Through the Looking Glass

Crossing the threshold was rough, like jumping out of a fucking frying pan, right into a fire. I went from choking on smoke and feeling like I was having a heart attack, to suffocating and feeling like I was burning up. It felt rotten and wrong like the night Wolf died and the night she came back all over again, but worse. Suddenly, I realized that I was being held. Wolf told me to try to relax as my body “re-learned how to breathe”. Just as I was about to pass out, the stitches in my leg and hand started tingling. It spread through my whole body as the stitches did… whatever they did, causing the burning sensation to fade and finally letting me take in a deep breath. 

I’m okay now… I think. The sores are still there and itching but other than that I feel fine, or as close to it as I can get in this place.    

It’s… weird. 

It’s dark here and not normal dark either. I have to hold my phone close to my face in order to see the screen, because if I don’t, it completely disappears. It’s like the light just stops, as if there was a wall in front of it, but there isn’t one. It’s made typing this a pain in the ass. 

Sound is fucked here too. When we talk it sounds like our voices are going through an old radio. It all comes out fuzzy and muted, even though we’re right next to each other. Despite that, there are still “echoes”, but even they aren’t normal or consistent. Every now and then, we’ll hear our own voices, repeating something that was said hours or days or weeks ago. I’m only calling them “echoes” because that’s what Wolf assured me that they are, even though they don’t sound like it. They don’t have that same reverberation. They’re more like exact recordings being played right next to us. 

Wolf says it’s because we’re not supposed to be here. We “don’t make sense” in this place, so it’s trying to reject us. According to her, this world is broken, completely consumed by the thing that Father Brien’s cult tried to bring to ours. Its corpse is the only thing left here, and that’s what we’re looking for. Once we get to it, she will be able to “fix” this world. 

Speaking of which, it took a while to get used to walking here. I can’t feel anything under my feet, so I ended up stumbling a lot at first. I can feel my body’s movements, of course, but it’s like walking through air. Wolf wrapped a tendril around my waist before we crossed the threshold and she’s kept it there since, both to help me walk and to make sure we don’t get separated or “fall off” as she put it, whatever the hell that means. If it weren’t for that tendril and the hand I keep on her shoulder, I wouldn’t know that we were getting anywhere. If I stop “walking” I can feel her pulling away, so I know that some kind of forward motion is happening, at least. Wolf offered to carry me, but I don’t want to put extra strain on her while she’s focusing on following the “trail”. Besides, it gives me something of my own to focus on, which I really need here. It's a good distraction from the constant darkness. 

I haven’t felt tired or hungry or anything since I got here, but Wolf insists that we take occasional breaks. She also insists that I try to eat something or sleep during those breaks, even though I don’t feel like I need to. Aside from the distraction, I think she’s trying to make sure I have something normal to hang onto in all of this. I’m sure it helps her too, so I’m not going to argue. I just hope we get where we're going soon.