Level Six: Siderophobia

Must be nice, I thought to myself, as I sit back to look at the new couple. They had the type of love that anyone would strive to have. The kind that she didn't have to try to be sexy to get his attention, and the kind that speaks in both their words and their actions especially, to have a beautiful purity. Their resonance as they talked, sayings like "I could just kiss you right now," and their stacking "I love you"s had this naivety to it that made them lost in their own jungle.

I called that. I knew it would happen.

To think that I had that before, and how it's proof uncertainty hides in just about anything — it's scary really. Looking at the two of them, it seems like destiny and fate is playing their part in this magic around their lives, but that's what I thought I had to. What happened to that?

The new lovebirds turned to glance at me, as if they just noticed I was there, and with that fueling their apology, they temporarily cut their spark between one another. Shyrene, after getting the agreement from Blake from a look into each other's eyes, spoke up when no one else did. "We'll save the affection of our relationship for another time, when this is over with. Getting out of these levels is the current task for us. Serving you is our first priority. You heard what Your Majesty said. This is for after we're successful for you and support you."

"You don't have to pause your relationship for me," I told them, to be polite. Flashes of Camdyn was slamming into my head when she mentioned 'Your Majesty', what instructions she gave me, and how he had gotten up with bloodshot eyes from the tears that fell and took off running, feeling humiliated to be seen that way. How I still don't know if he heard anything he said. For my sake than anyone else's, I continued the conversation thats already been stroke up. "Do you thank Camdyn's mind for deciding to confess, Blake? It was so sudden it surprised all of us."

"Are you joking?" Blake replied, his brows raised. "That was all you, Ellie. It was because of you."

The man is full of surprises today, and because of this one, I physically had to take a step back, and regain my balance. "You've got to be the only one joking around here. How would this have anything to do with me?"

"I saw the way you look at him. You're not one centimeter in the direction of getting over him, Ell," by his expression, it was obvious he was playing me back in his head, with whatever look he was going on about. "Sure, Camdyn was indirectly confessing his love to you, and how it still exists after all this time, but what stuck out to me is how you received it. It's like you were drowning in his affection, or in his heart, legitimately. I wanted to feel that way, but mostly I wanted Shyrene to feel that way too. She deserves it.

"I wanted her to feel how you felt more than I felt nervous to confess I guess, and I took a shot at it because of this slither of possibility that I can be the hella lucky guy that could do that for her. It worked out very well for me."

"You got all of that from a facial expression?"

"If a picture speaks a thousand words, a face can speak a million, Ellie Reyes." He said without much thought, a small smile all he offered besides the words. "Especially when it comes to love. You can't hide love. You saw it in Shyrene and I, and both of us see it in you."

"Sorry, I can't believe that. There's no way."

LEVEL SIX HAS BEEN PREPARED

SIDEROPHOBIA, FEAR OF STARS WILL SOON BEGIN

THANK YOU FOR WAITING

"That's the most senseless thing I've ever heard ," Camdyn brought out. Showing up with the rest of us, was living proof once again that a level will never let anyone skip out on anything no matter how restless you are. I feel bad for him, as much as I don't want to say I do.

"Yeah, we've had some of our best times together when—." I stopped when I realized what I was saying out loud, but that didn't mean that my thoughts were barricaded. They ran wild, for miles, without a single intention to stop, and nothing to pull them back from doing that either.

There was a cliff behind his house that oversaw the biggest, and most gorgeous body of water that I've been able to lay my eyes on, and off to the distance there was a waterfall that fell more elegantly than the castle of a prince and a princess from the fairytales, but Camdyn convinced me that it's not the day that it's the most mesmerizing; but at night, and he was right. The stars were aligned like a connect-the-dots that felt to spell out my name, and I felt a connection to them, so overwhelming like they were part of me.

"There's not a 1% chance she or I are afraid of the stars, and I have proof stored in my brain, that's clearly open for you guys to peek into whenever the heck you want to. Her brain holds the same memories too!" Camdyn yapped on over the awkwardness that filled the air after I cut off my thoughts, covering for me, though we were both thinking the same thing. Those times were wonderful. I hate that they were.

"It has to be a mistake," I added on, accepting his help as a boost, shamelessly. "This level would be useless to go through with and it's technically accusing me of false information."

"Again with this, Ell," Shyrene said, though her eyes did most of the talking, as well as the three claps in still air that made everyone flinch. "We're in your head. It knows the feelings in your heart, whether that be the love of your life or the deepest darkness of it. Besides, let's say it did make a mistake. Shouldn't you be happy? That means that it's basically letting you off on a level that you're not afraid of. So if you fear it or not, we're doing it, and saying you don't just makes you a liar trying to cover something up. That's what it looks like."

"Fine," I groaned, annoyed, but with good timing, it didn't have to stay with me too long. Stars began to light up the sky, twinkling like the keys on a piano produced music, and it warmed me like hot cocoa with a cold snow or fresh blankets out of the dryer, that I wouldn't let go of the feeling for days if I didn't have to. The doctors might have said the surgery was 30 hours, but it's felt like days and I haven't seen the sun or the moon rise or fall once inside here. I felt I had the right to be tired when the stars came out, and that itself was comforting.

I felt a great amount of the 'I told you so' aura mixed in with my blood stream, because it made it evident that Shyrene's beliefs were beliefs without proof, and that were wrongly made to come to the conclusion of. For once since I've met her, I actually felt mightier — watching her all this time take the most sickening and ghastly moments, and being so unbothered made her look like a pro. If there were chances at all that I'd come out as a winner competing against her on any day, they'd have to be slim, and this was that 'slim'. For some reason, it was such achievement for me, like reaching the tip of Mount Everest.

"Okay, seriously though Shyrene. What's the catch here? There has to be one. You can tell that she's fine. There's nothing wrong. She's enamored by those celestial bodies in the sky, actually. We were never trained for this!" Blake started to get a bit worried by events that he didn't expect to happen, and in between it, he turned to look at me because his lover didn't have anything to say. "Ell, it's not that we want you to suffer, but this isn't something we prepared for. Standing here doing nothing feels so inaccurate."

I smiled wildly at him, "it's okay," I said, "I understand."

"Wait it out," Shyrene said, deciding to speak out late. There was a cold shrill to her voice that made you listen to her, even if you had no plans to. "The level isn't over yet, is it? Be prepared for anything unexpected until you're told that you've passed, you've got that? You never know what danger is out there, and according to the narration, the level has started and hasn't ended. Don't get full of yourself in the process."

Nothing. There was dead silence for passing time I couldn't keep track of, except for the rhythmic tapping of Shyrene's shoe. After a while, I got used to every two seconds to the dot, there being one more click, and again, and again, and again, like the one drop of water from a leaky faucet that somehow had the power to keep you up at night.

Something. Then there was something. The faint outline of a person, about six foot tall, glowing in the dark, like a ghost. "How have you been, Saturn Marie?" It spoke, as it levitated nearer to me. "How does it feel getting your father in prison?"

"Papa?" I questioned, the title rolling off my lips naturally because of the name he used on me, but I cursed myself for still calling him in a way that he didn't deserve. My blood father was never meant to be called something like that. It was too endearing for a person like him who could carry not an ounce of love in his body. "Soren, what are you doing here?"

"It's interesting to see how much I can still bother you when I'm a fragment that you made up, this is the way you're painting me to be. I'm not even real and only in your imagination. Well your imagination, with your little friends here to watch," he teased. His voice was the same. His face, though hollow, and un-punchable because my hand would go right through it, was the same. His sense of style was the same. I could mistake him to be real. Sometimes I accidentally do, for quick little seconds and that means unfortunately Shyrene is right. Something was bound to come up.

"Soren, I don't think it's a good for you to be here," Camdyn entered his talk, but it freaked me out some more, that even if he isn't real, that everyone here can see him. This wasn't a secret that I had the ability to keep to myself.

"Says the one who got put into prison just so he could make sure I got behind bars. You still satisfied that you did something like that? Betray me? I trusted you, so I think it's best that you don't get your ass involved right now," he barked in response to any kind of restrictions. It riled him up enough to grab the gun in the waistband of his jeans, load it, and take a shot at a poster, that was as far out as I could see. It mapped out the human body, but the bullet went straight to the heart without question. He knew how to shoot. There's no doubt about that, and as he stared deep into my soul, I could tell he wanted me to know that. "Now, Princess, Baby girl. You remember what we used to do when you were a little one, don't you sweetheart?"

"No?" I replied, it coming out like I was asking. His voice echoed though, deep into my bones, an earthquake he handed to me that only I had to suffer through. It was piercing, up and down my skin like goosebumps that didn't exist one second and were there the next, but these were much more lethal than those minor chills. What he wanted me to remember; it was coming back, and by this point, because of my anguish and stresses, Shyrene and Blake and all of their doubles were all lined up behind him, a gun pointed, ready to pull the trigger when Soren was. I've lost them. They're not on my side anymore. Not right now.

"You know. You remember. I know you do," he said, in a tone meant to tease. As he spoke, he shot off another bullet, hitting nearly the same spot his first one did, but this time it was more threatening. There were seven bullets following right along behind it from the team he took from me. He was warning me. This was the warning shot, and things could go down and only down from here. All I can control is how far it'll go down.

This was it. This was the memory he wanted me to remember. The times we would be in the backyard of his house, in the time I didn't know it would be a bad idea to let him back into my life; in the time I was jealous of my half-brothers for having a real blood father in their own household; in the time that I was full of oblivion and he took advantage of it.

During those days, we'd stand below the stars and he'd practice his aim there in front of me. I thought at that age, it was normal to hear guns go off every night I spent time with him, and that it was normal for eardrums to be lit up on fire because that's just how it was for me. This too, I tried to forget. I tried to associate the stars with good things, and because of Camdyn, I did forget about it. It became heavenly, actually, but that wasn't meant to last.

Why do I feel so small? I had thought that to myself then, and I thought that way now. Beneath the stars, I was this tiny ant of creation, that didn't have any worth. The whole world, the universe beyond it, and even further out than that, was much much bigger in size than a mere human like me. The stars only reminded me that every existence is far more vast than I want to believe. I really am just dust.

Beside my father, I would notice how big this universe is. He himself was this great tower above my age that lacked so much wisdom and understanding, and I never knew if he valued me or not. I could never tell if it was out of love that he fought for me, or out of the looks and reputation of the neighborhood, but with freedom to feel it or not, I felt like a prop. A prop that just wanted him to be happy with me, because he was my father. Because I'm his daughter.

"Mars. Snap out of it. Now," Camdyn hollered, grunting out of struggle. It's become much too common that he'd have to say something like that to me, and I probably needed it more than I wanted to believe. Smacking myself back to the world I've been stuck in, I came to to find Shyrene with a gun pointing at my chest from a distance of about five feet, and so quickly afterward Camdyn was wrestling her for it. The fight was equal, but I expected that from her after seeing the faith Blake had in her from square one.

"Soren! Permission for my second in command!" She yelled, when the gun slipped her hand, into Camdyn's grip. I shivered when she said his name. It registered deeper into acceptance that these people were on the same team, and right now, against me, as much as they could be, not even near the fence.

"Granted, Shyrene," Soren answered her, and as her request warned us would happen, her second turned up from the crowd gathered around my failure of a father, confident as she walked over to us. Her looks herself could kill more than the gun wrapped in her fingers.

Thinking fast, but also recklessly, Camdyn grabbed the Shyrene that attacked first in a neck-hold, the gun once in her hand pointed up against her temple. Facing her double, his tone was daunting, and straight out of a horror movie. "Put the gun down, or I'll shoot her. Is that what you want? More traumatic events? Did you forget you share the same brain?"

I was frightened right out of my shoes, but she didn't seem to be. Maybe for a quick snap at most, yet that was it. The glare returned right back to her where it has been, and she didn't look away from Camdyn. If it was intense before, I wouldn't know what to call her now.

"Not if I shoot you first, Camdyn Sacar. Or better yet, how about her? She's who we're after here, yeah?" She said, turning to look at me. The gun was pointed back where it used to be; at my chest.

Then one of the gun's went off, but I didn't know which one. All I knew is it meant life or death for me. and that the probability was pointing more toward the second.