LERISTORY
Episode Three -- "Los---"
Paul FlyThe world was looking two-dimensional again. All the colors were bland, even the flames ahead: to Lorelei they were boring. The shock of the performance, its burning, its drive, had since left her, and now she was feeling much more like her normal self: apathetic. This person (who had told her to call him Rez) was leading her around, around an unknown place. Her parents... they were behind her, back at the entertainment shack. Rez had lead them in a hurried pace away from there, and toward a sprawling vista of burning shacks and houses. The numbness of her life grew with every step.
"Fuck," Rez muttered, stopping. She stopped too. Ahead was the dull glow of fires. Black clouds rose up high into the gray sky.
He turned to her, as if to say something, then stopped, "Are you okay, Lorelei?"
A question. A strange question at that.
"Okay?" She asked, stepping back.
"Yeah, are you alright, you look pale."
"I am fine," she said.
Rez gave her a strange look; she didn't think about it. He said, "Look, the Gallow's are on fire, we can't go this way..."
She stood there. Waiting.
Finally Rez took her by the arm, saying something about sewers. She stumbled along, following him. She felt herself sinking further into darkness. Even the flames looked dim now, everything was drab. Rez in front of her was all coming together into dull browns and grays. The warm air from the flames was becoming non-felt. The dryness in her mouth didn't matter anymore. She didn't care.
They walked-stumbled for some distance, the fires always on their right. Finally they came to a concrete foundation of some sort, looking broken and ruined. There was an open round hole in it. Rez walked up to it, looked down. Said something about safety. He looked like he was about to climb down when he paused and looked at her. He stopped. Looked. He took her hand. Held it. Looked at her. He looked kind of pained.
She didn't care.
Finally he went down the hole, asking her to come down as well. She did. At the bottom of the ladder was a low round tunnel, extending in both directions.
"Sorry about the smell," Rez said, but she didn't smell anything. They hurried down the darkness, splashing footsteps.
After a while, they saw a light ahead; a dimly glowing red light, shining pitifully in the dankness. When they came to it, she saw that the tunnel ended here, with a wall of new looking concrete and steel. The lighty was embedded into the wall. Next to it was a dirty terminal screen. There was text on it.
But her mind was elsewhere, or rather, it was nowhere. Without pain and panic, she was lost, and in front of Rez's astonished eyes, she collasped, no-living in the no-world.
This time there was no call for help.
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