She/ They/ He

TW: self harm

Flurries of wind push through me onto the mountains behind me. I have been climbing for too many hours and it hurts to keep going from sheer exhaustion. Unsure footsteps cause the rocks to crumble. Within a few seconds, I step on an out of place stone which throws my body forwards. The knees take the forefront of the damage. Pools of blood emerge from the wounds. Loudly, I curse. An overwhelming urge tells me to give into the pain. Alas, I push the ball of my foot firmly then the heel follows, hoisting up my weight until I am standing strong. The blood doesn’t stop dripping, however. Drip. Drip. It becomes deafening. I look at the damage and it appears that my whole leg is filled with horizontal cuts and it just doesn’t stop bleeding. It rolls off the rocks, into the waterfall. The waterfall turns a deep red, it mocks my wounds. Drip.

Someone levitates out of the waterfall and lands at the bottom of this mountain. They run to me in an incredible pace. The person has short hair, petite shoulders, muscular legs and I briefly wonder their gender before settling on the binary of male. Must be. They embrace androgyny in a way that hurts the cuts. He wants to tell me something important but my head is too dizzy from blood loss and I am still mesmorised by the blood waterfall. Drips are replaced by gushing sounds. Remarkably, he is now a few metres away from me.

“Stop! Please.” They mimic a speech I have heard before but the ringing, the dripping, the gushing is too intense.

 Please STOP. I can use the right words. Give me a chance. Just stop, ST—”

Deafened by the dynamically ever-growing ringing in my ears, I sit up from my bed. Something feels abnormal. Usually I do not tend to remember dreams, so it takes a while to readjust to the waking world. I feel the individual fibers of the carpet beneath as I walk to the door and open it. Carpet does not await me on the other side, grass does. Perfectly, the sun beams. Other people are content on what seems like a golf course. At least a hundred people are ahead. I approach the nearest person.

A classy feminine woman and I proceed to converse about this bizarre turn of events. Vaguely, she looks familiar.

“What is this place? I don’t understand how I got here.”

“Oh dear, you’re one of those.”

My expression fell flat in confusion, causing the woman to giggle slightly.

“Deary, this is it. The end, for now. Your dimension must have also signed up to the Actualisation Centre too. In principle, you have messed up your reality and you need to self-actualise before you mess more things up.”

“I don’t know who you are and you are already telling me that I have messed my life up?”

She looks at me in a sympathetic way and sighs out the words,

“You really don’t know. Such denial.”

Heavy silence strikes between us. I have a burning anger in inquisition but fearful to know the answers. We stare each other intensely. Her eyes are the same shade of brown as mine, they hold such strong emotions. She has a fringe, not un-similar to one that I had as a kid, long hair surrounds it. It comes to me that we look quite alike. Tentatively, I ask,

“What did you do to get here”

“Robbed different clothes stores every Wednesday for the past three years even though my husband is a millionaire. It’s a great hobby but I suppose it is a coping mechanism for something. Not yet sure what I am supposed to realise here.” She continues talking for quite some time but my mind wanders.

I think about my version of Earth. Rumours about other dimensions had always existed but the layman (like myself) never thought, and certainly never spoke freely about the prospect. There was an unspoken rule not to pry into things that we don’t understand. From what I know understand from this bizarre woman is that my whole dimension was in on this scheme where time stops for individuals who need an epiphany. Usually, it revolves around identity or a dilemma that won’t be fixed without intervention.

We exchange names. Hers is Zia and mine is Zeon. She asks again about my mistake but the rest of my life is a blur. I was doing something important before coming here. I hear the sound of gushing. I hear a scream. Drip. I decide to stop thinking about it. Safer that way.

Zia introduces me to her friend, Zak. He is uninteresting. Features from his face are apparent in her. Odd. Then, I spot the person from my dream.

Once again, they (he?) are running quickly. Not with inhuman speed this time, nonetheless still running with a great speed. He looks fearful and that’s when I notice. All of these faces look familiar because we are all the same person with different manifestations, presumably raised differently or with small changes to their lifestyle or different rules of their universe etcetera. The variations are endless. Male, female, unknown alike.

He (they?) is still in my view, circling, creating an uneasy sphere around me. Drip. They close in the circle. Zia and Zak see another friend named Ze so they leave me. I am alone. Drip. The ringing dials up in volume. Now, he is merely inches away from me. They stop. They laugh. I struggle not to breakdown. Drip. He talks with such coarseness that spit droplets land on my face. Drip.

“You hear it. Now see it.”

No answer can escape my confused lips.

“You have to see it. You have to see me to escape.”

Forming word shapes without speaking, I look at them. Drip.

Nuggets of memory slip through the noises. The dresses I used to wear and the arguments it would start in my head. The fake moustaches I used to wear to compliment my long, feminine hair and the arguments it would start among those who saw. Being called a girl felt so wrong sometimes but I would dislike being a man. My dress-sense became a cross between the binaries. Progressively, I hid my body. It gave home to self-inflicted scars. There was an incident with too much blood. I was okay with the consequence. My roommate screamed at me as I reluctantly explained how I never feel right in this body and the rot my mind has to suffer. Ray (the person who I live with) asked me to give her a chance to use the right words. I didn’t listen to her.

“I’m Zeon. Which one are you?”

“I am you. I am Zeon too.”

They were who I have been trying to be. They are the reason why I am here. Truly, they have saved me because no one else can. Only I can change this mental disease, navigate it. Horizontal cuts don’t make me more like them, it just isolates me from the ones supporting me.

It is time to face my mistake.