Look at me and tell me who I am,
What I am,
Why I am.
Call me a fool and it's true, I am.
I don't know who I am.
It's such a shame,
I'm such a sham.
No one knows
who
I
am.
~Jekyll and Hyde Musical
Contrary to popular belief, nothing can go without sleep for very long. Truth be told, they may not necessarily need it, but otherwise, one will go insane.
For mortals, sleep is a time to rest. It gives your body a chance to rebuild while you're not busily destroying it. But that's only because our weak shells need thew rest. Sleep is something else.
Sleep gives a soul a chance to process all it's taken in during the day. Your puny, pathetic minds can't comprehend endless information pouring into them, with no rest. It needs processing time. That's what happens when you sleep. That's what happens when you dream. It's your mind processing all the information you've gained during the day.
Other people say that dreams are a completely different from processing information. It's to rest a long weary soul, it escapes from the body, and is taken to the dreamscape, or sixth dimension, or any number of places. Some even say it goes to the land of the dead. Wherever this place is, it lets you, for a short moment while you are sleeping, see the truth of the world. What you remember when you wake up is bits and pieces of it, which is why, if you sleep on an idea, you can wake up knowing the answer.
Yet others say that sleep is to rest the body, and dreams are visions sent to you by gods, by demons, or by something else entirely. Some say it's a vision of the future, a remembrance of the past, a turn of events happening in the present. Some say you need to know these things, some say they're dangerous insights, some say they're looks into your mind, some say it's into someone else's.
These are all wrong.
And yet, they're all correct. Some folks believe that the dream that Fluffy is going to die by eating an alien is true, some believe that their dream of their father dying in a third world war could never happen. They're both wrong. But they're both right. The dream of the dog dying may be simply worries personified in dreams, the dead father may be a warning of the future. We can't ever really know until it's too late.
All of these ideas are true, They're simply twisted, or only bits and pieces.
Or maybe they're all mixed in together, not broken bits at all...
Lina lay in her bed, mulling over the future. This world was out to get her, she knew it. Life was out to get her, if the events in it so far were any interpretation of it's intentions.
The angel sent to protect the one she was meant to damn. Never mind that he was undamnable anyway, this was just one more thing stacked onto ten million others. Her life was never right. Not when she was on earth, not when she was in hell. And not even her one past shot at heaven had been at all worth it.
She turned over and glared at the earrings, beads, and bangles laying on her dresser. Angrily she swept them of onto the floor. She'd never wanted them. She'd never cared what she looked like. She'd never cared what others thought of her.
Until him.
She should have simply walked past him. She should have ignored the man saying he could get her a job. But she'd needed the money.
Not a week ago she'd been fired by her computer firm for insulting the president. She'd told him that the only way to get the company back on it's feet would to be to listen to her theories, or the man could just smash the building down and save himself some time. He had started the company himself, and was very proud of it. He didn't like being told he was wrong.
Unfortunately, he had been a very influential man, and had worked very hard to ruin her life.
Lina hated people like that. She hated those who thought they deserved to be special. She hated the people who refused to admit they were wrong, who refused to listen to anyone else, who beat down as hard as they could on anyone who embarrassed them.
"Denounce god. What has he ever done for you? Throw that and your old life away. I can help you build a new one."
Lina shook her head and tried to drown out the memory with others.
She didn't like that job, anyway. She'd really only wanted to paint. She'd gone to the best art school, scrimped and saved to get the degree, and it hadn't gotten her anywhere. She never got a job worth having since her computer one. Yeah, she'd liked computers, but she hadn't loved them. She'd loved the way she could form people with a stick of graphite, could move a puddle of pigment around to make a bowl, a flower.
She'd adored the feeling of creating something, something beautiful, something delicate and lovely to be cherished, to make something that no one else could. To open her soul to her canvas and paint what she saw there. She'd gloried in the movement of the pencil, the dance of watercolors, the oils spreading across the cloth.
But she was good at hacking. She was good at smashing down firewalls and ripping apart passwords. She could have a computer whipped into shape in no time. She didn't not like it, but she hadn't loved it. So, ignoring her parents, she'd gone to art school instead of a computer academy, spending her money on her passion instead of what would make her money.
She'd been disillusioned quickly. She didn't get a job anywhere but fast food restaurants for quite a while. Then, like a godsend, she got the job at the computer company.
Now she was kicking herself for tossing it away like that. But she'd been so mad the man's induced stupidity, the stubbornness making him refuse to admit that he needed to change things from the way they were thirty years ago. Now she was out of a job. Again. She tugged at her fraying black sweatshirt and pulled it over her worn red jeans, laced up her black army boots and brushed her clean red hair. She picked up her duffel and put it over her shoulder and went off for another day of job searching, while her larder got steadily emptier.
He'd stood at the door to her apartment, waiting for her to walk out, head heavy and hands fumbling at the keys. She'd been half crying over the third day with no breakfast, her empty stomach growling at her, pinched and painful.
"Denounce god. What has he ever done for you? Throw that and your old life away. I can help you build a new one."
Her father had beaten her and her mother. Her foster family had other things to worry about. Her sister had insulted her and told her lies.
And they'd all told her dreams were useless. They'd all told her hopes were for nothing.
She hadn't listened. She'd followed her heart. Look where it got her. She should have listened.
But she hadn't. And that's when she met him.
Lina turned around and saw him standing there, grinning. She'd groped for the bottle of mace she kept in her pocket when she went out; the city wasn't safe, no matter who or where you were. He'd laughed and told her he had a job for her. Her. Lina inverse.
She should have listened to her head, telling her what happened to young girls following strange men offering "jobs". But her stomach and head hurt from lack of food, her heart hurt from lack of hope. Her soul hurt from lack of life. She had nothing worth stealing but an old laptop safely locked away in her room. She had no looks worth raping or selling. She had no money to buy drugs. So she allowed herself this one hope, this one chance. Maybe, maybe this would be her chance, her saving grace. Maybe this was real, maybe she could have a job. Maybe she could pay for rent, pay for her food, her...
Maybe she could afford canvases. Maybe she could buy herself some paint. Her hands ached for a brush, a stick of graphite. So she went with the smiling man, like a lost puppy, not knowing what she was getting herself into.
He'd given her a job. It was computers, but it paid amazingly well. She'd been their chief hacker, their best. She got into other's computers, ruined their databases, stole and copied their products to ruin them. She'd felt pangs of guilt, but it was eat or be eaten, every man for himself, right?
Right?
She put it into the back of her head, ignoring the little voice that wondered what these people would do when their jobs were taken away.
"Denounce god. What has he ever done for you? Throw that and your old life away. I can help you build a new one."
She'd been young, innocent...and stupid. She'd fallen in love. Fallen in love with evil, with the man who convinced her he loved her back. With Xellos.
"Denounce god. What has he ever done for you? Throw that and your old life away. I can help you build a new one."
Her life had always sucked. What was the harm in doing that? It had made her feel tremendously better. He loved her, she knew that. He was the only one in her life that showed her the least bit of affection and care. He was the only one that didn't hate her for being there. Her father had hated her because she was like her mother. Her mother hated her because she was a mistake, a mistake the family couldn't afford. Her sister had hated her because Lina was the reason she couldn't have a pair of skates, have a bike, eat something besides speghetti for dinner every night and have cable. He boss had hated her because she wouldn't bow down and admit he was right. Her foster parents, when her mother and father were put into jail for drug dealing, didn't hate her, but that was almost worse. She was an easy way for them to get money, nothing more. They didn't care in the least bit about her.
Xellos held her and told her he loved her.
"Denounce god. What has he ever done for you? Throw that and your old life away. I can help you build a new one."
He'd said he would always be there for her, always care for her, always catch her when she fall and kiss her tears away.
"Denounce god. What has he ever done for you? Throw that and your old life away. I can help you build a new one."
She'd fallen for him entirely. She loved him. She loved him with all her heart and if he'd told her to leap into the river wearing plate-mail, she would have. She would have done anything for him.
"Denounce god. What has he ever done for you? Throw that and your old life away. I can help you build a new one."
It had seemed like a good idea. She'd screamed it into the frosty might air, glorying in the feeling of power it gave her. God had never done anything for her. He'd made her life miserable. He'd broken her heart, ripped at her soul, torn open her life. She didn't need him.
She'd turned, smiling to Xellos.
"There. Feel better?"
"Amazingly." She smiled. I'm going for a walk.
"Don't forget your mace."
"Of course not."
The mace didn't help her when she was staring into the headlights of the semi.
Lina rolled over and stilled her thoughts. She didn't need to spend another night in tears. She was fine. Finally, curled in a tight ball and holding ht covers snug about her, she drifted into a restless sleep.