The Blind Diviner

Cosima sat in the back of the car with her arms crossed, glaring at the back of Bree’s head with prejudice. She didn’t bother saying an adding word to Reed and hers conversation, wanting the time to try to think. It was hard to concentrate when Reed kept repeatedly thinking inappropriate thoughts about Bree, although they were only a flick of a second. Cosima sighed lightly, it wasn’t out of the ordinary to come across someone thinking about sexual or deviant things unfortunately.

Cosima’s eyes glance up between Bree and Reed when she heard a light laugh. She knew the laugh, the one that was fake and flirty. What angle was this woman coming from? Who is she? Normally Cosima would be able to see someone’s aura fluctuate with their feeling but Bree didn’t have one that she could see unlike Reed, whose aura was red.

A grimace grew onto Cosima face when Bree let the same laugh ring through the car. Now it wasn’t impossible that she was interested in Reed, he’s not a bad looking guy by any means until you get to know him. But his personality is what could make him sour.

“You’re so lucky it just stays like that!” Bree praised, crossing her legs over one another enticingly. “Mine has no hold to it.”

“Oh, but you don’t want the woes to curly hair.” Reed smiled, gazing over to Bree.

“Do you mind though?” Bree reached out, catching Cosima out of the corner of her eye.

Her long fingers ran through Reed’s thick curled hair before gripping it roughly and slamming his head down against the steering wheel. His head rolled unconsciously to the side as the car swerved into the middle of the road. Cosima was panicking, wondering why Bree wasn’t grabbing the wheel or even making a move to attack her.

“Shit!” Cosima shrieked as the car clipped the end of the small bridge they had been approaching, flipping over the railing and barreling down towards the water below.

Cosima braced for impact as the car crashed into the surface of the water. Cosima could feel her neck whip back and forth, knocking her head against the window beside her. She became dizzy for a moment, trying to gather her head together as the car quickly filled with water. She unbuckled her seatbelt as she watched with stunned eyes as Bree just sat silently and eerily calm.

“What they hell are you doing?!” Cosima yelled, moving to unlock the door but it was jammed.

The water swirled around their chests, Reed’s limp body floating upwards against the restraint of his seatbelt. Cosima wasn’t going to pay mind to Bree, the now decidedly psychotic bitch, who seemed to be waiting to drown. Cosima unbuckled Reed from his seat, taking a deep breath of air as the water rose up around her head. She banged against the windows, trying to kick them out and unlock them. Nothing would work as her poor lung capacity was already running out.

’All in time, Cosima. Relax.’

Bree’s voice was crystal clear in Cosima’s mind. Her hands were gripped onto Reed’s jacket, staring straight into Bree’s head as everything around her was suddenly rushing madly in a laminating blur of toned whites. It felt as if she was free falling, Cosima’s back bumping against the top of the car until it all came to an abrupt standstill. The car plummeting hard onto something hard like it had been picked up and dropped.

Cosima was flung forward like a ragdoll into the windshield. Her wounds, old and new, were singing painfully as the white tones dulled and it darkened almost peacefully around her. It was too late for Cosima to realized that she was in fact passing out from the impact.

Neither her or Reed could see Bree step out of the car unscathed and into the new reality they were in. Perhaps it was best they were inoculated at the time, having to perceive that their world was no longer around them could have proven to much for them to take in.

Cosima woke almost an hour later, momentarily forgetting the event that had occurred. It wasn’t until numbness had filled her arms and the left temporal side of her head that her eyes shot open. The room was mostly white and it almost seemed like she was in the sun with the lighting of the room. A finger dragging across her forearm alarmed her, making her jerk away.

She became eye to eye with a stranger, a man. His features were handsome, much more than Reed’s in her opinion. And like Bree, there was some celestial about him that she couldn’t put her finger on besides the intimidating beauty they had. His eyes were this odd mix of seafoam and lilac, a color that would only come in contacts. Cosima only saw that they were natural but continued to trust him as much as she had Bree.

“Who are you and where am I?” Cosima demanded, cradling her arm away from his reach.

“We didn’t expect you to wake up so quickly,” the stranger commented, wiping his hand clean of whatever he was applying to Cosima’s arm.

“You didn’t answer my question.” Cosima challenged, trying to remain calm.

“I’ll tell Bree you’re awake.” He moved swiftly out of the room, again, ignoring her questions.

Cosima sat up in the bed, ripping the suctioned down wires from her head and chest. She untapped the IV from her arm and smoothly pulled it from her vein. Her head was pounding as she stood up, the disposable gown hanging off her body loosely. All Cosima knew is that so far nothing good comes from waking up in a hospital from her experience and that she had to find Reed.

She pulled the door to her room open slowly, peeking out to see no one in sight. She slipped out, staying close to the wall as she then broke off in a run down the hallway. Sliding around the corner, Cosima saw an emergency exit door of the hall. She scampered down, feeling mentally strained with the invisible changes she felt around her. An alarm sounded as soon as she pushed through the door, running into a hard glass wall.

Cosima felt herself turn white with fear as she looked and saw she was hundreds of feet up in the air. A red lever with the bold words ‘PULL TO EJECT’ reading right in her face. Two packs that looked like parachutes were hung up next to her. She fearfully backed out of the glass box but almost ran back in when she felt several presences raining down on her. She was suddenly attacked with the same bright light that she was when she had tried to read Bree but this time it blasted her like a train.

She collapsed to the ground, gripping her head in pain. The light ceased and heard a pair of heels clacking over to her. Someone put a soothing hand on her back and Cosima saw that it was Bree, looking guiltily down at her. Then she looked forward, seeing six armed men with weapons pointed at her.

“Oh for godsake, put your weapons down! She’s been traumatized enough,” Bree barked to them.

“Let go of me!” Cosima hollered, fighting against the jackhammer in her head and getting up to pit herself against the wall.

Bree eased her way towards Cosima, “you’re in no danger.”

“I beg to differ.” Cosima huffed, wildly looking around at the strange faces.

‘Have some faith.’

Cosima shook her head away from Bree’s voice in her head but she just kept talking and assuring.

‘You’re in pain and I can help.’

“Stop that!” Cosima snapped, not understanding how she was in her head.

“Cosima, please,” Bree urged. “Can’t you see that we’re the same?”

“Is this another experiment?” Cosima panicked, remembering her childhood.

“I promise you this is not an experiment,” Bree spoke with sympathy, knowing Cosima’s painful past as a child.

“They would all say that and lie.” Cosima gritted her teeth, “just please at least put me out before you start.”

Bree stopped in front of Cosima, whose hands were balled into tight fists that hugged her trembling frame. Cosima flinched when Bree laid her hand down on her shoulder, a habit that Cosima thought she had shook off years ago. She felt warm and she opened her eyes, seeing Bree’s aura for the first time.

“You can see that my aura is pure,” Bree started, letting her energy flow into Cosima, “you can feel that we are the same.”

“H-how?” Cosima’s voice shook, seeing the warm yellow and green colors glowing around Bree’s body.

“If you allow me to help you, I can explain everything. Things weren’t suppose to go like this, I apologize.” Cosima nodded, knowing that if her and Bree were the same that she wouldn’t have been able to see what would happen if herself was involved.

Cosima allowed Bree to escort her back to her room, waving off the trailing men who had been so threatening earlier. Bree stuck the wires back onto Cosima properly before injecting the IV back into her arm.

“Where are we? Things feel different and foreign.” Cosima remembered how around her was a sharp and rocky cliff that held an endless ocean stretching out in front of it.

“I know how it feels. I was in your position when I had approached you. Your body isn’t lying to you, it’s right. This place is very foreign to you.” Bree sat down in the chair next to her bed.

“Why are you so different? Why can you be in my head but I can’t be in yours?” Cosima was overflowing with questions and anxiety.

“Like I had said, all in time.” Bree’s words reminded Cosima of what she had done to Reed.

“And Reed,” Cosima turned accusatory. “You hurt him, where is he?”
“It wasn’t meant as violent as it seemed. He would have made the situation escalate if the car reached the water with him still conscious. I just needed you, he was in the wrong place in the wrong time. He really isn’t meant to be here.”

“Again,” Cosima sighed irritated, “where is here?”

“I know you must have noticed things, seen things. I can hope that can be a convincing factor when I tell you that we’re still on Earth but not your Earth.” Cosima looked at Bree like she had lost her marbles, feeling played again.

“Read me,” Bree offered up and Cosima could feel nothing but the truth, “know that I am not lying.”

Cosima sat in silence and contemplated what Bree had told her. She was on Earth but not on her Earth. As far as Cosima was concerned, or anyone else for that matter, her Earth was the only Earth. But she couldn’t deny that something had happened and that things weren’t normal lately. The hallucination and nightmares, the scratch that appeared on her arm. Maybe this isn’t suppose to be as crazy as it seems.

“Then what Earth are we on?” Cosima asked hesitantly.

“An Earth that’s distance from yours is kind of difficult to explain.” Bree seemed to settle into the chair more, folding her hands onto her lap.

“I’m sure you have heard of parallel universes? Where an outcome that doesn’t happen could happen in another universe. That’s what this is. You see, when the car went into the water and you saw all those lights, felt like you were suspended in the air, you were going through what we call the fall. It can only happen if it is through of us,” Bree gestured between her and Cosima.

“Can you prove any of this?” Cosima asked, not sure how to respond.

“Unfortunately, I can’t. It’s very difficult to enact a fall. It takes days to submit enough energy in oneself to-,”

“No,” Cosima interrupted, “I mean that I’m actually not on my Earth?”

“Oh, of course.” Bree hopped to her feet and kicked her heels off.

Cosima looked down and saw that Bree had terribly webbed feet. She made a face and looked back up to Bree. “Having an unfortunate genetic defect isn’t very convincing.”

“No, just wait.” Bree encouraged, taking the cup of water from the bedside table.

She poured some of it on her feet and Cosima watched with a disbelief as Bree’s skin seemed to crawl and thicken in reaction.

“The fuck? Who are you? Goddamn Ariel?” Cosima leaned as far off her bed as she could to see. “Did you give me some sort of painkillers or something?”

“Who’s Ariel?” Bree questioned under her breath before dipping her fingers into what was left of the water and ran them over her neck. Her skin shimmered a golden hue as it recoiled what looked like gills forming under her flesh. Cosima watching in disbelief, feeling as if she was going to be sick.

“Unlike your Earth, mine is made up of 98% water and there aren’t any particularly large continents. It’s evolution I suppose. I mean, honestly your feet without webbing creep me out as much as mine probably do to you.” Bree explained, slipping her flats back on.

“But-no,” Cosima backtracked. “No, this is all just a big dream. We got in an accident and I’m just under some very heavy drugs or lost a lot of oxygen to my brain and am in a coma.”

“That would be easier, wouldn’t it?” Bree sighed heavily, seeing that I just couldn’t have a grasp on what was in front of me.

Cosima nodded, “sure would.”

“Here,” Bree grabbed Cosima hand tightly, “read me.”

She snorted, “uh, no thanks. Been there, done that. I already have enough of a headache.”

“No,” Bree shook her head, frustrated. “Just do it, will you?”

Cosima apprehensively began to read Bree’s mind. She was suddenly enveloped into a world much beyond her own and what looked like the one in front of her too. She saw things that were just impossible beyond what the imagination could cook up. And then she saw her, it. She felt like a wildfire in Cosima’s mind but she couldn’t get out of the hold that was taken over her. A wicked smile graced itself upon her face, a face that was identical looking to her own. A hand clung onto her wrist without any warning, the sharp talons digging themselves into her skin before she jumped from the entrancement.

She looked down, seeing the marks from the she devil. The blood vessel’s under Cosima’s skin were burst purple and red, her skin revolted by the contact. Cosima felt as if she had to be insane. This was all just too much. A different world? Bree’s a mermaid thing? And now this grotesque version of herself is harming her. What next?

“I was hoping that wouldn’t happen but she knows you’re here,” Bree whispered, looking around slightly.

“What in everloving hell is that? That thing, it looks like me except dark and abominable.” Cosima rubbed her hand over the marks, “she keeps haunting me.”

Bree grew very sober, looking to Cosima with icy eyes. “This right here? None of this is important, I didn’t just pick you up and drop you here for no reason. That thing Cosima, as hard as it is to believe, is you.”