Mikayla sat in front of the couch on the Shogun’s living room floor. Micheal’s body lay behind her, and he occasionally tossed and turned, letting her know that he was still alive. She sighed and put her face in her hands. ‘Micheal will be okay. Mai and X can handle this,’ she thought. She knew they could, but she couldn’t help but worry about Micheal.

  “Hey, Mikayla, are you okay?” Me-Kil’s high-pitched voice asked.

  “I don’t know, I’m worried about Micheal. Even if the others can save him, this will probably be a huge setback in our plans,” Mikayla replied.

  “They’ve got this. If there’s one thing elves are good at besides meditating, they always follow through. At least on my world,” Me-Kil attempted to reassure her.

  “Oh, right. I forgot Myriil had even gone with them,” Mikayla said. “You can hardly tell when he's around anyway.”

  Murgul entered the room, battleaxe resting on his shoulder. “Mikayla, you need to eat something. You haven’t eaten all day.”

  She sighed. “I’m not hungry.”

  Murgul sighed in return. “Just because you aren’t hungry doesn’t mean you don’t need to eat.”

  “I don’t need to eat; I need to be helping. How can you guys just sit around and babysit me while I recover?” Mikayla asked.

  “Because it is what X tasked me with,” Murgul replied.

  “X is scary,” Me-Kil said.

  “Well, I can’t just sit around,” Mikayla got up.

  Murgul put a hand on her shoulder. “You have to rest. Your soul could sustain more damage if you don’t wait for it to finish healing.”

  “I don’t care.” Mikayla pushed Murgul’s hand off her shoulder.

  A spectral image of a gun appeared, aimed at her temple. “I’m going to find help,” she stated, the gun firing and blowing her brains out. Blood splattered onto the ground as her body flew to the side. Her corpse smacked into the floor, flaked into dust, and disappeared.

  “If she kills herself, it won’t be your fault, Murgul,” Me-Kil said.

  “Agree to disagree,” Murgul said.

  * * *

  Micheal tossed and turned before gasping and sitting up in a field of tall grass. The grass was blue, and green mountains spanned the horizon. He looked skyward and saw stars in a red sky. There were two moons, one purple with a black splotch and the other smaller and sword-shaped. He didn’t know how he knew the sword-shaped natural satellite was the moon; he just knew it was.

  “Hello?” Micheal called out.

  He felt something walk up behind him. It almost felt like it had walked backward from within him. He turned to face the strange presence, revealing a form of golden light. It looked eerily similar to him, albeit shirtless and missing a nose and mouth. Its legs were points, sharp as needles, and it had a sword strapped to each of its forearms. A dagger-shaped marking covered one eye. It bowed to him, and he scrambled backward, tripping and falling over.

  It blinked at him.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Micheal shouted.

  The creature looked over its shoulder. Micheal leaned to the side and saw wooden boards and bricks springing from the ground, forming a small house-like building. Paint washed across the walls, turning it a light bluish-green. A chimney blew smoke into the sky. The creature turned back to him and continued creepily staring at him. Micheal stood back up.

  “Let’s see if I can find any answers in there,” Micheal said before walking towards the strange building, mostly ignoring the creature.

  The strange creature made of light followed him into the building. The interior was massive, with book-filled shelves lining the walls. Stairs climbed the walls like vines, reaching upwards to access all the books. He grabbed a small yellow one titled ‘January 13th, 2003, 2:05 p.m.’ and opened it. He and the creature were suddenly transported into the stands of an ice rink. He still held the book, but his eyes were drawn to a child in the hockey game. It looked like himself. He watched as a 13-ish-looking version of him scored the winning goal.

  “This place is weird,” Micheal thought aloud.

  He spotted his parents cheering in the stands, so excited for him. Then the book forced itself shut, and he was back in the massive library. The creature put its hand on Micheal’s shoulder, and he instinctively flinched away. He looked towards it. It pointed with its arm towards a pulsating, glowing mass floating in the center of the seemingly never-ending room. He didn’t know how he could see it and not see the roof, but he knew it was the center the same way he knew the sword-shaped satellite was a moon.

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  “These must be my memories,” a voice reverberated through the massive chamber as he thought the words. “This must be my mind,” the voice called out again.

  The creature pointed towards the glowing mass again.

  “Do you want to go up there or something?” Micheal asked it.

  It nodded.

  “Too bad there’s no elevator,” he stated.

  “Pfft,” a voice said from behind him.

  Micheal turned around and saw a teenage version of himself decked out in full hockey gear.

  “You’ve been slacking too hard. Back when I was around, we’d make it up there in no time flat,” the teenage him said.

  Another him appeared, this one looking as if it was from a few weeks ago. A cut continuously appeared and disappeared on the palm of his right hand, and the blade sheathed on his waist phased in and out of existence with the cut.

  “You were an absolute jerk when you were in control,” the new guy said. “You’re glad you got rid of him, right Present-Micheal?”

  “I don’t even know what’s happening here,” Micheal said.

  “Right, right. Well, that’s Way-Too-Into-Hockey-Micheal,” the constantly changing one said, “And the others decided to call me Naive-Greedy-And-Boring-Micheal. N-GAB for short. The others pick your name when you get booted from control by the new guy. Which is you.”

  “Wait, you guys are just living in my head? How come I didn’t know about you guys? And what in god’s name is that?!” Present-Micheal pointed to the needle-legged light construct.

  “Do not use the Lord’s name in vain!” a new, bible-holding, seven-year-old version of him shouted at him.

  “You’ve never seen us because you’re always in complete control,” Way-Too-Into-Hockey-Micheal replied.

  “Okay, who are you?” Present-Micheal asked the seven-year-old.

  “We call him The Zealot, or Devout-Catholic-Micheal,” N-GAB said. “And we don’t know what the creature is. We’ve all agreed that it's related to the magic sword I picked up.”

  “Well, you guys clearly have gotten too out of touch with the mystical and the magical. The Zealot and I figured out that the creature is likely a representation of the piece of soul floating near ours. You know, the one with the magic string connected to it?” a new version said. He was holding a baby, dressed in all black, and had a temporary tattoo on his hand. He looked very, very tired.

  “Wait! Don’t tell me who you are. Are you Magic Micheal?” Present-Micheal asked.

  “No, we call him Overworked and Overly Mystical-Micheal, or OOM. The baby he’s carrying is Baby-Micheal,” N-GAB replied before turning to OOM, “And for the last time, that thing is probably not a soul.”

  “Ah damn. I was close. Also, what makes you think it isn’t a soul? It pulses whenever I say something or have a thought,” Present-Micheal said.

  “See! The Zealot and I are right!” OOM exclaimed. “If the present agrees, it has to be right!”

  “You never said that when I was in charge,” Hockey-Micheal exclaimed.

  “Of course he didn’t, idiot! He came after you!” N-GAB shouted. The Micheals began to fight amongst themselves, and the baby started crying.

  “Guys! Stop infighting! We are literally all the same person, how is it that we can’t get along?” Present-Micheal shouted over the clamor of voices.

  Everyone went quiet. N-GAB sighed, and OOM started trying to put the baby to sleep.

  “First, what is in that room?” Micheal asked, pointing to a door that had appeared on the wall.

  “That,” N-GAB shuddered, “That is the most horrifying place in here, besides the nightmare and fear collective. I think I speak for everyone on that.”

  “The what-now?” Present-Micheal asked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Hockey-Micheal said.

  The Zealot, OOM, and the baby had all disappeared.

  N-GAB continued, “In that room, are the preschool-elementary obsessions. They only ever want to talk about one thing,” he shuddered again.

  “Well, remind me never go in there if I ever show up here again,” Present-Micheal said.

  “You’ll be back,” N-GAB said.

  “That’s not reassuring. I’m going to go investigate the glowing thing now. The sword-thingy will probably follow me,” Present-Micheal said.

  “Good,” Hockey-Micheal said, “That thing is creepy. It stayed outside until you passed out, and we’ve never seen it do anything other than a few acrobatic tricks.”

  Micheal left his past selves to talk amongst themselves again. He climbed the stairs, which went surprisingly quickly, despite what Hockey-Micheal had said. He walked onto the platform that floated around the yellowish-glowing object. The platform wasn’t there earlier, but Micheal attributed it to mindscape shenanigans. He could tell the object wasn’t always yellow. And there wasn’t supposed to be turning sickly yellow.

  Floating off to the side of the spherical object was another object, also yellow, which was connected by a golden thread and looked like it should attach to the larger one. The larger one, which he agreed with OOM that it was his soul, was perfectly smooth, and slightly transparent. There were no holes or blemishes, besides the slowly spreading sickly yellow.

  Micheal looked at the golden creature and pointed to the attachment-looking piece. “Is that where you come from?”

  It nodded.

  “Why is the soul becoming that sickly color instead of the luminous, glowy, healthier-looking color?”

  The creature extended the sword on its right forearm and traced letters into the air. Glowing afterimages were left behind, spelling out ‘s-i-c-k’.

  “I’m sick?” Micheal asked it.

  It nodded again.

  “How do we stop it?” he asked the creature again.

  It shrugged.

  Micheal sat on the platform next to his soul, and the creature sat beside him.

  “We can wait this out, right? The variants will solve it somehow, right?” Micheal asked the creature.

  It shrugged again.

  “Well, all we can do is wait it out then,” Micheal said.

  It made a gesture that seemed to say, ‘If you say so.’

  Favorite past self?