy that created her horrible home.  It was a beautiful place, really.  Fine lines, woven and webbed forming patchworks and quilts of stunning hues.  Sheer lattices built from tiny atoms formed molecular fabrics of iridescent drapes.

As she continued to probe, she saw that in most places the intertwining seams were tight and strong, and in others, sparse and less opaque.  The energies spun and vibrated, less where the bonds were strongest, and erratic and edgy where the more delicate links appeared.

Lily moved toward the most insubstantial section of the dimensional quilt, held together by scant blood-red threads, taut and stretched from one to the other.  Her newfound eyes piloted the way, and she moved comfortably to the glimmering spot.  The threads soon appeared as layers turned sideways offering shallow places to slip in between and through--but to where?  If she pressed through the negligible doorways, would she end up in another room as the brown-haired lady had?  Or in a place with no substance to support her being? 

Ah--but she was already existing in a terrible world without substance--wasn't she?  She survived in a place of shadows.  At least if Lily ended up dead, Warin would lose her precious essence--and she didn't want to go down without taking him with her.

So the decision was quick, and she moved toward the scarlet layers.  Her stride turned to stark purpose as she came upon the dimensional rift.  Lily angled her body and slid into the largest fragile opening.  Floating and swooshing were words that came into her mind--I'm floating and swooshing though energy and light.  How amazing!

And she floated and swooshed right into a very dark chamber full of dark shadow priests.

* * * * *

She was on the edge of something--not really inside the bleary chamber, but on the fringe of its reality.  The frail layers that formed the crisscrossed doorways, hallways, and windows between these dimensions were more recognizable to her now.  The topography had a logic that became clearer the longer she resided in the in-betweens, as Lily was now calling them.  Instinct claimed that she could emerge into this chamber and remain intact, and the shadow-light patterns would render her visible. 

Instinct also told her that the essences were somewhere here, in this murky monastery.  Her soul tingled as if something intimately familiar was nearby.

The huge stone chamber showed two priests standing at a podium, concentrating intently over a large volume of text.  Another was tending to potions and concoctions over a table loaded with vials and powders.  Shelves full of books and odd notions lined the walls from floor to ceiling.  More shadow priests moved from room to room, but it was difficult to see where they headed.  The rooms and halls were lit with strange lamps that emitted an eclipsed light, as if true brightness would burn the dark clerics' flesh, like the demons they were. 

Lily pushed through the tight dimensional hallways, rounding the perimeter of her limited space, searching for the area that held the precious pilfered essences.  She floated and swooshed through the hallways and windows and doors of light and energy, until she saw what she was searching for.  

Relief warmed the cold that persistently hugged her torn soul, as Lily eyed the rows of wooden tables that lined a tremendous section of the sinister chamber.  On top of those tables and setting on tiers above and below were contraptions that moved a substance like bottled lightning through glass tubes and gold piping, heated with magic fire and coal.  What looked like blue diamonds and scarlet sparks spit from the lightning, and spun through yet another reaction.  Her eyes targeted the crystal containers at the end of each and every contraption--the crystal containers that collected the viscous, sapphire-blue liquid-light. 

Distilled essence.

* * * * *

Each table was marked with a symbol of sorts, and each contraption held a numerical code that must be identifying its lot.  How would she know which lot was hers?  Lily supposed it would be something akin to a mother finding her lost child--she would certainly recognize her own soul.  Wouldn't she?

The dimensional hallways that she now occupied offered many rifts as exits into the magic room. The closest was only several yards away if distance in this abstract place could be judged so finitely.  Lily targeted the door that looked the easiest to maneuver to and through, and moved ahead.  So close now to being whole again caused a nervousness that was as elating as it was terrifying.  To be this near and not succeed--the headache that suddenly pinched at her temples cautioned her not to endure that thought.

She continued through the glimmering latticework until the chosen exit was almost in front of her.  Excitement pushed her breathing into shortened puffs, and her heart ta-thumped extra beats in her chest.  What would it be like to cross into yet another reality?  To move through the threshold of the dark priests world?  What would happen to her body and torn soul?  Warmth touched her belly and worked its way through the rest of her, almost like being caressed. 

So close.

She floated and swooshed toward the tear in the curtain of energy and light, and parted it.  As her hand poked through, strong fingers suddenly grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked her back into the in-between spaces.   She was too stunned to scream--reaching back to untangle the spider claw that was separating her hair from her skull by the roots.  The claw spun her around and pulled her face into his--Warin's face.  "Hello Lily," he hissed.

That face was twisted with anger--spittle flew from lips that formed a thin line of hate.  The eyes that stared into hers were wild and insane.  He had her by the back of her head, yanking and pressing.  The pain was starting to burn and stab, but he couldn't kill her--he'd lose his precious essence.  She did the only option available, and jammed her knee as hard as the abstract space she was in would allow, and smashed it between his legs.  Warin let go and grabbed his groin, more furious now.  Lily bolted straight for the rift, tumbling like a clumsy gymnast into the magic room, and landing with a thud on the floor.  She noticed immediately that she felt different here--her body filled this space differently--but she couldn't explain or translate the sensation.  And she didn't have time--Warin pushed through and into the room, moving slowly from obvious discomfort, then stopping to pick up a rope and some strange tool of sorts on his uneasy way toward her. 

"How many of these are yours, Warin?  How many souls do you own?"

Warin looked at her with a curiosity that slightly softened the serrated lines of hate.  "And what difference is that to you, love?  If I owned them all--what would be the care?" 

"There are scores of souls here, Warin.  You have them all imprisoned in the shadows--don't you?  How did you get the rights to all those women?  Marry them all?  Buy them?  Threaten their families?"

He tilted his head as if trying to understand why she chose this line of conversation, or any conversation at all.  He took a step closer, and she moved a step back.  "And I ask again--what's the difference this knowledge makes to you?  You're going back to your own, new and improved shadow place, now.  You were damned clever to escape--but back you go, to where there are no rifts in space."

"Those other souls will escape too, Warin.  Think of it--all of them," she spread her arms displaying what was already there--the tables and contraptions of liquid lightning.  "Think of all of them finding a way out, and back to you."

"Well, my lovely Lily, this little escapade of yours has certainly brought that possibility to my attention--and I already have the priests fortifying their shadow spaces as we speak."

He stepped closer, she moved back again.  They were almost dancing now--a dance of catch-me-if-you-can.  Warin held up the rope.

"You aren't whole, Lily--you can only do so much, you know.  You're physical self can't stay here very long without deteriorating, and I don't want that to happen.  You are my best money maker--the cream among the milk."

She reached to grab a gold tube that dripped the precious viscous blue liquid into a crystal container.  "The essence--the real essence is inside the apparatus--right?  This," she lifted the crystal container and held it, "this is just a product of the actual life force.  But if I break one of these," now bending slightly toward the larger contraption that held the liquid lightning--the true essence, "what would happen?  Would the person whose essence this is die?"

Warin lost the look of curiosity now, and showed blunt irritation.  "What?  You'd knowingly kill?  You?  Go ahead . . . I have hundreds more.  Knock it down."   He took another step closer.

Lily heard Anna's warning, "Drink or be swallowed."

She lifted the crystal bowl and took a drink.

* * * * *

"NO!" Warin lunged toward Lily.  You've polluted the mix!  You have to stay pure!  Damn you!"

Lily dropped the bowl and felt her body change.  Warin seemed to disappear--or maybe her vision was changing--she didn't know.  Time drifted somewhere else.  She could still hear Warin yelling her name--but from where?  Memories that weren't hers tickled her brain--confusing the transition, if that's what this was--all the more.  She had swallowed only a piece of a piece of the whole of another person, and she was only a piece as well.  What would that do?  She was polluted now--Warin certainly made that clear.  Good.  That was a good thing. 

The surrounding space suddenly filled with color--an aura bursting with golden bubbles of life-fires rained from nowhere forming an arch around her being.  Brilliant blues splashed against that living arch, migrating and mingling with the gold, forming cobalt-amber braids that weaved into her hair, thickening it, growing it, now emblazoned with a scarlet flame of passion.  Skin turned transparent--she could see through herself!  A sensation of hanging in space--another in-between, but then not--made it difficult to focus.  That and the voice of the other still tugging at her psyche.  Lily just couldn't hear the words--but she felt the pain, felt the ripping of a soul from the physical body--felt the rush of hate when a miniscule moment infused the huge meaning of being buried alive in a worthless body, hit the brain.  Pure hopelessness.  Pure pain.  Oh the pain!

At that second, Lily remembered the bleeding of her own essence.  She remembered the little priests with no soul stealing her own.  She remembered being strapped to a table, and staring at her husband in shock that he would hurt her so.  She remembered the curl of his lips into a smile of twisted delight as the liquid lightning was sucked out of her body through a tube in her heart, and the priests chanting and moving in gross patterns around her 'remains,' as Warin had once referred to her new, bled-out self.  And she remembered watching as her life-force was transferred into an ugly grey urn, and then carried away.

And she was angry.

* * * * *

Lily looked down to where Warin's wails had emanated, and saw that she was hovering above him like an angel.  His cries were quiet now, and as she brought her eyes into a new focus--she viewed the man in his true form--old--very, very old.  Ancient, even.  Shriveled and grey with sunken skin stretched thin over aged bones.  Patches of white hair draped over baldness.  She realized then that he was the one who drank her essence--he didn't sell it--he lived off it--fed on it.  Her life made his life, and now that part of her wasn't purely Lily, but mingled with the spirit of another--it was no longer keeping him young.  So he used these women, one after another, to keep himself young and immortal.

"You bitch!" he yelled.  "You bitch!"

            "I suppose, Warin, that it's in your best interest to point me to the table where my life-force is kept.  It's no good to you now."

            "How, Lily, would that be in my best interest?  You reabsorb your essence and become whole again--that doesn't help me.  It puts me faster in my grave!"

"And you can't drink from any of the others?"

            He almost hissed when answering, "No--there's a ritual necessary to prepare my body and mind for the acceptance of new blood."

"Good, Warin--that's good.  You'll die then, and your madness will die with you."

"So will the secret for freeing the others, my dear Lily.  The priests won't tell you anything--they're bound by magical oaths."

            Lily was quiet for a moment, listening to something whisper to her senses.  Listening and thinking.

            "I believe that a spirit is a strong and loyal living thing, and if freed from its captive vessel, will probably find its owner.  I think that all I have to do is release the essences from all those awful contraptions and life will take care of the rest."

            Warin's face turned ashen.  If there was any blood in him, it was suddenly drained.

            "Well now--from the look on your old and nasty face," Lily said, "I think I may be very right."        

            So Lily floated and swooshed through the chamber, from table to table, releasing the essence from each and every vessel, and knowing immediately when touching her own.  The transparency of her skin filled with the color of pink flesh tones washing over her like pastels on a canvas.  The ta-thump of her heart pounded in her chest with a new beat--hardy and whole.  The sensation of touch that was diluted in her shadow world came flooding back, her mouth was moist again, and details of her body that she'd forgotten sent loud reminders.  Awareness rushed through her senses.  And for the first time in a timeless existence of shadows--she felt warmth from blood pumping through her veins--and she felt hungry!  Food!  She'd forgotten about food!

            She turned toward the man who stole so much from so many, just in time to watch him crumble into dust. 

            Lily walked out of the halls of the shadow priests, defiantly ignoring the few that had filed into the room, and opened the door into the sunlight. 

She was going home

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