She removed her robe, and lay back, and kept lying back, the bed not beneath her but spinning away as she fell, faster. Walls of tan comforter towered above, miles and miles, the pit’s mouth shrinking to a point, vanished to leave her in a tense smooth cotton shell. A cold hand held her. Fingers locked tight, rigor mortis, tension of the dead. Cotton covered her mouth, but as she struggled she realized she was not falling but standing, and while the sky above was the color of a sunset cloud, beneath her feet lay good dank earth, jungle smelling, corpse nourished. Ghosts whistled past her ears as she walked, beneath her arms, between her fingers. She ignored them, because one could not hear ghosts in waking life, and if so why listen to them in dreams?

She caught the tail of that thought, which sped past her in kite form trailing a ribbon, so fast the tail’s edge cut her fingers. She was dreaming. Dreams of isolation and insignificance.

Not deep enough. A personal layer of dream, this. A path formed beneath her feet, expected, welcomed. Paths guided sleepers through dreams, and through meant out, which Kai didn’t want.

She stepped off the dream-path, and fell again through tan space into the gap between threads, following the beat of a distant heart no longer hers. She fell through vast chambers of creation.

No. To fall was to give herself to the nothing. She pointed her hands at the deep, and dove.

She opened her eyes, and sat up with a start, or tried to. Her arms moved a few inches then stopped, wrists bound. A gray ceiling spread above. A mask across her face forced air into her mouth, into her nose; she was made to breathe in. The pressure reversed, and air swept out of her lungs. She turned her head, but could not shake the mask loose. She pressed against the bars that lined her bed, her cage, but they were cold and strong. Overhead, a lamp swung slowly. When next the machines forced air into her lungs she screamed.