She blinked blearily and was almost blinded by the bright fluorescent hospital lights as she scrambled to regain control of herself. Shielding her burning irises, she tried to remember something, anything.

Slowly, the scene of black and growing came to her, and the conversation that she had held with the strange, not-exactly-man (though she wasn’t aware of what made him not-exactly-human. He looked like a man to her—and perhaps that was just it?) Throwing off her train of though, she struggled to sit up, but relented when the IV poking out of her wrist jerked painfully. She felt around until she came to the big red button, but before she pushed it—and, she hoped, sent the nurses rushing in—nurses came rushing in.

Wondering if she had some form of otherworldly magic after her brief encounter with true reality, she hummed to herself before explaining her sudden and irrational loathing to the lights above her. The nurses all tittered and tried to restrain her when she attempted, for the second time, to sit up, and finally, after her explanation of Seinaux, turned off the lights. Thanking them, she asked them in a perfectly normal voice for a glass of water, and if they would please take the stupid IV from her skin, showing them how absolutely unneeded it was by trying unsuccessfully to sit up a third time.

They twittered at her until she lay down and shut up and then rushed out of the room. When they returned, they were followed by her worried looking parents (ha, worried, what a laugh. They were probably disappointed) and who she assumed to be the doctor.

“Well young lady, you gave us quite a scare there. How are you feeling?” he asked, voice gentle, as if he were talking to an easily-startled dog.

“I’m fine, thanks. Could you please take this needle out of my skin? It’s a tad uncomfortable, you see. Also, I think I need to pee, and my teeth need to be brushed. I’m also starving for some real food.” He smiled, and his look wasn’t as nervous as before.

“Yes, of course you are. We’ll take that—” he removed the IV, “and get you some real food. The bathroom is right to your left, and you can brush your teeth and pee in there. Well have some food sent up to your room after your parents leave. Agreed?” she thought it over and nodded, feeling slightly dazed because of the abrupt change from the other world to this.

After she had peed and brushed her grotesquely yellow teeth, she walked hesitantly back into the room, where her parents waited.

Her father and mother, acting as if there were cameras in the room, hugged her and told her how happy they were to see her. She ignored this; it was their fault she had been put in a coma. It wasn’t like she had hit herself with a baseball bat; especially not her fathers baseball bat. Annoyed with them and herself (why would She have chosen to live with them, of all people? Just to learn? To expand her understanding? After thinking it over, she decided it was a possibility, and perhaps worth it. She did so like to know everything)

After a few awkward moments of pretending to be a family, her mother and father (if you could call them that) left, and she finally got the treat of…hospital food. Not such a treat, it turned out. After she had, with great effort, eaten all the food, the doctor returned.

“Now, what is this about a dark place? Called…Sein…Sein…?” he looked at her questioningly for help.

“Seinaux, it’s called. And you’re not allowed to know about it, because it would ruin the game. And I can’t ruin the game.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper, “but, if you promise not to tell, I’ll tell you,” he thought about it, and then nodded. She smiled at him and continued; “Seinaux is the midway place between one life and another. But I can’t really tell you more than that, and then it would really ruin the game. You don’t want to do that.”

“Yes, I do. What game?” he asked, feigning curiosity.

“No, trust me, you don’t. I know the secret and if you knew the secret then you would know that you wouldn’t want to know the secret and that you wouldn’t want me to ruin the game, but since you don’t know the secret, you do want me to ruin the game—though, you really don’t, remember—and then we’re back to the start again. See?” He smiled at her and talked in that very-gentle voice again.

“Yes, I see now, thank you,” very politely, he patted her hand, and then he walked out.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Well, yes, I suppose that would get you sent here,” the woman said agreeably, and she laughed appreciatively. For a psychologist, the lady was all right.

“Yeah. The kicker is; I can’t explain to you what I mean either, because it would just be a but-load of crap, so I’m sorta just stuck here.” She said, sighing. She wasn’t too mad. It was an eye-opening experience, being in the psychiatric ward of the states largest mental health care facility. The woman across the table nodded sadly, as if she understood. Who knew? Maybe she did.

A bright side that tended to balance all the white-washed walls, white garments, and ever-fussing nurses and overseers, was that her parents no longer had the opportunity to beat on her, and her brother was safely in a foster home. After she had gone to the hospital, that fateful day, with a dented-in forehead and blood on her father’s favourite baseball bat, the social workers had looked into the home-scene and found a world of hurt; which they quickly cleaned and fixed as best they could.

“Anyway, how long till they let me out, ya think? I’m almost eighteen and, no offence to your lovely education system, I need my schooling from outside this institute, you know? Isn’t there a law somewhere about releasing patients after a certain age?” The woman smiled at her, a genuine smile that Seria liked.

“Well, you’ve made tremendous progress, and we are preparing to release you here soon. Unfortunately, your dreams still seem uneasy, and sometimes you talk about this… Seinaux, in your sleep. We’ve monitored your heart and breathing rate, and they increase alarmingly when you have these dreams. The increase is what worries us. This type of increase usually results in violent, irrational and uncontrollable actions, and we can’t let you out while you continue to have these dreams.”

She looked genuinely sad about this, so Seria decided not to begrudge her for the bad news she was relaying.

“So,” she continued, “You can either tell me about this place, this Seinaux, and your dreams, and I can help you reduce and possibly get rid of the dreams, or, you could spend your whole life here. Your choice.” Seria thought for a while, then said,

“Well, if I choose to stay here, and I don’t tell you the secret, then that won’t be very educational. Or was my original intent to actually go insane, to see what its like? Because spending my whole life here would certainly do that. But is that what I wanted when I made this? Or…” She paused, frowning in concentration.

“Or, I could tell the secret, but that might be classified as insane on the dot, but I could be ‘helped’ until I no longer showed these ideas, and then I’d eventually be free, free to experience the rest of what I had intended. Depending on what I had intended. That’s the question, here. What was my original plan? What choice? Was this part of my plan? This choice? Did I plan for both alternatives?”

The woman, seeing that Seria was talking to herself more than her, sat back and listened in fascination. She couldn’t follow the one-sided conversation, but she felt that it had some form of significance, a great…power. Something that was The Big Secret. That thing that always seemed to be just out of reach for her, the thing that was just on the edges of her mind, just about to be discovered.

Gooseflesh rippled over her skin as she felt the presence if IT, the secret. Whatever she chose to call it, moments like these came along, and she felt like she was on the brink of discovery. Leaning forward, she grasped the unusually small white hands in her own, captured those deeply disturbing dark-blue eyes with her own hazel, and whispered,

“Tell me.”

The eyes she looked so searchingly into flashed in recognition or memory, she wasn’t sure which, and in an instant Seria had made up her mind.

Tell her she did.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Shadows of light would filter across the dark scenery, as if the roles of dark and light were reversed, playing the rules of some alien game as if it were the strain of death and the ease of life. Even when all knew that it was truly life that was a strain, and death that eased all time and all pains.

Black trees, their spidery branches creeping across the darkened sky, grew here, visible only because the shadows of light created an eerily grey outline.

The dripping Spanish moss was black cobwebs that held a weight far larger than physically possible, yawning towards the earth as a lover might hold their arms out to their beloved when separated inexplicably.

The dank air was heavy, but not humid, wet but not heavy, as if the air too, seemed to be confused as to its purpose.

The ground was dark, black. The grass; black threads that swayed in the breeze, like hair continuously on end. Nothing could be found obscuring the dark strands, nor was nothing found that wasn’t tree, air, sky, shadow, ground, or grass. The place was filled, brimming with sensations and anticipation that seemed misplaced, and yet, it was so desolate, so empty, that the sadness lay in that one thing, that one loneliness.

Suddenly the place twisted; a subtle shift that would have gone unnoticed if there had been anyone there to witness it. Then, the immense feelings of loneliness were gone, and a girl stood in a clearing of black, spidery trees.

She was about five-foot-six, with long, straight black hair that reached to her hips and hung limply next to her gaunt and sallow face. Her skin was white, belying the idea that she had never seen sun, and her clothes were trying to match the deep black of her hair, though failing miserably. She looked around herself with a level gaze, as if it were not even a bit odd that she was suddenly surrounded by unfamiliar territory. She started walking in a circle, looking with barely veiled curiosity at the black area.

A quiver went through the air, as if the place was alive, and anticipated the inspection with great nerves. She stopped for a moment, tilted her head, as if listening, then continued her inspection, mindful of the grass under her feet as though it might be alive. When she had finished her calm and controlled circuit of the clearing, she stopped in the middle again, where she had first appeared.

“Where am I?” she asked, closing her eyes and listening very carefully. The trees said they weren’t sure, and the grass didn’t know. The moss that draped the trees was aware only of the branches on which it clung, and no other being seemed to be present in which to ask. Her mind filled with the rustles and murmurs that was the talk of the dark forest, and she asked another question.

“Where can I find out? Who could tell me?”

After a quite murmur of conversation, the trees pointed her forward. She strode to one of the oldest trees, and placed her hand upon its velvet bark as it whispered its secrets to her. He said that if she walked long enough, in a straight line, she would find him, the only one who stayed here. Humans like her would pass through; they came and went, but he stayed, and was perhaps, because of this, no longer entirely human. She thanked the tree graciously, and started her walk, unsure as to which direction, or how long the dark forest stretched on.

*~*~*~*

Unsure of how long she had been walking—for time seemed to be a foreign concept in this place—she sat tiredly, careful not to harm the living things all around her.

It was then that the man appeared, glorious in his black robe, beautiful brown hair, and hazel eyes. He seemed to be the most gorgeous man she had ever seen, and she could barely conceal her awe.

“Hello,” his voice was low and musical, with an external quality of magic--something--woven in.

“Hi,” she said, breath coming shorter as she stared at him. He sat, as carefully as she had moments ago, and rested his hand in his chin.

“The…the trees said I would find you if I walked long enough,” she said, regaining some composure.

“Did they? Why is it that you needed to find me, then?”

“Where am I? I mean, where are we? Where is this?” She asked, still unable to look away from him completely.
“This,” he said, spreading his arms to accommodate the gigantic forest, “Is the midway. All humans who die come here, and they pass on just as quickly. Usually they don’t even need to find me, they just…vanish. Like that,” he snapped his fingers for emphasis.

“So I died, then. Is it normal to stay here so long?”

“No. Most just move on. New life, new road, new settings. Their choice, of course. This is the game, after all.”

“Game?” she asked, her curiosity bubbling to the surface. He nodded agreeably.

“Game. We are all…how should I put this…we aren’t human. We are…entities? That’s pretty close. We are entities that play the game of being human. We made the world for our own enjoyment. Floating suspended in endless space can become quite boring, you know.” Seeing her utterly confused look, he smiled sheepishly. “Maybe I should start at the beginning…

When the universe began, the Big Bang, scientists today call it; it began just how they said. Right now, ‘we’, as in, the people we pretend to be on earth, haven’t made any advancement so large as to see our entity selves, but we could, that’s the point. Anything is possible. Absolutely limitless. We are beings of grey, light and dark melded into a seamless one, which floats in the dark area where there is no time, and no gravity. Thought roams wide and far within the universe, never bouncing off a star or planet or asteroid, continuously going on and on and on, without halt.

The entities of the universe, us, are just bubbles of thought and chemicals, magic and possibilities. Spirits. About 6 billion years ago…you have heard of the chaos theory?” at her nod, he continued,

“About 6 billion years ago, random thoughts from the spirits converged into one; connected, melded, and created. What they made was earth and its solar system; a life sustaining planet. Upon noticing this, several million spirits took interest, and began the plan. Earth, they named it. They watched in wonder, as a student might watch growth in a Petri dish, the way the earth evolved. When they realized that humans, the caveman, were perfect for their inhabitation, they began planning their game. We began our game. Before they go into play, as they call it, they make a type of…outline. They say they want a certain gender, certain tragedies and certain triumphs, certain siblings, parents, anything to make it interesting.

Entities who first start playing—and there are those, for ever earth year at least twenty thousand more start playing—normally make their character perfect. Good life, lots of money, perfect family; the stereotype. Then, as they progress and realize how entirely boring that can be, they choose different things.

Some are bums; some become the president of the United States. Some lead a terribly angsty life as a teenager, and later an adult, who had a horrible childhood, and some live a life where all they do is the oddities they enjoy. They choose to cause inexcusable crime, to be the ‘good guys’. Their only intent is to broaden their understanding, and to further their ideas and concepts of that ‘human nature’ is. Earth is, quite literally, a center of learning.

She waited for the reality to crash down, and suddenly, she felt that he told the truth. She was different, they had already established that. But what had happened to change her so that she didn’t remember all of this?

“But…” she started, collecting her thoughts. “But, what is this place…and why aren’t we…as humans…aware of what this is?”

He smiled knowingly.

“This is, as I’ve said, midway. We call it Seinaux, and entities in their human form stop here to collect, and plan, make ideas and rules for their new ‘character’. This is really just a place in the entities…for lack of a better word; mind, to stop and think, still in their old human form. And the rules set down long ago by the first entities state that, under no circumstances, are we allowed to know it’s all a game, because it would not be as ‘fun’, interesting, or enthralling if we did, and we would not learn the lessons we set out to. More rules apply, but that is the main one.”

“Oh…and why don’t I remember this? I mean, right away?”

“It might have been your original intent, to be different, to last as a human longer than you were supposed to. Or, you could be new to the game, or, and this is the more likely one: or you could still be human, only you might be in a very deep coma, or perhaps a deep, deep trance. Maybe you took one too many pills, and you’re now lying on your bright bathroom floor with the bottle next to you, but you aren’t quite dead yet. There are endless reasons, but those are the ones I find most possible.” She nodded absently, thinking.

“So…if…if and when I wake up, will I remember this?” she asked finally.

“I don’t know, it’s hard to say. Mostly, it depends on if your entity self wants you to remember it. One more thing; just so we spirits don’t look like a bunch of alien invaders, the human, caveman race would have died out without our...souls, and they would not have come back. Thus, we did not interfere with the natural course too much, and we did not take over.”

She nodded again and he stood, pulling her with him.

“Well then. I expect you’ll be moving on here soon, either as a new person, or you’ll be waking up from your pill-induced coma,” was he teasing her? She wondered, frowning.

“But…why are you here? Like, permanently?” He smiled a sort of bitter smile, and she felt like the answer would sadden her before she even knew what it was.

“Because, this is the place that fits me best,” he answered, and the bile taste in her mouth intensified with the confirmation. His smile returned, and he now seemed to be grinning.

“Well, nice meeting you, whoever you are,” he said, his tone lighter than earlier, and before she could say, “My name’s Seria,” he was gone. She huffed and walked around for a while, until suddenly, that subtle shift happened again, and she was gone.

Lonely once more, the trees drooped down and began to anticipate the next arrival.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

When Seria had finished her tale, she sat back, as if relived of a great burden. Her eyes fluttered closed and she was soon asleep. The woman, whose name was Yejia, sat tensely still, bristling with nervous energy, as if anything in that moment were possible for her. Perhaps it was.

When she had finally calmed herself, she looked at her charge in surprise, finding her asleep. Gently, she roused the girl, who looked up at her confusion.

“Yes?” she asked politely. She knew where she was. She knew what had happened with her father, and the crazy things she had said to make the doctor think she needed a mental heath facility, but she felt, even still, that there was a hole in her memory, something she was missing.

“Seria,” the woman said, breathless. Her ecstatic eyes searched the features of her confused opposite, and she took a breath, a horrible suspicion in the bottom of her clenching stomach.

“Yes?” the girl said again.

“Do you…do you remember what you just told me? Do you remember what happened when you were in the coma?” The girl’s confusion deepened and the suspicion turned into hard fact, weighing like a stone in Yejia’s gut.

“No ma’am. All I remember is that we were having a lovely chat about my getting out of here, and then I fell asleep.” Deciding that maybe her psychologist was mad, she sat up hurriedly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep, it will never happen again, I promise.” The woman sat back, nodding.

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it. But…you truly do not remember telling me about Seinaux? Anything at all?”

At the odd, exotic name, the fringe of Seria’s mind felt a brush of a whisper, like the ghosts of memories that had long been forgotten. She frowned, troubled. She knew that the name was important; vital. But she knew nothing beyond that. Slowly, she shook her head, still greatly troubled with the odd feeling of having lost something.

“No ma’am, I don’t,” she said, even slower than she had shaken her head. Yejia sighed, flipping her short black hair out of her eyes.

“Well, I suppose it’s for the best. Please don’t mention this to anyone. I’m truly sorry that you don’t remember, but perhaps that’s how it was supposed to happen. Or when one tells the memory to another, they lose the memory and the other gains it. Who knows?” deep in thought, she didn’t realize Seria was smiling at her.

“Excuse me, Miss, but you sound a lot more crazy than I am. Is that what psychology does to you?” Yejia looked up, and smiled.

“Yes, I believe it is. Now, Seria, go back to your dorm. Your departure date is the day right after your birthday, so you’ll have to hurry and pack. The center will give you funds until you get a job, but you’d better get one quickly; the people down at the financial office don’t tend to be too patient.”

“Yes ma’am!” the girl said, standing and smiling. She rushed off to do as she was bid, leaving a very pensive woman in her wake. Yejia lay down on the patients couch and closed the door, mulling over all she had learned tonight, wondering at the future, and at her own past.

When the dim rays of the morning sun peaked under the heavy curtain over the window, Yejia was no longer laying down, but sitting, as alert as she had been when Seria had been about to reveal the big secret. With something akin to a smirk, she stood and left for the day, fully intending to enjoy the game to the best of her abilities.