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**Roxy Cotton** · (07-10-2021)

Roxy’s head was just a loud buzzing, like a swarm of bees rattling inside of her skull. She could feel cold, soft earth at her back, and her hands were gripping dewy vines of ivy and fallen twigs.

Before opening her eyes she lay there, trying to keep the world from continuing to spin.

What happened?

Where was she?

She found it hard to piece anything together, to remember the details. It was like she’d woken up from some sort of dream… she could remember faces but nothing concrete. Vinnie, Angie, Centurion, Maxine… but why? Why had she been dreaming of them?

Roxy could hear tree branches shaking in a breeze, though she couldn’t feel the air moving on her skin at all. Other than the persistent rattling of the canopy of vegetation, all she heard was her own breath moving in and out of her body, her own heart beating in her ears like a drum.

Murky light spilled in between her eyelids as her lashes fluttered, grey and filled with specks like dirty water going down a drain.

She sat up, her palms pressing against grains of soil as she felt leaves falling from her body. Upon opening her eyes more fully she winced and tightly closed them once more, the stabbing of the bright sun overhead driving daggers into her skull.

Another few breaths. Another few heartbeats. She opened her eyes again, more prepared for the harsh white light. But she found, now, that she was sitting in the light of dusk. The violent sun that had moments before felt as though it was slicing her brain in two was now sleepily descending behind the faroff horizon, casting a wave of orange hues across the sky.

“How…”

She could see that she was in a forest. A dense one. Trees walled her in on every side. The spaces between the trunks were emblazoned in sunlight which gave a prismatic effect all around her as the searing white gave way to warmer reds.

“I don’t understand… Angie? Angie are you here?”

Roxy called out but her voice sounded oddly flat. She realized there were no echoes, her vocalizations didn’t seem to register the way that the other ambient sounds did. It was as if she were in a soundproof room, but she clearly wasn’t. All around her were open spaces, although the trees broke up the endless sky as if she were staring out a window through bars.

“Hello? Anyone? Can anybody hear me?”

Roxt stood up, brushing away the moist soil from her legs and dress. She plucked a twig from her hair and tossed it aside while turning in a slow circle, trying to find a way to go.

“Hello? I don’t know where I am!”

Roxy noticed something else then as well. The sun was always in front of her, no matter which way she turned. Even as it took its bow below the rim of some faraway sea, it stayed directly ahead of her.

She spun around to test it, and sure enough there it was. A glowing orb of amber, fattening and sinking like a candle melting onto a table. And the shadows… where were the shadows? She couldn’t find a single one…

“Okay… this is obviously some sort of fucked up joke. HELLO!? Ha ha! Very funny! Whose stupid holodeck am I locked inside of? This is worse than an IMAX!”

Roxy stumbles around, trampling on the underbrush in her high stiletto heels which sink into the soft ground, making it difficult for her to get around. After nearly tripping over for a third time, she gives an exasperated groan and pulls her feet free from her shoes and stands barefoot on the chilly dirt.

“These heels cost more than your car!”

But no one replies. Roxy plucks her heels from out of the ground and carries them by dangling them from the first two fingers of her right hand. She then looks into the trees for a clue of what to do next.

“Okay, so what’s the game? What do you want me to do? Is this some BS life lesson where I’m supposed to learn something new about myself after chatting with some wise coyote that somehow speaks English or something? I don’t have time for this! I’m trying to bond with Ang to help her deal with losing her sister!”

And then the stars come out. A few at first, just dots punched through the darkening tapestry of sky as the sun drops lower and lower. Then, more spring into view. Patterns of tiny white pinpoints as if someone spilled sugar on a blue dinner plate.

“Wow… they really do look just like little fish.”

As Roxy stares skyward she can almost see the stars swimming around in the blue ocean of evening sky above the trees. They move in little patterns, rolling in concentric circles.

“This is what Van Gogh saw…”

She takes a step and the world lurches forward. The forest stretches and races past in her periphery and she finds herself several hundred yards from where she started. Turning her head she sees the spot she was standing in, one step prior, nearly vanishing into the treeline behind her.

“Hmmm… I wish Lucy could get to something interesting in one of her promos as fast as I got from there to here…”

She smirks and takes another step. A second dizzying blur speeds past her, tree trunks whirring by and blending into one another like a watercolor in the rain.

As the sky darkens and more of the little stars emerge from the depths to swim in the endless waters, Roxy watches them and tries to find some direction. With every step seemingly taking her a quarter mile, the trees continue to zoom past her on every side… but each landscape looks identical to the one before and after it. The patterns in the stars stay in place, unfazed by how quickly everything else continues to move.

Once the last beams of the dying sun fade away from the horizon ahead of her, the deep blue of the sky blackens like rot. It is only then that Roxy is able to see the faintest of columns of light coming down from the sky to somewhere deep in the trees to her left.

“Aha! Follow the beam, just like Rogan Maclean… now if only I had a man in black fleeing across the desert…”

She turns to her left and walks forward, the first zipping by with each mile-long step. After a few paces she stops and looks for the light in the sky again, finding it a bit closer but not much. The candlepower has increased, though, as it looks less like a moonbeam and more like a laser pointer at this point.

Roxy glances at the little opening she stands in and the trees around her, noting that every step she takes leads her to an identical set of surroundings. No moss on the trees, either, just like the lack of shadows. She remembered learning as a young girl that the moss would always grow on the North side of trees, but these ones? Bare. Nothing in the sky or on the ground or anywhere in between gave any indication of a direction - just the spotlight shining down from the heavens.

“Whoever put this together? Good fucking job.”

She moved again, her purple painted toes flexing into the soil each time she landed on the balls of her feet. No longer just taking tentative steps forward, Roxy was now moving at a fast clip with strides as long as her tight minidress would allow.

After running at a brisk pace for the better part of a minute, she stopped to catch her breath… the thing was, she noticed, she wasn’t tired at all. She felt as if she were still lying on the ground, waking up. Her heart rate hadn’t even elevated.

Looking up to the sky she found the beacon once again. The pillar of nearly fluorescent white light was closer still, she could tell by its growing width. She could also see its incandescence rolling inside of itself, like plasma. She noted specifically that she’d been wrong to begin with - the light was never shining down from above, but moving up from the ground.

“What am I running towards here? What can make something so strong and so bright that goes so high up into the night? How did Angie set this whole thing up, anyway? She can’t even make convincing Halloween costumes for her cats…”

She blew a strand of hair from her face and looked down at her feet. Though she could see the wet dirt oozing up around her toes as she felt the cold chill through her soles, when she lifted each one from the stickiness of the soil she was surprised to see no print left behind. It was as if she’d never stepped there to begin with.

Roxy only gave herself a moment to stare in wonder before she once again took off running toward the shimmering tower of light.

As she ran, Roxy contemplated her surroundings. No matter the speed, no matter the distance, everything remained the same. The more Roxy ran, she was running to stand still. Even with the sun seeming to spin around the sky at breakneck speeds, everything was just the same as the first moment she awoke.

“It’s like a maze or a hall of mirrors…”

Roxy thought as the trees sped by in a blur.

“... at every turn, every step, it all just reflects back on itself. The trees might as well be the same trees every time I stop. Am I running toward the light or is it coming toward me?”

She stops. The light is right next to her now. A reverse cascade of light so impossibly bright that it looks more like a tear in a photograph of a forest. Roxy can hear it, humming behind the trees. She can feel it, lifting the flesh on her arms and legs into dimples. She takes a deep breath, pulling the light toward her on a gust of inhalation, and then she steps toward it one more time.

“Took you long enough, Racquel. Ugh, look at those shoes, absolutely ruined… what are those, Blahniks?”

“Mother? What? Why are you here? Where is here, even?”

“I have no idea. All I know is I’ve been standing here for ages, watching the sun crawl across the sky… my watch told me two days had gone by but the sun had only gotten halfway past! This place is a nightmare. I’m sure it’s wreaking havoc on my circadian rhythms… and you KNOW how important my sleep schedule is to me, dear.”

“The only sleep schedule you ever had was passing out on the couch with a glass in your hand, hopefully an empty one if we were lucky…”

“Watch your mouth, Racquel. We didn’t choose to be here, you forced us. I should be at the pool right now…”

“We? Who’s we?”

“All of us. Me. Your sister. My sister…”

“Dani’s here? Where?”

“Well how would I know, darling, I’ve been standing here watching a week-long Wednesday unfold.”

“Well how am I supposed to find her? I want to see her before this whole magic trick evaporates around me…”

Roxy looks around through the treetops, scanning the starlit sky for clues. Finally, after what feels like forever, she spies another beam of light far off to her left again. It looks miles away, thin as spun silver.

“Oh! There! Dani must be over there in the light, like you!”

“Light? What are you talking about, dear? It’s darker than a coffin in here.”

It occurred to Roxy then that what she saw as her surroundings must not be what her mother was seeing. The stars, the trees, the beams… for all Roxy knew, Mandy might be standing in a windowless room.

“Good to see you, Mother, I’ll text… I need to go find Dani now.”

Roxy turned to run off in the direction of the slender glowing tendril of light in the distance, but she felt her mother’s hand close around her arm.

“Racquel… before you leave. This… this thing you fell into. Be careful. It feels different. It feels malignant.”

“Sure thing, Mandy, go burn some sage. Oh, I know, maybe set up an incense burner and play some pan flute music, like you always used to when a new ‘uncle’ would come visit you in your room for a few hours! Dani almost burned the whole place down once because she thought it smelled so good it must be candy, do you remember that?”

“I’m not the one who got her killed, Racquel.”

Roxy pulled her arm away roughly, shooting her mother a green eyed glare as cold as a jade dagger. She opened her mouth to retort but closed it again without a word, silently backing away with eyes filling like wells.

"How fucking dare you..."

“Racquel… just listen to me. This place is more than scenery. It’s a tumor. It’s malevolent. Whatever you tripped and fell into, it doesn’t want to spit you back out… it wants to digest you.”

Roxy turned away and began to take a step as her mother continued to beckon.

“Racquel! Roxy! You only get tonight!”

Roxy turned and ran toward the faraway light, leaving her mother to vanish behind the trees. She only got tonight? Really? Mother, you don’t even get tonight… you get nothing.

Turning her head over her shoulder briefly Roxy noticed that the beam was gone from where her mother had stood. Extinguished. Was she following a pattern? Was there an order this thing was forcing her to follow?

She stopped running when the sobs became unbearable, and she bent over, hands on her knees, to calm herself. Wiping tears from her eyes angrily, she flung them down into the cold dirt of the forest floor as if she were pushing people aside on a busy subway platform.

Roxy wasn’t willing to let her mother derail her with guilt over what had happened to Dani. Roxy didn’t kill her, some psychopath did. Sure, she’d followed Roxy out to Los Angeles and tried to be just like her… but whose fault was that really? The sister who welcomed her sibling with open arms or the mother who drove them both away?

Roxy’s life was already in enough turmoil, she didn’t need Mandy adding more. She’d lost Sarah, but grown even closer to Angie as a result. She’d possibly lost her soulmate because of Vinnie’s stupidity, but she’d regained a championship career.

And now, of all times? When she and Angie had JUST once again claimed the Cooperative Titles in UGWC? Last time was still fresh in her memory, even though it was years gone by. They’d won, they’d beaten the odds and shocked the world, but then what happened? They dropped them right back almost immediately. No one even remembered anymore. Now, once again, the titles were around Roxy and Angie’s waists… and the shadow of WrestleStock was looming large just over the horizon.

It didn’t go unnoticed to Roxy that the Battleground Cooperative victory had been Roxy’s first win on a major show since she’d won the Coalition World Championship from Angelica back at Grand Slam in 2019. Almost two years. She didn’t want to repeat history and have some impotent Cooperative run that lasted less than a month.

Rox wasn’t stupid. She could see the handwriting on the wall. Synergy was pitting herself and Angie, along with a potential World Championship contender in Centurion, against the champion Baal, whom she and Angie had just defeated for those same Cooperative Titles… Lucy Wylde and Rogan Maclean. The Killing Joke. The team next on the known list of Cooperative contenders. It didn’t take clairvoyance to see what the Coalition was planning. The Killing Joke were stepping into the batter’s box. Roxy and Angie were giving Lucy and Rogan a preview for WrestleStock. And, if Roxy wanted to keep her promise to herself and hold onto those titles for more than one match, she and Angie were going to have to win on Synergy to shake Lucy and Rogan up. If they failed, if they lost, then the challengers would show up at WrestleStock full of confidence and comfortable in the knowledge that they could win… Roxy needed to keep that from happening.

Roxy stopped running and looked at the sky. The thread of light had become a tether the width of two of Roxy’s fingers pressed together, but it didn’t seem as intense as the previous column of white. It was duller, somehow. Just slightly. But whereas the first column had seemed like a thermonuclear flash and was almost excruciating to look at directly when she was up close, this one gave her no fears of having her shadow burned into the trees behind her. Well, if there had even ever been shadows in the first place.

She notices the tiniest hint of grey along the line of the horizon. Like a layer of dead skin in between the land and the sky. It couldn’t be dawn already, could it? It had only been an hour, maybe less, since she’d watched the sun drop like a coin into the slot of the horizon. But, she remembered while lying in the dirt how quickly sundown seemed to happen. She’d chalked it up to being half asleep and delirious, but was it real? Was time as arbitrary here as light and shadow?

Then it hit her. What her mother was warning her about. Only tonight. Roxy remembered how she had only been able to see the beams of light once the sun had gone down, and now, seemingly, it was already on its way back to light up the sky and erase the beacons that gave Roxy her only sense of direction in this place.

Somehow, she knew deep inside of her that she needed to find Dani. She needed her sister. She was the key that unlocked the door back to the real world. If she didn’t… well, then nothing else might ever matter again. Not the UGWC, not Vinnie, not the Cooperative Championships or the Killing Joke… Roxy would be here, forever, running alongside the same trees for eternity. And everywhere else? She’d be her worst fear.

Forgotten.

Roxy dropped her shoes onto the ground, and they began to sink. Roxy gasped and gripped the hem of her skirt with both hands, stretching them apart until a tiny tear opened up. Then, when the fabric fully relented, the skirt ripped up to her waist with a sound like a gasp for air. Then she ran. She could feel chunks of earth flying out behind her and hitting the backs of her legs, kicked up in divots as she pounded her bare feet faster and faster. Roxy moved so quickly she could no longer even make out the trees as they spun by. The stars turned into dizzying trails like a little kid writing his name with a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

When she stopped, she first thought she’d gone too far. The light was no longer in front of her. But then she closed her eyes, and she heard the faint hum - the vibration she could sense in her teeth, in the bones of her inner ear.

She opened her eyes, and the light was there. She didn’t remember turning or taking another step, but somehow the column was right in front of her, just waiting for her to walk inside like she had before.

Roxy held her breath, and then she went inside.

“Racquel? Is that you kitten?”

“Aunt Callista?”

Roxy couldn’t disguise the disappointment that she felt when the woman inside the light wasn’t her sister, Dani.

It had been years since she and Callista - her mother’s bohemian vagabond of a sister - had laid eyes on one another, but now of all times?

“I know. You didn’t want it to be me. That’s all right.”

“No, Aunt Callista, that’s not it, it’s just…”

“You need Dani. I know. But listen, Racquel, we both know you’ve put too much on her all these years. You can’t keep leaning on Dani like a crutch…”

“Crutch!? What the fuck, Callista? My sister’s DEAD, I’m just GRIEVING her.”

“No, no, no… you’re RELYING on her, Racquel. Your sister died because the two of you couldn’t stand to stay who you were… and she could bear to be anyone that you weren’t. But that’s NOT your fault. Every time you get close to evolving, you cut yourself short because of this… this guilt that you feel over Dani. Like you don’t believe you deserve to be happy if she isn’t alive. But you DO, Racquel.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about…”

Roxy holds her shoulders in her hands, feeling a sudden shiver.

“Mother always reminded us that you were off in your own little world, acting like nothing mattered. Now you’re telling me my own sister doesn’t matter!”

“Oh she matters, Racquel… she matters a lot. But you wear her like an anchor around your neck every time you fly too close to the sun. Her memory drags you back down to Earth time and time again, no matter how hard you try to replace her with Angelica…”

“Now you watch your goddamn mouth, Callista!”

Roxy sneered as she turned back toward her aunt and stood inches from her, with a finger pointed up into her face.

“I love Angie like a sister, but I’d never think of replacing Dani. How could you say anything so cruel?”

“Because it’s true… the whole world knows it, Racquel. They saw how hesitant you were to go against Angie, and they knew why. They saw the way you destroyed yourself after you were forced to face her back in 2019. And they see now how she’s the only reason you’re able to put any heart or soul into this thing again. You dug a hole in yourself meant to bury your sister, but you never filled it in, honey. Now you’re filling it with someone else. But that hole’s always gonna be bottomless until you let Dani die.”

“Dani IS dead! I saw her body! I went to her funeral!”

“But you never blew out the candle you were holding for her all these years later. You never really let it be totally true. You accept it just enough to keep the pain running through you, but that’s all. Because you’re too afraid to open up your hand and let her go.”

“Shut the fuck up, Callista… it’s not Dani’s fault that my Coalition career spun off of its axis and flew away. I just needed time to heal. Time to focus. I was hurt…”

“Your ankle was never hurt that badly, sweetie.”

“Yes it was! Yes it was! I could barely walk! If I were to go into a ring with people like Baal or Rogan or Lucy back then, my leg would have fallen apart under me. They would have swooped in like vultures on that weakness and picked the skin right off my bones. But now? Now I’m healed. I’m ready. I can go against Lucy and Rogan and show them that they’re really just The Joke. I can go against the Coalition World Champion, again, and walk away with a win. Because I’m better. Because Angie is better. It’s got nothing to do with Dani, Aunt Callista, and everything to do with… with time.”

“Well honey, you don’t have a lot of time. You need to figure this out and figure it out now. Because if you don’t listen to what I’m trying to tell you and finally untie this noose that you keep putting around your neck, the doors are going to close and you’ll be gone forever. At least Dani gets to be dust… you won’t even be a memory.”

“You stop it right now! STOP IT! This is why Mother told me never to call you or try to find you! This is why! Because your family never meant a damn thing to you when you decided just to pick up and leave, go see the world without ever looking back! Where were you when we needed you? Where were you when I needed you? You didn’t even come to Dani’s funeral!”

“Your mother wouldn’t tell me when it was, Racquel. And every check I sent her came back unopened. She told me if I ever showed up she’d call the cops.”

“You’re lying…”

Roxy’s voice wavered.

“You know I’m not. Close your eyes and try to remember. You know the truth, it’s buried inside of you somewhere, even under all this plastic and makeup. Find my face in the crowds throughout your life… because it’s there, and it’s always been looking out for you.”

“But Mother…”

“Think about who she is, Racquel. About what she turned you into.”

“She made me strong.”

“She made you cold. But you’re more than just her. You’re Dani too. And because your sister gave you that, you’ve got to give her her freedom.”

“What do you even mean?”

“I mean that she doesn’t want to be this burden to you. She doesn’t want to keep dragging you down with the memory of her. She wants to be the reason you soar, not the reason you sink.”

Roxy fell silent as she looked out over her aunt’s shoulder. She could see a third pillar of light, but it seemed impossibly far. Less than a thread. And the light over the horizon was growing. She didn’t think she could ever make it.

“Racquel… go. Before the sun comes up. Go… and say goodbye to your sister, finally.”

Before Roxy could answer, Callista was gone. The envelope of light around her had vanished and there was once again nothing but the trees. When she looked up to the sky, the spider web of glowing light was there, but still hopelessly far off. Roxy wanted to just lie down. To stop running after Dani. To just give up and sink into the dirt like her shoes.

But something Aunt Callista said to her kept ringing in her ears:

“Dani wants to be the reason you soar, not the reason you sink.”

And her mother had warned her as well:

“Whatever you tripped and fell into, it doesn’t want to spit you back out… it wants to digest you.”

Roxy steeled herself and pointed her body in the direction of the light. Taking off, she never peels her eyes away from her destination. She watches as it widens and grows nearer and nearer. She sees, also, that the sky is brightening more and more with every step she takes, weakening the beacon.

By the time Roxy reaches the light, it is barely a different hue than the air around it. Roxy can see the fiery beginning of dawn in the background as she stops running and stands before the wispy curtain of iridescence, and she swallows hard before stepping in, afraid of what lies within.

“Hey! You made it!”

Roxy's sister stands in the middle of the beam, holding out her arms for a hug.

“Dani? Is… is it really you?”

“Of course! I missed you!”

Dani comes forward and hugs her sister, and Roxy nearly collapses to her knees as she holds on for dear life. Her face contorts into sobs and she buries it into the crook of Dani’s neck, smearing her with lip gloss and eyeshadow.

“I miss you Dani… I miss you so much… you have no idea…”

“I think I do.”

“No, you don’t, you couldn’t… I think about you every single day! I dream about you every night! Every time I close my eyes you’re right there waiting for me, and it makes me want to close them for longer and longer every time…”

“Roxy…”

“You don’t have to call me that if you don’t want to…”

“No. It’s who you are now. I don’t need you to stay who you were when we were kids to love and cherish you.”

“Dani I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry for what happened, I wish I could go back and switch places with you…”

“Don’t say that, Roxy. This is the way things happened, and they happened this way because they were meant to happen. We can’t change that. It’s not up to us. Life is for the living… and you have to keep living.”

“But it’s so hard!”

“It doesn’t have to be. You’re making it hard by dragging around my dead body everywhere you go. You have to stop. You have to let me be gone.”

“Dani… I don’t know… I don’t know how… I don’t want to…”

Dani pulls herself away a bit, so she can look Roxy in the eyes.

“Roxy… I will always be your sister. I will always love you. But I died. I’m not there anymore, but I can still see. And I can still feel the weight of your heart. It’s drowning under the pressure you put on yourself for what happened to me… and that HURTS me.”

“No, Dani, don’t say that…”

“It’s the truth, Roxy. All I want is to watch you succeed. To watch you be happy. I see you with your friend, Angie, and I see how close you are. I see how much you smile when you spend time with her and compete alongside her. But I also see the way you hold back… the way you keep just enough distance, because you don’t want to betray me. But you AREN’T betraying me, Roxy… you’re giving me exactly what I want. You’re giving me you, full of love and warmth and happiness.”

“It hurts so much, Dani…”

“I know it does, Roxy. I feel it too… when I wish I could be there, when I wish I could wrap my arms around you or just call you up to talk. But you have so much love around you, you don’t need it from me…”

“Dani!”

“You don’t! You have Angelica. You have Kenzi. You have Sarah. And you have Vinnie.”

“That liar… that fucking idiot liar…”

“Roxy… there are things you don’t know and that I can’t tell you. But please, promise me, you’ll take the lessons of this place and put them to good use. Remember the way to see. The way to move. The way to tell time. And remember what happens if you give up and stop trying.”

“The world will eat me up…”

“Without hesitation. Look between the frames, Roxy. Everything in life is caught on camera, but a lot of it is on the cutting room floor. You have to find the missing pieces. Do you understand?”

“I don’t… I think? Maybe? Dani I don’t know what to do…”

“Just remember what I told you. Remember every word I said. Remember that I love you. And please… Roxy… you only have a minute… remember to live.”

Roxy looked up into the sky and saw the big sun rising. The darkness of night was being stripped away like ribbons of paint. Time was up.

“Roxy… put your arms around me. Hold me tight. And let me go.”

Roxy sobbed, but she grabbed her sister and held her tightly against her chest. She cried loudly as hot tears streamed down her cheeks, and she could feel the same coming from Dani.

“I love you Dani.”

“I love you too, Roxy.”

Roxy’s breath caught in her throat, but somehow, she managed to smile. A feeling like a great weight lifting off of her filled her lungs with cool, refreshing air. It was as if a hot blanket had been drawn back, and she was bathed in some sort of baptismal lake.

“Goodbye.”

Roxy held Dani closer, and she felt her coming apart. Dani’s arms and torso thinned and turned dry and hard. As Roxy continued to sob and clutch her sister’s remains, she could see she was soon only holding a skeleton, which fell to pieces into a pile of bones at her feet.

She took a small step back, and the bones became dust. Soon, the last remnants of her sister Dani were carried off in a gust of wind.

Roxy wiped away her tears and stared into the sun, and then fell backward closing her eyes.

When Roxy awoke, she was sitting in her living room, surrounded by her friends, all of them waking up as if they’d taken a group nap.

While everyone regained consciousness, Roxy stood and walked to the mantel above her living room fireplace, where a candle burned - and she blew it out.

Threaded Mode \| Linear Mode What Dreams May Come - Roxy Cotton
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