Entangled: part iii
#Rom-Fi #Valentinesday #Series
This is the final instalment of my three-part Valentine's Special mini-series. If you are just catching up… Part I is here…. and Part II is here.
In Berlin, after a lazy morning followed by energetic drinking, we flowed into a subterranean nightclub. The lights, people and music draw us in on a wave of sensations. We were both getting better at controlling our combined experiences, picking and choosing what to follow and what to release. Our brains adapted to the shared reality, easily switching from me to you to us. But here in the brick-vaulted darkness, we dared to leave ourselves open, with no doors, no barriers, and no limits. Music rolled through us, enveloping, releasing, and expanding. The bass was dark, mids warm and welcoming, the treble tight and bright—every touch a spark of energy, every movement a ripple in space. Sam assured me, “It’s better than ecstasy”, which was enlightening. I didn’t know we did that.
I’ve never been much of a raver, but Sam lived for it. She would disappear to dance all night, and I would retreat to my books and a warm bath. We had worn those differences like a badge of honour. No co-dependency here.
But our entangled life had to be shared. If I remained at home, I would hear every beat, every brush of skin, every stolen look. You can close the doors, but you can’t stop the music. I hung back, which was fine for the first time in my life. I was a wallflower and at the centre of the dancefloor. Sam was the lightning and the conductor, and I watched her dance to replay as memories for us both.
We were in our space when it happened—a flicker of something at the edge of our perception, a wave in our reality. I couldn’t say who sensed it; it was hard to tell in the “US” phase. A flickering static, a tremor, but Sam pulled me away. I was with her; she laughed, arms flowing around me. A whirling dervish, dancing for me and with me. I could never dance like that. I saw people watching, even when they weren’t.
Snap. Again. Stronger. The ripple passed between us, a wave, but focused. Two states, one colour.
“What was that?” I thought.
“The drop?” she laughed… “…dance bitch!”
“Not the drop…something…” I said, reaching out for her, but she spiralled away, absorbed by the crowd. I stepped back and reached out.
The music faded to a dull throb. My senses sought the ripple again, searching through the room. I focused and refocused. A fear was rising in me, instinct telling me something was wrong. I had to protect her…. Sweat covered my skin; my eyes fever hot. My head ached as I pushed out harder, creating ripples of my own, tendrils of colour searching for danger.
I didn’t see Sam stop dancing. My focus was so strong she had ground to a halt. Where was it? What was it? Somebody was shouting, somebody… Sam was shouting.
The crowd had parted. Sam was on her knees; her nose was bleeding, her eyes bloodshot and wide with pain. A giant security guard rushed in, gathering her up like a fallen peasant girl in a Viking raid. I froze in fear as he took her outside, struggling to reel my senses back in.
“Help me!” She sounded so far away. My feet started moving. I pushed through the writhing masses and slammed the fire exit open to find Sam lying on the floor. Her head rested on the security chief’s rolled-up bomber jacket.
“SAM!” I fell to my knees beside her. A massive hand gripped my shaking shoulder. Tattoos led my eye to a red beard and pierced lip. The hoop bounced wildly as the Viking made sounds at me.
“Sind Sie eine Freundin? Was hat sie eingenommen?” The words made no sense. Sam spoke German, so I understood everything without thinking. She’d been my translator… but she wasn’t there.
She wasn’t there!
I grabbed her and held her. I needed to feel her next to me; her body was hot and shaking, her mind a cold collapsing vacuum.
“Hello! Wissen Sie, ob sie etwas getrunken hat? Sie sieht aus, wie jemand ihr Getränk mit einem Betäubungsmittel versetzt hat. Okay?” riddled the security guard with as much English as I had German.
“I don’t understand… help her please… Ambulance… call an ambulance.”
Ambulance, he understood.
I squeezed her hand as we sirened through the early morning streets, my grip trying to wrench our shared consciousness back. They gave Sam Oxygen, and the chemistry subdued the physics long enough for me to connect. Our hearts had been beat for beat since we became Entangled, the slightest change another part of our sensory experience. Her rhythm was an erratic tango, creating a violent, shifting, vertiginous sensation as I matched her. Once inside, I could not find enough of her to hold on to. Her ephemeral thoughts melted away as quickly as they appeared.
I fought my urge to flee the void, brushing aside the colours of her fear to paint a safe space for her. As I worked, I called to her, a siren at the edge of her consciousness, willing her back from the brink. Outside of us, the paramedic struggled to make sense of the images on his monitors. Her brain patterns were triggering alarms that didn’t match her physical condition. He grabbed me, and his world slammed into mine.
“WHAT!” was all I could manage.
“You…OK?” He put his thumb up. It would be comical in another world, in another life. He had no idea what he was dealing with.
“Entangled”, I said. The word hung between us. His eyes widened with fear as a wave of white, prickly heat enveloped me.
“Scheiße!” was all he managed before his face liquified, followed by a nausea that threatened to consume me. I was being dragged into the singularity consuming our universe.
“Tumour.” I waved a finger toward the shadowy mass on the three-dimensional scan he was trying to make sense of.
“Because of… it?”
“No. Before… it’s why…” It struck me again. A wave through my thoughts, again a tremor, again an aftershock, again a final mind-shattering force pushing me down, crushing our connection. Us was being dismantled, the bonds built over days ripped apart by violent, unstoppable entropy.
We were dying.
Sam was tearing us apart, destroying us to protect me. Turbulence shook my mind as it struggled to shape a reality I could survive in. Pain shattered my sight, muscles constricted, arms twisted, claw-bent knife-fingers tore my body from the world, and I fell.
Silence.
Darkness.
Black over black ripples emanate from me, echo waves, rebounding, empty of light, empty of hope. I rise and fall with them, void over void.
“What happened?”
I heard her voice. I tried to open my eyes, but they were beyond my reach. Her thoughts were a black, twisting sea deforming space. The infinite creeping darkness of death.
“Sam?”. The word slipped from me as waves of colours beyond sight rushed in and ran through me, filling me, becoming me. I was drowning in fear from the inside out. Consumed and absorbed.
“What happened?” An echo? Had she spoken again? There was no way to know.
“Where are you?” I said, with all the calm I could summon, but my fear coloured the words. They sparked and crackled, energising the turbulent space inside turbulent waves. Deforming, crushing, stretching, twisting.
I wanted to search, to reach out, but a force held me in place, frozen and blind. An invisible line I couldn’t cross.
“I can’t see?” The fear in Sam’s voice cut through me. I struggled again and felt the space give a little, but the respite was brief. I rose high on a wave into the darkness and saw Sam far away. She was darkening, oppressive anti-colours spiralling from her, radiating out and pushing upwards. I dropped into the depths again, submerged, drowning in our fear upon fear, feeding back in an ever-tightening loop. I had lost control, and Sam was slipping away. Invisible in the darkness, my body strained, forcing a last breath of love.
I lift leaf light through black air.
Reaching.
I clasp firefly atoms.
Falling
I shatter the darkness into a world of colour.
Alone
The wind blew no more.
I SCREAM!
Porcelain me shatters through strings, electrons, atoms and cells painting a bloody shroud on hospital sheets. I bend and arch my back against restraining hands. Fear rips my throat and shreds my wrists. My eyes straining to break free as the needle slides into my neck. I collapse through the world into oblivion.
…
…
…
Soft steps… fading.
…
Clash of metal on a distant shore…
…
A faint breeze.
…
It starts with warmth.
A subtle updraft lifted me through the void.
Nothing became black became darkness.
It was no longer empty—the feel of me, my warmth, my breath, my darkness ceded to light. I drag my broken self onto the shore and watch the sunrise. The metronomic beep of a heart monitor became the rhythm of my world. I rebuild my senses slowly until I’m ready to reach out. I touch the world beneath my fingers and opened my eyes.
Fraction’d reality reforms around me, the edges sharpened by pain. Every part of me was half of me now.
The tears were mine alone.
Entangled Plc hid their fear behind charts and graphs, whilst they rewired me, rebuilt me, then released me. After a week, I walked to the morgue and gazed upon her cold, grey shadow. Friends reappeared and helped where they could. We travelled back together, and someone arranged a funeral somewhere. I had nothing to bury, nothing to say goodbye to. Just an empty grave cut deep into my soul.
Time passes.
I stand on a seashore to fulfil a promise made in another life. The memory of our words is all I have left. Her fire baked shadow is dust in my hand. I let go, waiting to feel something: hope, connection, a lifting of the fog of grief. But I’m empty, infinite, and impossible to fill.
The wind lifts, the sea laps, and the sun warms my face, drying salt paths through yesterday’s makeup. I hold time in my breath and wait for the end.
My eyes close.
The darkness is mine and mine alone.
Until, at the edge, swirling sun patterns drift through my vision, shifting ripples and waves…waves. A tremor runs through me. I open my eyes.
The world is waiting.
Frozen waves glisten, caressed by unseen light, over them, around them, through them. The surrounding sand shimmered with drifting light waves over and over. I was inside.
“Hey.”
The sound rose through the sand, the wind, the sea. The sound was a thought, an idea, a dream and my reality.
It was Sam.
I held my breath, or possibly I wasn’t breathing at all.
I waited.
“Thank you.”
I laughed, and the world shimmered. A spectrum of sprites danced away from me.
“For what?” It wasn’t words, just the idea of words.
“Bringing me here.”
“I promised.”
A wave, the colour of love, flowed over the world. I gasped, breathing Sam in, and the sea followed. She washed over me and through me in the sun, the air, and sand. Every measure of light and warmth, every tremor of sound, in every cell, atom, electron and string and I knew we were Entangled forever.
Me, Sam, us.
What an ending! Science fiction is something I have a strange relationship with - sometimes I love it with a fierce passion, and sometimes it leaves me cold. This was on the love end of the spectrum, definitely.
The ending surprised me so much! I thought we were going in a dark direction and the almost spiritual ending, sublime and sweet… stunned me! This is a love story! How surprising and how unusual this story was… bravo Steve… it took me on a journey!