So what’s the problem here? What’s the hold Del has on me besides fueling the occasional nightmare that I still wake up from in a cold sweat? Those days—the days when I was just a kid and he was in control—are done and gone. Del’s just a fat old drunk living in some trailer park now. I know that for a fact because Raylene tracked him down a couple of years ago, looking for payback for what he’d put her through, but when she finally found him, she decided he just wasn’t worth the bother. Instead, she came away with a lost soul that needed her help—taking up the rescuing of strays just like her big sis.

So it’s not Del. It’s me.

You’re supposed to forgive yourself for thinking you were to blame for what he did to you, Honey told me. For thinking you deserved it.

Except I honestly don’t believe it’s that. I’m not stupid. I know I wasn’t to blame. I was just a little kid being hurt by someone who was supposed to be protecting me. I didn’t deserve it—no one does—and I don’t think that. So what’s to forgive?

But Honey seems to think it’s still sitting here inside me, and she’s not alone. All those healers Joe consulted, back when I first had the accident, they all said the same thing. That I have something inside me that needs to be fixed before they can help me with my physical problems.

I guess that something is this place, with Del ruling the roost. Del in control again, only amp that up a hundredfold because the old Del, the brother I grew up with, didn’t go around wielding magical powers. He was just a redneck pedophile—bad enough for any kid to deal with, of course, but nothing like what he is here.

Which brings me back to, what am I supposed to do?

If this is all in my subconscious, then I need to find some way to tell my subconscious that it’s over. Del’s not god. He’s not even the devil. He’s just a loser that I’ve managed to raise to these huge supernatural proportions, here, in this world that sits inside my head.

I actually have to smile then, because that gets me thinking: If this world’s inside my head, then what’s inside my head when I’m here, physically in the world inside my head? It’s a confusing piece of Escher logic—or illogic, depending on how you view that kind of thing. Me, I appreciate the odd riddling mystery it provides. It’s like holding a mirror up to a mirror where the reflections get smaller and smaller as they go on into infinity.