"Yeah," Miriam says.

"What are we looking at?" Louis checks his wrist like he's looking at a watch, even though no watch is there. "Twentyfour hours or thereabouts."

Her mother opens a Bible, studies the pages.

"But if the sacrifice of his offering be a vow," her mother says, "or a voluntary offering, it shall be eaten the same day he offereth the sacrifice, and on the morrow also the remainder shall be eaten. But the remainder of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day shall be burnt by fire."

Idly, lost in thought, Miriam nods. "That what it is? Funny how you know that, because if you know that, it means I know that, and yet – I didn't know that. I haven't seen the time since the… car ride."

"Could be that the subconscious mind is a powerful little booger."

"I suppose so."

"Or maybe I'm something bigger, meaner, something outside of you. Maybe I'm Death himself. Maybe I'm Abaddon, Lord of the Pit, or Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds. Or perhaps it's that I'm just a bundle of thread cut from the mean, uncaring scissors of Atropos – I'm just the tangled skein of fate lying on the floor at your feet."

"That's great. Thanks for fucking with me in my own dream."

Her mother speaks again: "For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison."

"Shut up, Mom." To Louis, Miriam says: "That's her telling me I have a filthy mouth."

"It's you telling you that you have a filthy mouth."

"Whatever."

"What happens next?" he asks.

"Nothing, I guess. Last I checked, I was hanging from a dirty showerhead in a moldy cottage found somewhere in the approximate middle of New Jersey's sandy asshole. As such, I'm not really making any plans."

"So you're done with trying to save me?"

"Well, looking at my options–"

"Give, and it shall be given to you," her mother interrupts.

"I'm talking, Mom."

Her mother continues: "For whatever measure you deal out to others, it will be dealt back to you in return."

"As I was saying!" Miriam barks, hoping to jar her dream mother out of her Bible-quoting reverie. The woman doesn't budge. She's like a kidney stone lodged in the urethra – not going anywhere. "As I was saying, I'm out of options. I'm done trying to play savior, done thinking I can make a difference."

"That's awfully fatalistic."

"Fatalistic. Fate. Fatal. Would you look at that? Ain't language a crazy bitch? Stupid me, never drawn the connection before. Fate and fatal. That tells you something, doesn't it? It tells you that all our lives are a donkey-cart ride over a cliff's edge. Everybody's fate is to die, and why try to stop it? We all tumble into darkness with the donkey, braying and hee-hawing, and that's that, game over. I see the fatalities of people. I see how their fate plays out. And I haven't been able to do dick about it before, have I? It's like trying to stop a speeding train by putting a penny on the tracks."