Letty Kathaldri reset her mind-world with a snap of her fingers. The reset spat Ibrahim and Larry back out onto a palm tree-line street not unlike the one where they'd first appeared, only this time, they were out on the asphalt, flat on their faces.

"What the hell?" Ibrahim muttered, as he rose to his feet.

Beside him, Larry was on one knee, staring down the street like a deer about to meet his god.

"Car!" he yelled.

In a whirl, Ibrahim grabbed Larry by the collar and pulled him up and ran onto the sidewalk, narrowly avoiding getting run over by a passing car—not just one, but two.

Ibrahim had to press his hat down on his head to keep it from flying off as the second car whisked by.

"What the hell, man?" Larry said, yelling at the car as he staggered away from Ibrahim.

"I think it's a car chase," Ibrahim said.

"Damn crazy drivers!" Larry snapped.

Despite how much Ibrahim admired the style of old vehicles, he had no interest in getting run over by one.

"I wonder what that was about," Ibrahim said.

"Well, I don't," Larry said, gruffly. He straightened his coat.

"Are you aright?" Ibrahim asked.

The janitor was acting strangely. He was far more belligerent and short-tempered than he used to be.

"No, I'm not alright, Doc! None of this is!"

Ibrahim wished he could do something to help, but, if there was anything he could do, he didn't know it.

Not knowing what to do, the two men spent a while wandering the streets, trying to understand what had happened. Almost immediately, Ibrahim swore he could feel the nearby presence of other spirits, he just couldn't figure out where. At one point, Larry asked if there was any chance they could get something to eat, and while they did discover a bustling commercial district at the edge of the residential area, unfortunately, the commercial district began at exactly where Letty's mind-world faded to white.

She must have never bothered to fill in the rest.

Ibrahim wasn't surprised to notice that time moved differently in Letty's world. One of the first things he'd learned from his exploration of mind-worlds was that, in general, time advanced at different rates in different places, depending on where the wyrm's attention was focused. By the time he and Larry made their way back to Letty's mansion, Jonan was already there, knee deep in assisting Letty with her strident "return to the silver screen".

"What do we do?" Larry asked. He walked back onto the patio, having taken a peak inside the mansion from the stairs to the parlor.

"Figure out a way to free Jonan from Letty's clutches," Ibrahim said, from where he stood on the grass.

They started discussing some ideas—Larry made some very creative suggestions involving rope—when, by and by, Ibrahim's eyes caught sight of a street bleeding into existence in a section of the white expanse at the edge of Letty's imagination.

"What's that?"

"Let's find out," Larry said, setting off in a jog.

After a hurried run, they arrived at the growing street just in time to see Mr. Kathaldri driving his daughter and her not-unwilling hostage into town in a glitzy car that had to be at least 150 years old.

Angel, Ibrahim thought. The car was a beauty. It passed by like a string of pearls.

"Where do you think they're going?" Larry asked.

"Maybe they're going to meet that 'Mr. Towsend' Letty had mentioned," Ibrahim said.

Wait a minute…

A mischievous idea popped into his head. He turned to Larry. "We should go back to the house while they're out. We can catch them by surprise." He tapped the back of his hand on Larry's shoulder. "They might even have some rope."

It took them fifteen minutes to walk back to Letty's mansion, by which time Night had already fallen. While walking down the driveway, Ibrahim and Larry heard gunshots, and then, rushing in, managed to get a glimpse of Letty lording over Jonan's pool-soaked corpse.

Then she snapped her fingers again, and Ibrahim got a face-full of asphalt.

The two men got off the street before the car chase ran them over.

"Beast's teeth," Ibrahim muttered. "What if she's doing something like this to all the souls in her care?"

"I thought we were here to rescue Dr. Derric," Larry said.

"Yeah, but…" Sighing, Ibrahim looked out over the rooftops along the palm-lined avenue. "What she's doing…" He shook his head. "It's sick. I don't know if leaving people in this never-ending torture counts as medical malpractice, but it definitely feels like it should. I mean, Larry, what if it was you? Would you be okay if someone had been in a position to rescue you, but didn't, simply because it was inconvenient to them?"

But Larry wasn't listening. His attention was elsewhere, somewhere far away and unseen.

Ibrahim stepped out in front of him. "Larry, are you even listening to me?" He waved his hand in front of Larry's face, breaking Larry's mysterious trance.

The janitor stared and blinked. "Sorry, I…" but then he cut himself off, stepped around Ibrahim, and pointed at one of the lampposts on the street. "Doc, look."

Ibrahim did.

"Can you feel it?" Larry asked.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Feel wh—…"

—But then he felt it: though he couldn't see it, he had the uncanny, discomfiting sensation that something was staring back at him. And then he realized: "The lights…"

The lights were on. It was the middle of the day, and the lights were on.

That should have been my first clue.

Ibrahim approached the lamppost. The presence he sensed grew stronger with every step. He looked over his shoulder to Larry. "She's keeping the souls in the lampposts."

"Shouldn't Letty have a Main Menu?" Larry asked.

Ibrahim shook his head. "Why would she? You had to know Greg to get one, or be in touch with a transformee who did. Letty, meanwhile, made it her business to hate everyone in sight. She must have built all this by herself. Hmm…" He scratched his chin. "Maybe that's why our 'mind-powers' aren't working," he mused. "We're expecting things to run by Greg's rules, because we're used to them, but they don't apply here."

Larry's attention had wandered back to the lamppost. He was fixated on the large, ornamental light bulb at its top.

The janitor titled his head to the side and then took one step closer, closer than Ibrahim had gotten.

Shloomp!

Larry got sucked into the light bulb, without a sound, like light shining in reverse.

Ibrahim looked around in shock. "Larry? Larry!?"

But he got no response.

After spending a couple seconds mulling over what to do, Dr. Rathpalla reminded himself how much he hated making leaps of faith.

You'd never know where you'd land, let alone if.

He took a deep breath and then stepped forward and focused his gaze on the light bulb. For a second or two, Ibrahim felt like an idiot, like he was trying to figure out one of those stereoscopic vision "magic eye" posters. Just like those posters, the seconds of idiocy suddenly gave way as everything clicked. The lightbulb swelled to fill his vision while the world seemed to shrink around him. Then he blinked, and the next thing he knew, he was somewhere completely different, though still staring at the same lamppost.

The street continued alongside a short stretch of sidewalk before seamlessly vanishing into a flat land caught in the dead of winter. Snow covered low-lying grass. Old, old farmhouses stood among the snow like lonely buffalo. There were some logs piled against the nearest building, with a sled laid against them. It felt like the start of a Shrovestide movie, or maybe a musical.

But, as far as the eye could see, there wasn't even the slightest sign of life. Everything was deathly still.

"Ibrahim!"

Dr. Rathpalla turned to face Larry.

"Thank the Angel, there you are!"

Ibrahim rushed toward him, only to stop.

Larry wasn't looking at him. The janitor's eyes looked up.

Ibrahim followed suit, raising his eyes to the sky.

He staggered back in horror.

About two-thirds of the way up, the sky simply stopped existing. A glass dome continued in its place. A great face loomed beyond the glass: a balding white man, his slack, sagging jaw ruined by rum and time. He lay on a deathbed fit for a king, surrounded by splendor, yet he paid no attention to any of it. All of his attention was focused on the glass.

From the look on his face, you would have thought he wanted to die, as if life was too terrible for him to endure any longer.

"I think… I think we're in a snowglobe," Larry said.

Then the man's eyes fluttered and his grip slipped. The sky tumbled as the snowglobe fell, and then shattered, and everything was lost to tempest and darkness.

All of a sudden, Ibrahim was back on the snowy plain. This time, it was far from lifeless. Smoke wafted up from the chimneys of the farmhouses. Several children played up on the low hills, tossing snowballs. One boy rode a sled down the hill, the same sled Ibrahim had seen before.

"Everything has… reset," he said.

"What's going on?" Larry asked.

Ibrahim glanced at the janitor. "The story has started over from the beginning."

Walking back to the sidewalk, Ibrahim focused on the lamppost. The next thing he knew, he was back in the ritzy neighborhood with the palm trees. Larry emerged from the lightbulb a moment later.

Looking up and down the street, Ibrahim knew there were spirits in each and every one of the lampposts. He trudged down the sidewalk to the nearest lamppost, and entered its lightbulb before Larry could even ask what he was doing.

Ibrahim reappeared in the middle of a luxurious bedroom. The man in bed was screaming, staring in horror at the bloody, severed horse's head some madman had stuffed beneath his duvet.

Ibrahim turned away in disgust and ported back through the lamppost.

He looked at the lampposts once again and shook his head.

"It's all of them, Larry," he said. "Every single one."

The scale of it was just mind boggling.

A couple more lampposts revealed Letty's vile plan in full.

"The hag isn't just torturing Jonan," Ibrahim explained. "She's torturing everyone. Each of these lamps shines onto a world, each one of which is a stage for her cruel whims, and she's made Jonan and the other ghosts into her player-puppets. She's forcing them to play out demented stories over and over again."

"Jonan hasn't even mentioned Ani," Larry said.

"Maybe he doesn't remember her," Ibrahim said. He shuddered. "Now isn't that a terrifying thought? Not only can she control her victims' afterlives, she can alter their memories and minds at will."

Larry gasped quietly. "I… I don't think he knows. I don't think any of them do."

"What?" Ibrahim asked. "What do you mean?"

Larry gesticulated angrily. "Jonan, he and the other spirits trapped here aren't just repeating the same story over and over again, they aren't aware of the repeats. For them, every time is like the first time!"

The tall man started to pace around. His breathing turned heavy.

"Beast's teeth," Ibrahim said. "You're right…"

The reasoning was iron clad and as simple as tea: if they remembered repeating these stories, they'd try to break free.

But they didn't.

"It's awful!" Larry said. "It's awful!" He was raving now, eyes wide, hair fraying over his sweaty brow. "Awful! Awful awful awful!!"

Ibrahim grabbed Larry's forearms. "Get a hold of yourself, man!"

Focus flashed in Larry's wild eyes. "Look out!" Grabbing Ibrahim, he leapt off the road and onto the sidewalk.

The two men toppled onto the pavement. Ibrahim slammed his thigh against the sidewalk. Aching, he pushed off the sidewalk with Larry's help, rising just in time to see the car chase from before play out for a third time. However, this time around, he managed to get a look through the rear-view window of the car being pursued.

No hat covered the driver's suave blond hair.

"Jonan…" Ibrahim muttered. He pointed at the car. "Jonan's in that car. That… that must be how he ends up at Letty's place. He's fleeing there to avoid whoever is chasing after him."

Larry stared at Dr. Rathpalla. "We… we're all getting chased." He wrapped his arms around his sides. "Chased, chased, chased…" He teetered back and forth.

"Larry, you're scaring me," Ibrahim said. "Something's wrong with you. This isn't just stress. Something is seriously wrong."

Then Larry got down on his knees, bent over, and screamed.

"What the hell…?" Ibrahim stumbled back, afraid.

Larry shivered and panted. Ibrahim didn't move until the janitor stopped screaming, but once he did, he helped him up as quickly as he could.

The janitor was crying. "I… I don't know." He shook his head. "I don't know what's happening to me, Doc. Angel… you're right. Something's wrong."

Ibrahim clenched his fist. "Shit…"

He stepped away from Larry. Usually, psychiatric conditions weren't contagious, though the Green Death had taught Ibrahim that there were exceptions. "We need to get out of here, fast," he said. "And not just for Jonan's sake." He huffed. "When did you start feeling off? What are your symptoms? How long have you been experiencing them?"

Larry stared at the psychiatrist. "I don't know. I… I don't remember."

Ibrahim's jaw went slack. "How can you not remember? You're a wyrm! We—"

A shiver dug its way down his spine, leaving the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. "Oh no. Shit. Shit shit shit shit."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.