The Deceiver 

Lauren Folk

With her heart pounding, Mossy Pretta stared into the dark. Icy pinpoints of light from her charging phone pricked her eyes, blinding in the pitch of her bruise-black bedroom. She found herself clutching a fistful of bedsheet in her hand and forced herself to release it.

The night was as silent as it could be, this time of year. It was very late, or very early, and the house had settled its bones against the changing temperatures of late spring. A cracked window admitted only the cool breeze. The peeps of frogs had abated and the chirps of birds had not yet begun. Something chittered in the distance, then stopped.

Mossy rubbed her eyes and listened. When the whisper came, she barely flinched.

Are you awake?

She wasn’t really surprised, but she had hoped tonight would be different.

~~~

The felt-covered walls of her cubicle were bare except for one motivational poster—the kitten on the tree branch, hang in there, 

baby!—that the previous occupant had left behind. She had tried and failed to keep a plant alive under the fluorescent lights.

Mossy glanced down at her hands and found them clenched around a spreadsheet, printed on continuous-form paper. She focused on relaxing one finger at a time. Soon, the bottom sheet slipped free and the whole stack stretched into an inhaling accordion until gravity reassembled it on the floor.

“Excuse me, Ms. Pretta?”

Mossy looked up to see a smiling man standing at the entrance to her cubicle.

He pointed with a thumb. “I’m the new guy. They put me in the cubicle next to yours.”

Mossy nodded at his many white teeth. She couldn’t have said if his blurriness was his fault or hers.

The man’s smile looked a little forced now. “My name is Kip—"

“No, it isn’t.” The words were out before she had consciously thought them. She flushed.

Kip’s laugh was shallow. “It’s not a nickname, if that’s what you mean. Anyway… nice to meet you?” He gave her one last glance before disappearing.

Mossy turned away. 

~~~

Knight to D-9.

“That’s not a real move. Try again.”

Mossy leaned back against the headboard. The chessboard sat on the nightstand. The stack of dusty books she’d had there twenty minutes ago were on the floor to make space.

Rook to G-7.

“Better.” Mossy nudged the castle to its new spot and glanced over the board. In a moment, she saw the end and moved her white queen next to the cornered black king. “Checkmate.”

The board rattled menacingly.

“That’s the game, baby. Anyone ever tell you you’re a sore loser?”

Another game.

Mossy sighed. Headlights flickered through her window, tracing a path across the wall and over her face. “No, I want to sleep. You never just let me sleep.”

A long pause. Mossy knew she’d made a mistake, but she was so tired.

“Wait—”

You can sleep whenever you like.

Mossy felt the air grow cold around her cheeks and waved her hands uselessly in front of her face.

“I’m sorry, okay? Please, just—"

Her eyes closed and darkness rushed in.

~~~

Outside her childhood home. The tiger stalks her, creeping up from behind. A magnificent growl rips from its throat as its single amber eye locks onto her. The space where its other eye should be is a terrible void rimmed with tattered flesh. She tries to run but finds that her limbs have grown stone-heavy, her legs marble, her arms granite. Breathing requires a Herculean effort, each gasp sucked through layers of cotton. In the instant the tiger reaches her, she wakes up screaming.

~~~

A crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to someone in the break room down the hall. The song, muffled but not defeated by a dozen partition walls, brought back echoes of the sleepover birthday parties of her preteen years. They loomed large in her memory, despite taking place only two or three times.

Each sleepover had followed the same comfortable formula: half a dozen giggling girls would congregate at the birthday girl’s house for the evening. Pizza, cake, and presents were followed by a movie and late-night gossip about boys.

Mossy never dreaded falling asleep at those parties, though perhaps she should have. Inevitably, she would be roughly awakened by one of the others, who would shake her arm and whisper urgently, “Stop it, Mossy, quit screaming! You’re gonna wake everyone up.” Mossy would murmur an apology to the rest, most of them still sound asleep, but one or two would grumble and turn their backs to her.

During the party that would mark the final time she received an invitation (although it took a while for her to recognize it), she’d outdone herself with a bloodcurdling screech that had woken everyone up, including the parents sleeping upstairs. With a group gathered around her sleeping bag on the floor, Mossy could only shake her head in wordless shame and dread, still half submerged in the nightmare and awash in the utter impossibility of giving it a name.

~~~

She came to gradually, finding herself standing at her dresser, methodically knocking everything off the top of it. Her consciousness finally retook control just as the lamp went over, and she managed to catch it mid-fall. A careful survey found nothing broken. Mossy put everything back where it belonged.

Are you ready to play?

Heart still pounding, she set up the board once more with shaky hands.

“That was really rude.”

You wanted to sleep.

“Listen,” Mossy said, trying to rein in her anger. “You can’t throw a tantrum every time I want to sleep! I need to or I’ll go crazy. Is that what you want?” Part of her felt it might already be a little too late. The lurking madness felt only skin deep and ready to emerge.

I keep you safe.

“How is making me insane keeping me safe?”

No answer. She blew the hair from her face and laid down on the bed. Maybe she could get some sleep through sheer proximity to her pillow.

~~~

A dying breeze licks the back of her neck as she squints in the sun. The heat is intense, raising goosebumps all over her body. Her feet sink into the blistering sand but find no cooler layer underneath. The sound of water surrounds her. Shielding her face with both hands, she looks around for it. Golden dunes stretch in every direction, sunlight glinting off particles of sand and shattering into fractals in the heat-hazed air.

Her tongue darts dryly over her chapped lips, and panic, which until then simmered like a low-grade fever, begins to unfold within her. The water is so close, she can hear each wave as it crashes against the shore; it is everywhere and nowhere.

Dropping to her knees, she plunges her arms into the molten drift and begins to dig. Blisters bloom on her skin like furious spring buds, and the only water for miles drips from her eyes and bursts into steam as it hits the sand.

~~~

Her own yelp rang in her ears. Hoping no one had heard her, she sat upright from her desk and wiped away the small puddle of drool on her mousepad. Maybe the sound had been deadened by the hundred or so honeycombed cells nearby. It was usually so quiet in her own cloistered space in the corner that she was able to fall deeply asleep with no interruptions. No such luck today.

“Ms. Pretta, are you okay? I heard something.” Kip poked his head around the gap that served as an entryway. His wide eyes were a little too earnest, in Mossy’s opinion, but she nodded her head.

“Sorry. I… got a bad papercut.”

“Ouch.” Kip winced in sympathy and left. Mossy thought that was the end of it. However, he reappeared moments later, and this time strode right into Mossy’s cubicle to her desk, which he reached in two steps. He had something in his hand and held it out to her: a bandage.

“Here you go, in case you need it for that papercut. I get them all the time, so I keep a box in my desk.” He shrugged. “Thin skin.”

Mossy stared at the offering, suspicious, mind still foggy. Her trance was broken by Kip’s awkwardly shifting feet as he turned to put the bandage on her desk instead.

“Okay, well,” he said, “it’s there if you need it.”

Mossy finally looked up. “Thank you.”

A toothy smile burst onto his face like a sunrise. “You’re so welcome! Let me know if you need anything else.”

Mossy turned to her desk after he was gone and continued staring at the bandage.

~~~

“I really need you to stop messing with me at work.”

Her opponent said nothing. Then: Tell me again about pawn promotion.

“Not until you promise to stop. I need to work. I have to earn money for rent and food and… chess pieces.”

I am not messing with you at work.

Mossy frowned. “Oh, come on. I knew you were impossible, but I didn’t take you for a liar.”

I am not a liar. I help you.

“You’re not helping me by spying on me.”

Spying?

“The new guy, Kip? I know he’s yours. Or… he’s you somehow. I haven’t figured out how you’re doing it, but you have to stop!” She realized she was almost shouting. She knew arguing would get her nowhere, but her patience and energy were nearly exhausted. Deep breath. She said as calmly as she could, “Please. I’m begging you. Let me work and let me sleep.”

I do not affect your work, and I do not keep you from sleeping.

Mossy saw red and knocked the chessboard off the nightstand. Knights and rooks went flying across the room, clinking harmlessly off the glass mirror, landing in shoes. The heavier pieces—the queens, kings, and bishops—landed on the carpet nearby. One black pawn sailed high into the air and into Mossy’s lap. Picking it up, she stared at it for a moment, then threw it to the floor.

“I’m going to sleep. Don’t interfere.”

No response.

~~~

She tosses and turns, kicks the blankets off, then gropes around the bed seeking a corner to tug back over herself again. Sleep feels far away. Each time she closes her eyes, she is plagued by nightmares.

First, a snake at her feet, winding up its steel coils to strike at her unprotected legs.

Then, at a family picnic, her mother has been replaced by a nearly identical stranger, and only Mossy seems to notice those black, pointed teeth. Her father and sister sit around the picnic table with the imposter, and they all laugh, and their laughter sounds like screaming. Mossy sits up in bed gasping, throat aching as if she has been screaming, too.

She goes to the kitchen for water. Taking a glass from the cupboard, she stands in front of the sink and turns the cold handle. Instead of water, spiders gush from the faucet, exploding in a wave that knocks her backward. She drops the glass and it shatters into rubies on the floor.

She finds herself once more in her bed. Her hands are wet and in the dark, she cannot tell if it is water or blood. This time, she cries.

~~~

Mossy stood just outside of Kip’s cubicle. She could hear him hum, keyboard clacking. Her hesitation felt like cowardice, so she took a deep breath and entered the doorway, doing her best to smile.

“Hey there, um, Kip.”

He turned, already smiling, “Well hello, Ms. Pretta! What a lovely surprise. What can I do for you?”

She almost hated his relentless positivity but kept the smile plastered onto her face. “I just wanted to stop by and, you know, chat. Get to know you. Sorry I haven’t done it already.”

“No worries,” he responded cheerfully. “If you’re half as busy as I am, you haven’t had time!” A laugh revealed those ultra-white teeth again. Mossy attempted a chuckle but settled for an even bigger smile that tried to match his.

Kip pointed behind him to an electric kettle. “Would you like some herbal tea? The water’s hot.”

“Oh, uh… sure. That would be nice.”

Kip busied himself with the tea for several minutes, still humming. She couldn’t make out what tune it was, but it sounded vaguely familiar.

“Here you go! Bit hot,” he said, offering her a chair at the small desk across from his. His cubicle was larger than hers and decorated with several living plants and many photographs of people wearing his wide smile.

“So, Ms. Pretta—”

“What brought you here?” Her interruption seemed to startle him slightly. “To this job, I mean,” she added quickly.

“Well, I actually love office work, and they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Kip said with a grin. “More than twice what I made at my last job. Though I know it’s a bit of a faux pas to talk about salaries.”

“I see. What did you do before? Are you from here, or did you move here?” She hoped her line of questioning wasn’t too obvious.

“I did a little of everything. I was basically a nomad. You know,” he waved a dismissive hand. “I’m sure everyone here has a similar story.”

“I see.” Her mind was struggling to connect the dots between such sparse data points, further hindered by an overwhelming urge to lay down and pass out on his spare desk. “I have a question, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s why we’re here, after all!”

Mossy eyed him, meeting his gaze for the first time since she’d entered his cubicle, and stared hard for a long moment. Tried to see something—anything—behind his earnest face.

“Are you real?”

“Of course I am. That’s a weird question,” Kip responded, turning away, but Mossy watched him closely and she saw it. A glimmer, a minute tightening of the skin around his eyes.

Attempting to hide her shock, Mossy filled the next few minutes of conversation with small talk before excusing herself. “Back to work, I suppose! Thanks again for the tea.” She fumbled her way back to her felted chamber, where she collapsed into the chair and put her head in her hands.

~~~

The last gasp of a dying sun glowed through the curtains. Mossy sat crossed-legged in the middle of the floor, thinking about the voice that had haunted her for—how long had it been? She could no longer remember when it had started, but it needed to end. Now. The air grew cooler as the final rays of light died and cast the room in deep shadow.

Hello.

“Hello. Want to play chess?” Mossy kept her voice steady. It was easier than she’d expected.

Yes.

She set up the board as usual, her white facing off against the voice’s black. It had taken her a long time to teach it how to play, but she’d had nothing but time during all her sleepless nights.

“White moves first,” she narrated, as she always did to help the voice learn. “I’ll move my pawn to E4. It’s the most common opening move.”

E5.

Mossy moved the black pawn. The voice seemed to have only a limited ability to physically affect the world around it, so she always moved its pieces. She slid her knight toward the center, and the voice directed her to move its knight forward accordingly.

“Good start,” she said, keeping her voice light and carefree. She nudged a pawn up to join the first one and the voice captured it, as she’d predicted. “Great job, you got one of my pawns. I’ll use my knight to capture one of yours now.”

A few more moves, knights and pawns dueling in the mostly empty center. On her turn, she paused for a moment, examining the board.

Have you figured it out yet?

Mossy, startled, advanced her first pawn. It was a weak move, she knew, but she could afford it—she always won against the voice. When it was her turn again, she brought her bishop out, and the voice advanced its knight.

Sensing the beginnings of a trap, Mossy castled, which allowed her king to move two spaces to the right while the rook to its right reappeared on its left.

“You’re… doing really well tonight,” she said cautiously, as the voice brought its own bishop into play. The next few moves were quick, with black advancing boldly and capturing several of her white pieces. She found she was having a difficult time keeping up.

You are a good teacher.

Mossy managed to place the black king in check once, but it moved safely away from her feeble attack. “What did you mean a few minutes ago, when you asked me if I’ve figured it out yet?”

Rook to G8. Mossy moved the black rook one space to its right. The voice continued, The game.

“Oh, of course.” Her white queen retreated.

The voice advanced its black knight, and Mossy relaxed a little. A wasted move. Each side pulled pieces back and forged ahead with new ones. They were quiet for a while, and Mossy’s relaxation deepened as her eyes darted around the board, almost hypnotized by the infinite potential of the battlefield.

The day her parents had taught her how to play chess flickered to life in her mind. Presenting a united front as always, they’d sat her down in front of a board and held up each piece, explaining its role in the grand design, just as she had done with the voice. They’d even made up a song to help her remember how each piece moved.

Pawn goes forward, only onward, gets crowned if it’s brave, they sang. Rook goes up, down, side-to-side, the whole game he can save…

The black king was sitting in a relatively empty corner of the board, barely protected by a few pawns and a rook. Mossy urged several white pieces forward, setting up an attack.

Pawn to H5, the voice murmured and moved the same piece forward again after Mossy’s turn. She ignored it, relying on her defensive line of pawns on that side to repel any attempt at king-killing or pawn promotion—promoting a pawn to a queen by reaching the first row of the opposite side.

Her mind jumped again to that first game of chess. Her parents had looked at her with odd expressions that, as a small child, she hadn’t been able to decipher. Mind sharp from the game she played now with the voice, she saw their faces clearly in her memory for the first time. Love was there, of course, but also urgency and something like fear.

How odd, she thought, as she captured a black pawn with her bishop. Maybe I’m misremembering—and her thought was cut short as her memory delivered another piece of the puzzle. She’d had a cast on her arm that day.

A couple of weeks before the chess lessons began, she’d had a nightmare, a bad one—the type her parents would soon start calling Mossy’s terrors. In the dream, she’d reached up with a small hand to open the microwave and bats had flown out in a whirlwind of naked wings.

Mossy had screamed and tried to shield her face, but bats had quickly covered her, digging into her skin with their claws, biting her with needle fangs. Stumbling backward, she had fallen—and had found herself awakening as she plunged from the top bunk where she slept above her older sister. Twisting halfway around in midair, she’d landed hard on her right arm and heard a sharp snap.

Her parents, hearing the thud, had rushed her to the hospital, dragging her sister along behind. She had needed surgery to fix the break, and they’d sat around her hospital bed for a while before she was wheeled away. Her sister had stared with owl eyes at Mossy and her arm in its bulky cast.

“What happened, Moss?” Her dad’s voice was both comforting and worried.

“The bats came out of the microwave and scared me.”

“Oh, sweetie, you remember we said those are just bad dreams?”

“I know,” Mossy said. “I just can’t remember that when I’m sleeping. But it’s okay. The voice said it’s watching out for me.”

Her parents had looked at one another, confused. “What voice, sweetheart?” her mother asked.

“The nice one that talks to me a lot.”

In her room, Mossy claimed an attacking knight with one of her pawns. Knight takes any course he likes, as long as it’s an L…

It’s been with me so long, she realized, with reluctant wonder.

The voice took out the pawn she’d just used against it.

She’d started therapy not long after her fall, she remembered. No diagnosis. But why chess? The looks on her parents’ faces had told her it was important for some reason that she hadn’t understood as a child, and which still escaped her now.

You know why, the voice said softly as its black queen took her bishop—a costly move, as Mossy mindlessly captured the queen with her pawn. For some reason, Kip’s humming was playing on a loop in her head, incoherent tones jingling over and over.

Her fingers were about to touch her remaining bishop, ready to stop the black rook that had zipped almost the entire length of the board toward her king, when she froze.

Bishop moves on each diagonal, heaven versus hell…

The tune of Kip’s hum matched the words her parents had taught her almost thirty years ago.

Now you are beginning to see. Check.

Looking at the board, Mossy realized she had underestimated her opponent. Two of the voice’s most dangerous pieces—bishop and rook—were standing silently over her king.

She shook her head in disbelief, scrubbing her hands over her face as if she’d walked through a spiderweb. As she reached out and moved her king out of check, she said, “Why does Kip know the song my parents made up about chess?”

Another black bishop leaped in to claim her third and final pawn.

Again: You know why.

Queen-assassin travels wide and kills from far away… The white queen was no help, hemmed in by her own cavalry on the other side of the board, waiting to attack the lonely black king ahead.

Desperate, she stared at the corner of the board she’d neglected, where the voice had sprung its trap while sending its king off in the opposite direction, like a mother bird feigning a broken wing. She made her only possible move, sending her remaining bishop ahead of the white king to draw the attack. If her king could capture even one of the surrounding pieces… King hops on, one square at a time, to keep the foe at bay.

The black rook claimed her bishop. Rook above, two bishops guarding the diagonal escape routes in every direction. A quiet and brutal execution in the corner.

Checkmate.

Mossy sat in stunned silence. How… how did you…

May I show you?

Defeated and with her head spinning, she nodded and felt sleep consume her like a tidal wave.

~~~

She sits at an oak desk whose surface has been worn smooth over the many years of its afterlife. She is writing on thick paper with a fountain pen. The words come swiftly and easily, and they are clever and well-written with no mistakes, no hesitation.

In reality, her manuscript lies half-finished in the bottom drawer of her nightstand like a forgotten curse, and Mossy understands that she is dreaming. As soon as the realization hits her, she is somewhere else.

She hears her name once, then again. More bodiless voices join the call until a full chorus sings out, Mossy… Mossy… She trips over a bundle of rags on the ground and sprawls forward onto her hands and knees. The sound of crying replaces her name echoing in the air, and she realizes it is coming from the bundle. Alarmed, she begins to remove pieces of cloth, but each one reveals only another layer in a different color and pattern. Frantic now, she digs through the fabric, ripping it in her haste to find what was lost. The bundle flees from her in empty tatters, which turn into flowers that are blown away by the wind.

A weight settles on her from above. She reaches up to find the solid coolness of stone resting on her head. She tries to shove it off, but her head bows forward and the weight settles on her shoulders and back, pressing her knees into the concrete. Stone grinds against itself in arcs above and below, curving around the shape of her crouching form until she is surrounded and can hear only her own heartbeat.

All is dark. Her breath streams out of her in a rush and the water molecules become stars that roam like fireflies. One drifts nearer and she holds out her hand. It floats just above her skin, then sets down with an electric jolt. Another star lands and she twitches as it delivers its own charge. Dismayed, she shakes them away, but more come, and soon all the stars are rushing toward her in a spiraling cloud. They settle down on her like bees, donating shocks to her body. When she tries to inhale to scream, she finds she cannot move, suspended in the electric current of the stars. More soar in through her open mouth, lighting her up from the inside, a white-hot ember.

Suddenly, cool water flows over and into her, and the agonizing fire is extinguished.

~~~

Do you see?

Mossy woke feeling somehow more refreshed than she had in a long time, but bewilderment tempered her energy. “No… but I want to understand.”

Look at your manuscript.

She pulled open the bottom nightstand drawer and pawed around in the dark for the worn journal but felt nothing. The drawer was full of detritus—pens, tissues, dust-covered hair ties, takeout menus—but no manuscript. Where is it? she wondered, and the voice responded.

Your desk.

As soon as she walked into her small office in the next room, she saw it, sitting in plain sight. I have no memory of putting it here, she thought, stroking the cover.

You did more than that.

Frowning, Mossy flipped some pages until she realized some of the words looked unfamiliar. They were newer, written in fresh blue ink that stood out against the previous pages sketched in faded black.

“Who wrote this?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. She began reading where the blue ink took over.

I told you, I do not affect your work. But you were right about spying.

Mossy shook her head helplessly. “Kip?”

I cannot tell you. May I show you?

She nodded. This time, she did not fall asleep.

~~~

Memories, some feeling like a stranger’s, play like a movie in her mind:

Mossy as a young child, falling with a wail out of bed, arm breaking.

Kip walking into her office with a too-wide smile.

Her arm in a cast, a black knight galloping along it like a real horse.

A bandage on her desk for a fake papercut.

The black maw of the microwave stretching wider and wider as squealing bats dart out.

Napping at work, and no one notices the ink on her face where she fell asleep on a stack of reports.

Playing chess at night.

Working on her manuscript during the day, writing so feverishly that some of the words start melting together.

Kip, humming her parents’ song about chess pieces.

She sleeps at work all the time. She never gets caught.

Not sleeping.

Sleeping.

~~~

“Sleep?” she whispers.

Yes.

“Is that… what you are?”

An approximation.

“Why can’t I sleep?”

You still do not understand.

“Tell me. Please.”

You do sleep. Every night, you sleep.

“How,” she wonders, “when you make me stay up playing chess with you every night?”

You are not awake.

“I feel awake… And during the day, how do I remember going to work if I’m working on my manuscript?”

You only work on your manuscript during the day.

It all starts to unfold. She sleeps at night and works on her manuscript during the day.

“You said I’m not awake when we play chess. And I’m not awake at work, either.”

Yes… A hesitation, a but, seen too late, like the trap for her white king in the corner.

“…I’m not awake right now.”

No.

She looks around, feels the air in her office prickle against her bare arms and legs, smells the popcorn she made a few hours earlier. She pinches a chunk of skin on her arm, winces, and then says, “It hurts. I have to be awake.” She can’t keep the forlorn question out of her voice.

Consciousness does not claim sole ownership of pain is the response, and she already knows it’s true. Her dreams often hurt.

“Wake me up,” she blurts out suddenly. “Wake me up right now.”

I cannot wake you for long, the voice warns.

“I need to be awake, even for just a few minutes.”

Very well.

~~~

Dry eyes creak open. Mossy can feel they’ve been closed a long time. She sees the ceiling of her bedroom clearly in the dim light, and notices cobwebs in the corners that are not there in her dreams. Just raising herself up on her elbows is a challenge; her limbs feel heavy and weak.

“How long was I asleep?” Her voice, a frog’s croak, receives no answer.

Of course. Sleep cannot travel here with her. Abruptly, she feels very alone.

She also feels like she could fall asleep again at any moment, despite knowing instinctively that she’s had a full night’s rest—more, even. This thought energizes her into getting up and looking around.

The place seems different—less tidy, more neglected. Apparently, Mossy is a better housekeeper in her sleep. The office is strewn with what looks like the aftermath of a paper bomb. Loose pages and index cards pile into drifts on every surface. The journal containing her manuscript lies on her desk and shows signs of having been worked on recently. Her story has colonized the entire room like kudzu, and Mossy wonders what she’s been writing about with such fervent inspiration.

Opening the cover, she starts reading. Her handwriting is different, almost alien. Although she can’t remember writing any of it, the story is familiar, because it’s the story of her and Sleep.

“Sleep came to me as a child, and we have rarely been apart since…”

Mossy consumes each word with a breathless hunger—for understanding, for the clue that will solve the puzzle. It takes her a few hours to read through it, and her dismay grows with every page. The words barely make sense, gradually losing all meaning and dissolving into gibberish. Reading it is like trying to read something in a dream—at one point, she calls out again to Sleep, just to check. The voice doesn’t respond, and Mossy is left wondering how and why her waking self—the one she is now—is breaking down so spectacularly.

The last page is only lines and doodles. Exhausted, she closes the cover gently and walks back to her bed to get answers.

~~~

“What’s happening to me out there?”

Out of habit, she sets up the chess board but doesn’t feel like playing. It seems Sleep feels the same way because it hasn’t called out a single move yet.

You are strong and good at protecting yourself, but the nightmares are stronger. Eventually, our defenses will fail.

“Our defenses? What’s your role here, exactly? Are you some kind of ghost?”

I am part of you. An adaptation… an act of benevolent self-sabotage.

“It appears I’m haunting myself,” she muses absently. Finally, the right question comes to her: “What’s going to happen to me?”

If you cannot break the cycle, eventually, you will remain asleep.

Mossy senses cogs turning in a system so large that she may as well be a flea on a Ferris wheel. She feels far away from her own body. Her waking self is wandering into madness and dragging her there, too. A ghost haunting a shadow.

Picturing this gives her an idea. “Is there a way I can talk to myself? Asleep and awake?”

Perhaps. Sleep’s voice has a thoughtful note that gives Mossy a sense of hope tinged with fear. Perhaps…

~~~

Mossy floats, carried along by a buoyant canoe of flowers, in an ocean that stretches to meet the hungry gold horizon in every direction. The cloudless sky cradles a gentle sun, and the water licks her toes and the tips of her fingers. A soft noise travels in on the breeze. She ignores it and hums quietly to herself. The sound grows louder and becomes a voice, calling to her.

Mossy… Mossy, dive down.

Why would I do that? Mossy smiles at the ridiculous idea of ever leaving the surface, absently twirling her fingers in the water.

Dive and find you, the voice calls, nearer, and now it whispers in her ear: Remember the black king.

Memory returns as a great wave bumps her raft. The flowers disperse, and she lets herself slip below the surface. Bubbles pass her for a while, traveling in the opposite direction with an iridescent wiggle, and she watches until there are no more. She falls in slow somersaults as everything loses color and meaning in the darkness.

After an eternity, her feet touch down on the abyssal plain. A faint green light, dispersed almost to nothing in the depths, reveals great shadowy shapes in the distance. One looks vaguely familiar, and she swims toward it. The act of deciding brings the object’s shape to her instantly, and she discovers it is her own house. Reaching for the doorknob, Mossy enters.

Inside, the water is gone, replaced by the intimate mundanity of her domestic realm. Everything appears to be just as she left it—in her dreams, at least. No cobwebs dangle from the ceiling, no dust bunnies cower in corners.

I am dreaming, she reminds herself.

Mossy stands at the door to her home office. A faint scratching sound comes from within. She turns the handle slowly and must stifle a gasp as she peeks into the room.

The kudzu paper bomb has become a boundless paper-blasted jungle. Thick green vines sprouting paper leaves creep along the shaggy trunks of trees and hang from high branches. The floor is carpeted in index-card bushes, and flowers show off blue- and black-pen stamens.

Mossy realizes she cannot see more than a few feet ahead. She runs back downstairs to the kitchen and returns with a butcher’s knife. Swinging it around like a machete, hacking through plants with crisp white leaves, she journeys toward the center of the jungle.

The scratching grows louder as she struggles through the undergrowth. Some of the denser thickets resist her advance; fronds and petals whip back against her arms and legs, leaving cuts. None are particularly deep, but each one wells up with smeared blood as she pushes her way forward. Soon, she is covered in a thin red sheen over most of her exposed skin, a blood-caked nightmare marking its crimson trail through the forest.

One last chop, and her butcher’s knife forces the final thicket to reveal the source of the scratching.

A figure sits, facing away, on something that might once have been a chair but is now swaddled in endless vines, its shape distorted by natural bifurcations and unnatural white-paper leaves. Mossy steps cautiously around to the side, fear slowing her to a near crawl.

The other Mossy works at a flat surface only vaguely recognizable as a desk. Her black feather quill writes on stacks of white leaves. As she fills each one, she mindlessly flicks it away, sending it sailing off to the side. The quick tentacle of a finger-thin vine darts up, snatches it out of the air, and lays it on a neat pile of completed leaf pages with a fastidiousness that fills Mossy with strange horror.

She swallows hard. “M-Mossy?” Her voice is a terrified whisper, almost indistinguishable from the swishing rustle of the paper jungle surrounding them, but the figure’s head pops up immediately. Mossy can see her double’s eyes as she looks around and finally locks onto the interloper.

“What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk. We have a problem—”

“Forget it,” the double interrupts, waving Mossy off with a careless flick of her wrist. “I have work to do. This manuscript isn’t going to write itself.” Her feather quill resumes scratching away at another leaf.

Mossy glares for a moment, infuriated. “Can’t you see what’s happening here?”

Without pausing, the figure mutters, “Get her out of here.”

A loud grinding sound fills the jungle, echoing against thick branches. The paper leaves begin to rattle and shiver with a sound like rainfall. At the same time, the ground rumbles and shifts under her feet, and Mossy searches in terror for the source.

She finally spots a massive white shape through the vines to her left. It’s moving quickly, flattening everything in its path, and the moment Mossy recognizes it, she almost collapses.

Queen-assassin travels wide and kills from far away.

The white queen advances on marble legs with fearsome speed. A severe frown and rough-cut emerald eyes glare down at Mossy from a brief break in the canopy.

Mossy fights the urge to flee back along the blood-soaked trail to the door, seeing that the vines have regrown in her destructive wake. No paths through the jungle are available to her without the luxury of time and the sharp edge of her knife; she imagines running through the razor-edged paper leaves and cringes, feeling the open cuts and layers of dried blood cracking on the surface of her skin.

Her head whips frantically, desperately around for a way out. The final line of her parents’ song comes to her.

King hops on, one square at a time, to keep the foe at bay.

“To keep the foe at bay,” she repeats out loud, chewing the words as they tumble out of her. Who is my foe? she wonders. She glances at the figure, still writing furiously and flicking leaves away to be plucked in midair and neatly stacked by vines. The hunched shoulders, the bowed head, the anxiously tapping foot… they all feel as familiar to her as her own body.

They are familiar, she realizes. She’s Mossy, too. We’re the same.

She remembers Sleep’s advice: Remember the black king.

Her double writing at the desk. The white queen, nearly upon her. The black king. Sleep. The liminal space of this vine-wrapped, paper-warped world, neither asleep nor awake.

This is a dream, but I’m not really sleeping, Mossy realizes. And she’s not really awake.

She points at the white queen—so near now—and lets out a wordless scream. With an ear-blasting POP, a mammoth black king with diamond eyes materializes in front of her and immediately engages with the white giant. The sound of their ponderous stone-on-stone grappling, of cracks as thick paper trees are knocked over and crushed, is almost deafening.

Mossy covers her ears and runs over to the figure at the desk, who is somehow still ignoring everything but the feel of the quill’s nib on the leaf in front of her.

“MOSSY,” Mossy yells at the figure, but her voice is drowned out by the titans battling behind them. She stretches out a hand to shake the bunched-muscle shoulder but finds she cannot touch it; her hand slides off of some invisible barrier. “Mossy, PLEASE,” she screams. She looks around sightlessly, unable to reach her double.

Not awake, not asleep, not awake, not asleep.

Images from her nightmares scroll through her head like the inked words on the leaves. She focuses on the first one she can think of—the bats in the microwave. She sees them in her mind as though in the dream once more, feels the dream itself like an object she can touch. Something like rage bubbles up inside her, and she suddenly pushes the sensations toward her double, throwing them like a mental dart. The shoulders flinch, but otherwise there’s no reaction.

She tries again, this time throwing the one-eyed tiger at her counterpart. A hand reaches out and swats at the air, as if at a fly.

Mossy closes her eyes again with a grim smile. Surrounding herself with nightmares, gathering them to her like precious children, she dives down, submerging herself within the depths of her most primal fears. Molten sand, falling, bodiless cries from tattered-cloth flowers. Senses heightened, she experiences them over and over, terror and panic spiking along with her heart rate. She holds each nightmare in her mind and, at the critical moment, launches it at the other Mossy like an archer releasing an arrow.

She doesn’t bother looking, instead sensing that each shot is firing true. The double’s agitation amplifies, ripples building into a tsunami. With eyes closed and nightmares flying outward in a barrage, Mossy hears the chair tip over and the other Mossy cries out in dismay.

“What are you doing? Stop it! Stop it right now! I’m trying to WORK and—”

Mossy fires the stone cocoon, the electric stars, and the consuming fire all at once and opens her eyes. Her opponent jerks as each one bombards her with fear and pain.

Now, they face one another, their battle utterly ignored by the gigantic king and queen, who continue wreaking their own havoc through the jungle.

Mossy stares into her double’s eyes—her eyes—and extends a peace offering. This time, instead of a nightmare, she sends a dream she—they—once had. It’s a dream of a memory, made sweeter through the misty veils of time and sleep. In it, a young girl romps through a field of wildflowers with a dog. They run in circles before toppling to the ground in a jumble of limbs. The dog’s tongue lolls and the child laughs.

A sudden silence drops over the jungle like a blanket. Mossy’s double savors this dream, tears running down her face.

“Mango,” she breathes. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen her.” Opening her eyes, she looks at Mossy. A long pause, then: “Thank you.”

“I’m glad to share that with you,” Mossy replies softly. “Now, we need to talk.”

They walk toward one another and sit on the vine-covered ground. Their envoys are nearby, frozen mid-grapple. The giants immediately release their hold on each other and stand still, black and white statuary, their jewel eyes meeting through the overstory.

“May I?” Mossy asks, extending her hand. The other nods and takes Mossy’s hand in hers. They close their eyes.

The jungle around them dissolves into murky gray, extending forever in every direction. A ball of light flits around the two figures as they sit facing one another, eyes closed, hands linked. The light pauses above them, pulsing slightly as it hovers.

Awake, Mossy says.

Asleep, Mossy replies.

The light explodes, arcing above them in a bright umbrella. They look up as scenes play out on the dome. Dreams and nightmares, consciousness fighting to subdue the subconscious monsters lurking below.

Must it be a battle always? Mossy despairs.

Not always, Mossy reassures both of them.

The lights swirl, dissolving the images. More coalesce in their place. Mossy recognizes the messy home office she explored with Sleep’s help.

This one is reality, she murmurs.

This time, they see more than the office: the piled-up dishes, the mail falling out of the stuffed mailbox. Spiders work diligently in the corners to cover up all that must remain unseen and unknown.

Entropy, she adds.

Again, a shift. The lights show them a chess board and Mossy’s parents, holding up pieces and singing, all smiles and worried eyes. They watch Mossy moving the chess pieces for Sleep.

Is the game the key? Mossy asks.

Is the game a trap? she demands.

Another scene plays on the opposite side of the dome: Mossy sleeping in her bed. Her dreaming fingers twitch in time with each chess move on the other side. The chess game ends, and that half of the picture winks out. The other side grows brighter and expands to fill the entire space.

Mossy, asleep in her bed, is still for a moment. Then, the twitching spreads from her fingers to her arms and legs. In a sudden, explosive movement, Mossy leaps from her bed, runs forward across her room, and smashes into the full-length mirror hanging on the wall near the door. The glass shatters, leaving cuts down her arms and legs. She walks back to her bed, stepping on glass she cannot feel, and sinks back down, still deeply asleep.

The picture shrinks once more, and another chess game begins on the other side of the dome. Sleep plays black, as always.

Mossy looks down at her legs and sees no blemishes. The other Mossy does the same and finds a Braille system of half-healed marks and scars shaped like dots and arrows and crescent moons. She runs her fingers over them slowly, reading what they have to say.

Sleep is the defense, Mossy says.

Sleep is the gambit, she replies.

The images continue. When Mossy plays chess with Sleep, her double lies dormant on the other side. If she falls asleep within the dream, however, the nightmares close in with a howl.

How did they know? she wonders.

The lights flare in response. On one side of the dome, Mossy’s parents sleep side-by-side in their bed, looking as they did when Mossy was young. The other side of the dome gradually brightens; there, Mossy’s father plays chess by himself in a dimly lit room.

An inheritance, she whispers in horror.

Our birthright, she grieves.

Now, dozens of images proliferate and bloom on the light dome, endlessly twirling, popping into existence and winking out again once their messages are conveyed. The observers sit patiently below, faces illuminated by the shifting, multicolored lights. They watch for a long time, waiting for the answer to the only questions that remain.

The origin of the separation, they ask.

The secrets of its undoing, they beg.

For a long time, the lights churn, each beam conducting a solitary dance, the meaning of which is hidden from them. Finally, a commingling, roiling with a violent delight of color.

A scene appears on the dome: a child’s bedroom, with a rainbow painted on the wall with thick, bold stripes—Mossy’s room in their first house, the one she only barely remembers. The colors of the rainbow begin to run, streaming onto the carpet and swirling into a whirlpool.

A small girl emerges from the dark beyond the pool and stands teetering on the edge, staring down as the winds from the vortex buffet her little body. As if someone has called her name, she glances briefly back at her bed, but the sudden motion upsets her balance and one foot slips into the water. The room-sized maelstrom latches gleefully onto this offering and tugs the rest of the gift down into its maw.

The child disappears and the water begins to calm, slowly unswirling itself into individual colors. Before the streams can fully separate, a small hand surfaces, reaching upwards in a silent plea. The water hurriedly resumes its hungry inhalation until only fingertips remain above. A brilliant ball of light the size of a marble appears just above the water. It floats serenely downward, seeming to ignore the hurricane winds, and alights with a blinding flash on the topmost finger.

The waters of the whirlpool stop dead, as if frozen. As the light fades, another hand appears at the surface. Struggling upwards, two little girls emerge dripping from the water.

Their movements are matched; they look down at the water suspiciously, then off to opposite sides of the room, which is split into mirrored halves with a rainbow on each side. The children trudge sleepily back to their beds and, movements already mistiming in the gulf between them, one lays down and falls asleep immediately while the other sits up for a while, watching the last remnants of the whirlpool fade into the carpet.

~~~

Mossy and her double open their eyes.

Hello, Mossy.

“Hello, Sleep,” they reply together.

Do you understand what must happen?

“Yes.”

~~~

The chessboard is set up on the nightstand, and the cracked window lets a soft breeze into the empty bedroom. It is very late, or very early, and the night is silent—or as silent as it can be, this time of year.

Mossy, her double, and Sleep are outside, far from the house, standing amid the trees. This forest has no paper leaves, only normal ones whispering quietly to one another in the dark. They watch the soft sparks of stars emerge through the branches, dappling each crown with silver light.

“When I waked, I cried to dream again…” The double sighs. “What if we can’t keep it fixed when we wake up? What happens then?”

A dream itself is but a shadow, Sleep offers in response.

“It’s going to work,” Mossy says, more confidently than she feels. The other must sense her uncertainty but says nothing.

It is time, Sleep says softly.

The doubles face one another and stare into identical eyes as they join hands once more. At their feet, the forest floor begins to bleed its colors into a whirlpool, fed by dirt and leaves and flowers and growing larger with each ravenous breath.

Remember, it is a decision, Sleep calls from the edge. Good luck, Mossy.  

Dreamer and waker ignore the vortex as long as they can, eyes and hands locked together tightly. Mossy looks at herself and smiles, and her double smiles back. The water is splashing above their knees now, and the current is strong. Soon, it rises to waist, then chest, height.

They float, and each frees a hand to tread water, keeping one pair of hands clasped together. The current twirls them around, and they circle the whirlpool and one another in a dizzying double spin, moving faster and faster until their two bobbing heads are just a blur. With a sucking sound, they are pulled beneath the surface.

A tiny ball of light pops into existence just above the rushing waters. It hovers there, perfectly still despite the air-gobbling pull of the maelstrom below. Long moments pass slowly, and the whirlpool begins to abate. Suddenly, two hands burst through the surface, stretching index fingers toward the light. They reach it at the same moment and the light flashes brilliantly before winking out.

The whirlpool dies down at once, depositing the detritus of its flood on the forest floor. Among the broken sticks, loose flower petals, and torn leaves is a woman, stirring weakly in the mud. She sits up slowly, then stands, gripping the trunk of a young birch for support. She looks up into the starlit canopy above for a long time.

At last, she opens her eyes.