Posting early.

Disclaimer: Characters and some of the plot belong to Stephanie Meyers. The rest belongs to me.

I'm right. The detective is very angry with me.

Fortunately, I'm still not at one with myself, so I'm prone to frustration, which inspires illegal driving maneuvers which set off traffic cameras, so I happen to know that there's a picture of me about to get on the highway several miles away from the Zen Institute, which corroborates my story about turning around when I realized that I'd forgotten my purse

The police are fairly confident about the time of the murder, thanks to some new-fangled pulse monitor the victim was wearing that tells the police exactly when his stopped. Fortunately, I was well away from the Institute at the time.

What's more, I don't recognize the victim. He never came to any of the meetings I attended.

Nevertheless, the detective makes an effort to impress upon me the fact that my presence at the Zen Institute might be interpreted as an unwelcome intrusion upon the investigation.

I, in return, suggest the possibility that my religious freedoms are being curtailed.

"You should start taking this seriously," the detective advises.

"I am." I ignore the fact that I'm batting away a bee as we have this conversation. We're standing in a garden, with crime scene investigators scurrying in and out of the building behind us.

"Don't you think it's strange that you happen to stumble across two bodies?"

Someone had to find them. Why not me? But that sounds flippant, so I don't say it.

He continues. "How many women are there at the Zen Institute?"

"How should I know?" I'm the only one I've seen so far.

"The killer chose your purse. You're being targeted."

"Which is it? Either I'm setting myself up as a target or I'm inserting myself into the investigation. I can't be doing both."

"You're doing both."

I know that he's right. I don't have any business coming out here every week. I don't really need enlightenment, at least not now. I already have enough going on in my life with work and school and my family.

I'm better off on my own anyhow. I shouldn't have started coming to the Zen Institute.

Scratch that. I shouldn't have gone to that happy hour four weeks ago. If I had just gone home straight after work, I wouldn't have found that dead body.

Unless everything really is connected. For all I know, my ordering a cider at the bar meant that the waitress was late getting someone else's drink, which made that someone decide to leave early, which meant that he got a taxi that was meant for some other someone who was trying to get home to her kid, which meant that the babysitter had to stay late, which meant that the babysitter missed her train, which meant that she wasn't there to stop her friend from walking down an alley to his death. Maybe it really is all my fault.

I tell the detective that I haven't got anything more to say. He isn't happy about it, but he lets me go home.

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That night, I dream of my Tulpa.

At least I think it's my Tulpa.

I'm outside, in the dark and alone, the lights of a house behind me and nothing but gloom ahead.

I feel something clutching at me, tugging me forward. So I stare into the darkness, trying to make out a form. But there isn't anything there. I reach towards the gloom, only to recoil when the tips of my fingers begin to disappear.

If I walked into it, I dream-think, I'd never come back.

I dream-think about doing it, about disappearing and never coming back.

But I'm too much of a coward for that.

I wake up just as I dream-decide to turn away from the darkness.

My first thought is that the dream is my Tulpa's way of telling me that he's angry that I've stopped trying to think him into existence.

But that assumes that he actually has some substance—that there is a something to be angry with me.

I'm sure that it's just my subconscious. I must be feeling guilty for killing my Tulpa, even though I didn't really kill him, I just stopped trying to make him real.

Or maybe I'm just losing my mind.

But I almost never remember my dreams, so the fact that I've remembered this dream seems significant.

Most of the dreams I do manage to remember are about being asleep—that's right, I dream about sleeping—I'm asleep and I can't wake up. I dream that I'm lying in my bed not moving. I'm straining every muscle in my body, but it's no good. My heart's racing and I'm fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting…

Sometimes I wake up from one of these dreams and I'm so goddamned grateful that I managed to break free. Only to realize that I'm actually still asleep.

One time, I woke up from one of these dreams and I was feeling so anxious—so shaken up by the dream—that I left my bedroom and went out into the living room, where I found my mother sitting on the couch. I sat down next to her to tell her about my dream. And as I sat there talking to her, I realized that I was still asleep in bed, unable to wake up.

One time, I dreamt that I was watching a bird in a cage. When I was growing up, the magpies living in the trailer park were always pushing baby birds out of their nests. We would take the birds in, and give them names like Om and Nirvana. I had to do most of the work, using tweezers to feed them worms, and the cages were always kept in my room, so that the birds would keep me up all night with their crying. And they'd always die, no matter what I did.

I remember dreaming that I was watching a bird in a cage, and this bird was crying, just like the baby birds would cry, all of the time. It was croaking and dying while I watched it. And then I thought That bird is me and all of a sudden I was inside of the cage looking out at the bars gasping for air.

Then there are the dreams that I think that I remember. I mean, the dreams that I seem to be dreaming over and over again. And I'm not talking about dreams that mimic my waking life. I'm not worried about the dreams where I go around repeating the things that I've done in real life. I'm worried about the dreams about places I've never really been: The one where I'm walking a dog around this park with manicured green lawns, or driving around a marshland, or wandering around this inland bay, each of the places familiar to me by now because I've seen them so many times in my dreams.

Like they're real.

My mother would say that I'm probably just dreaming about my past lives.

Needless to say that my mother knows more about my past lives than I do. For instance, she says that I died of mustard gas when I was a soldier. She says that dad was there too. He was stationed in my unit, and when the mustard gas exploded, he just left me to die.

I have no problem buying that my father would've left me—he's a coward—but I refuse to believe that I'd make the mistake of putting myself in his hands again. I resent the notion that we're destined to be reborn with the same people over and over again until we've settled whatever debts are owed. Besides, in what universe could my parents be karmically destined to be parents, let alone my parents?

My mother says she and I were sisters in a past life, but she's yet to give me any details about what we could have possibly done to each other to justify us being reborn as mother and daughter.

I bet that bitch fed me my bird.

But I say, Consider the score settled. Because once this life is through, I never want to see either of my parents again.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

I'm supposed to be doing data entry, but it's not very intellectually engaging, so I find myself thinking again about my dream from last night. The one about my Tulpa.

It's nonsense, I know.

And yet, I can't help thinking that it's a sign.

If I had a Tulpa, it would be completely devoted to me. It would be there for me whenever I needed it. It would be loyal, too, always taking my side.

"What're you doing?"

I jump in surprise at the voice. But it's just D—not a Tulpa—and she's grinning at me like she's in on some secret.

"Nothing," I say.

"Right," she laughs.

"Why?" I don't like the look on her face. "What does it look like I'm doing?" I start worrying that it's started going around the office that I'm sitting at my desk daydreaming when I should be working.

"You're thinking about a guy," she replies. "I can tell."

"A guy?"

"You know. A guy. You dating anyone?"

"No."

She laughs again, like she thinks I'm lying, but she gives it a rest with the questions.

I wait until she goes away to check myself in a mirror. My cheeks are indeed flushed. My eyes are dancing.

I look excited. Alive.

Is this what it looks like when a person is in love?

If so, then I'm sure it's more proof that there's something wrong with me. Because I was thinking about my Tulpa when she walked up.

My God, I'm a monster.

I remember that time J asked me to define love (he was asking, I later realized, because he was thinking about breaking up with his girlfriend). When I was done babbling about Plato's Symposium, he said "Love is sacrificing yourself for other people."

But everyone I sacrifice myself for, I hate.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

I go home and start unpacking the rest of my boxes. I've put it off long enough.

While I'm unpacking, I find something I wrote on a scrap of notepaper and tucked inside of a book:

December 15 – Was reading a book that I wanted to fall into, but I had to spend all day helping my brother with a project and then had a fight with my mother, so I didn't want to sleep, just sat in bed all night watching tv, mindless. Wanting to dull myself.

"Dull" myself? What the hell did that mean?

Called in sick the next morning and went back to reading that book—really too long after all—

The book that I found the note inside of? It was seventeenth century prose and, indeed, rather too long.

Then went sledding with my brother, walking to the college and going down the hill behind the retirement community. Spooked myself a little, going down into the reeds and thorn bushes, under which I discovered a sort of bog, buried in the snow. There were little channels going through the snow where the water was still running in the stream and where small things were probably hiding. The snow was dripping from the trees, splashing and plopping, so that I kept spinning around to see if anyone was there. But there was only my brother, playing in the snow.

I'm thinking about asking my parents if they'll let me take my brother for a while. "Give you guys a rest," I'll say. They might even agree.

But then they'll probably get drunk one night and call the cops to accuse me of kidnapping.

I can't stand being in my apartment any longer—fuck unpacking—so I drive to a coffee shop.

On the way inside, a man on the street shouts at me. "Was it you?" he yells.

I don't know what he means, but I nod, because I'm just trying to get rid of him.

So he falls into step beside me and mutters something.

"What?" I ask, pulling away.

And he repeats his accusation.

"It wasn't me," I declare, outraged, because how dare anyone accuse me of that?

He apologizes and goes, but I'm—

I'm left there on the sidewalk feeling traumatized.

It's the fact that I just nodded—that I just agreed with him that gets to me.

I go inside the coffee shop, trying to forget about what happened, but it's so crowded, so noisy. When I go to stand in line, I nearly cutoff a woman who was there before me. "It's the weather," she says. "So hot and humid. Everyone's out of sorts." She tells me that she has a headache, and she looks askance as a child behind us shrieks for a piece of candy.

She sits behind me after we got our drinks, but I will not look. I'm in the ebb and flow of everything, here at this table that I was lucky to get. I've pulled out my notes so that I could study—so that I could look like I was studying—arranging the notes just so, lest someone think me idle, like it's a crime to be sitting alone at a coffee shop with nothing to do, a neon sign that I want someone to talk to me.

I could turn around and talk to woman from the line, ask her if she likes her coffee, but I won't. I'll sit here alone, and I won't talk to anyone.

Because that's easier than trying to accommodate myself to someone else's idiosyncrasies. Easier than the heartache when they take your heart and stomp on it.

I should've just stayed in my apartment—but I didn't want to be alone. Or rather, I wanted to be alone surrounded by other people.

I manage to finish my drink before the noise becomes too much and I have to leave. I wish now that I had stayed at home.

But I don't even make it all of the way to the door of my apartment before I notice that something is wrong. The door's not closed all of the way, and I can hear noise inside.

When I nudge the door open and see what's inside, I want to scream.

This is it, I realize. I've really lost my fucking mind.

Because when Dana Andrews is sitting in my living room, reading my journals.

I wonder if I'm daydreaming, but why would I daydream about this?

It's real. Dreadfully, awfully real.

And this isn't Dana Andrews and I'm not Gene Tierney.

It's that detective. The who's been accusing me of butting into his case.

And it's my journals he's reading. Things that I never meant anyone but me to see.

"What're you doing?" I'm asking, the words coming out in gasps because my throat's closing up.

I think about snatching the journals out of his hands.

But that won't do anything about the fact that he's already read them.

"Your mother let me in," he says, like it's nothing. Like he isn't doing anything wrong

My mother?

My mother.

My mother my mother my mother my mother my mother my mother—

He glances over his shoulder. "She's passed out in the bedroom." And I can hear a tv blaring from there.

"You can't read those," I say, as if I can make him un-know what he already knows.

"They were in plain sight."

No! No! No! This is all wrong. "I'm not a suspect," I remind him.

"You can't have it both ways," he says, mimicking my words from the last time we saw each other. "Either you're involved or you aren't."

"I'm not involved."

"You found both bodies."

"It's a coincidence," I say. Never mind that coincidence—synchronicity—is the beginning of religion, or so Jung argued, the occurrence of what looks like patterns suggesting as they do the existence of an underlying order, God's plan.

"And I'm supposed to believe that you just up and decided to join this cult?" the cop quips.

"It's not a cult and I have every right to join."

"Why?"

"Why?" I'm confused.

"Why are you suddenly hanging out there?"

Because I want to find enlightenment. But I feel stupid saying that. Even stupider admitting that it's only because I want revenge on an old friend.

I don't say anything, hoping he'll let it go.

But he isn't done with me. A mocking tone laces his words as he continues. "I can understand why you'd be interested in the case." He holds up one of the journals. "You're a lonely, bored woman."

I can feel all of the energy draining out of me.

And he just keeps going. "You think it's romantic. But it isn't. It's dangerous. You need to grow up and get a life."

He warns me to stay out of the investigation. Warns me again, I mean.

I promise not to go back to the Zen Institute. And he leaves.

My mother eventually wakes up. I her drive to an ATM, give her all of the money that it'll let me take out at one time, and take her home.

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The next day, I meet with my advisor. He spends the first ten minutes of our meeting answering his personal email, and the next fifteen talking about his sailboat. When he finally condescends to glance at the latest updates to my reading list, he sighs.

He can't make any recommendations about books I should be reading, or so it seems, because he doesn't have any comments and I'm too nervous to ask.

He tells me to keep "plugging away at it."

I go back to work and find out that they want me to train the new research assistant.

She's thin and pretty and at lunch she told everyone in the break room that she originally trained as a dancer. She even auditioned for a ballet company in New York.

I give her a list of instructions to read (Standard Operating Procedures, they're called, all official-like, as if we work for NASA) and then sit at my desk, wondering when IT will get around to flagging me for reading fanfiction on the job.

Comps are in a week, so if I'm not going to do any work, then I know that I should study, but I can't bring myself to pull out my notes.

I check on the new girl and see a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead in her bag.

V made me and J read Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and we drove out to see Falling Waters, because the architect and Rand apparently had hard-ons for each other. It was an awfully tiny house.

I decide to dislike the new girl on principle.

So maybe it's retribution for my irrational dislike of someone who's practically a stranger when my car won't start up when I'm at the grocery store that night.

It doesn't make any sense, I know—the notion that my feelings towards a person might have any effect on the mechanical workings of a car—but who said that the world has to make sense?

So I decide to be nice to the new girl at work the next day, even though I have to take the bus to work from the repair shop, and taking the bus always puts me in a bad mood.

I'm sitting on the bus, staring out of the window at the sun, when the light begins to flicker strangely against the glass.

I sit up, trying to figure out what I'm looking at.

The sun's flickering again, the shiny metallic disc glinting in the sky, bits of it blinking on and off. And then all of it goes off, only to flash back on a second later.

I would think it was just the trees, that the light's just flickering through the trees—smaller bits of sunlight, blinking on and off, have the outlines of foliage and branches—but I can see the trees through the glass, and the sun's well above the tree line.

It takes a full minute for me to realize I'm looking at a reflection. The sun's actually on the other side of the bus, shining through the window on the other side, and it's the reflection of that that I'm looking at.

But it seems so real.

And upon comparing the actual sun, glowing through the glass, and its reflection, I find that I like the reflection far better.

I wonder what's wrong with me that I would prefer an imitation to the real thing.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

I know that I shouldn't do it.

I know that it's in my best interests that I stop daydreaming altogether. And I try. I really do.

I fail.

I picture my Tulpa as a young man. He can see him living in an apartment and going to school, like me.

That's as far as I go, and even that much seems dangerous. Like I'm unleashing something wild and unpredictable on the world.

But if I've already gone this far, then what's stopping me from going even farther?

That Saturday, I pick up my car at the repair shop and drive out to the Zen Institute, even though I promised the detective that I wouldn't go back.

I can't help remembering that scene in Laura when Gene Tierney breaks her promise to Dana Andrews. "I have never and never will be bound by a vow that I don't make of my own free will," she says. Or something like that.

And I don't think that I acting of my own free will when I promised the detective not to return to the Zen Institute. I was under duress. He might not have threatened me—not in so many words—but police are the jackboot of The Man. Specters of violence and oppression. Everyone knows that.

Even if I weren't annoyed with the detective for extracting that promise from me, I don't feel entirely like myself.

I'm tired. Like I'm walking around in a daze and someone else is calling the shots.

When I pull up to the Zen Institute, I find Should-do standing by the entrance.

"The meeting's cancelled," he says.

"Cancelled?"

"You heard about the murder?" he asks.

I nod, surprised that he doesn't know that I was the one who found the body in the meditation room. I would've thought that bit of gossip would have travelled alongside news of the murder.

"We shouldn't be alone at a time like this," Should-do declares. "We need to pull together. Everything's connected."

"I'm sure the police will catch the killer soon," I say, not because I have confidence in the police but because I feel like Should-do is freaking out.

"You think so?"

"Sure."

He runs a hand over his face. "Do you think that we should chant for him?"

I'm confused. "Chant for the victims?"

"For the murderer."

Now I'm really confused. "You want to chant for the police so that they catch him?"

"No. For him. For his soul. When he's captured, maybe we can petition the police for his release."

"You don't want him to go to jail?"

"He needs compassion."

Should-do is either kinder or crueler than I could ever hope to be.

He invites me back to his place so that we can meditate. He says that he has this special room set aside where we'll be comfortable.

But this is well outside my comfort-zone. I don't want to know him that well, even if we are connected.

Not that I want to go home either. There's nothing for me to do there but study, and I'm so anxious over Comps—

Fortunately, my cell phone rings just then. It's my brother.

I give Should-do my regrets and tell my brother that I'll pick him up in a few minutes.

The Zen Institute is only a few miles from the trailer park, and for once I do the speed limit. By now, I know that at least one speed camera is sitting there. I know that a ticket is probably coming my way.

But if not for the speed camera—if not for my penchant for breaking traffic laws—then I'd be on the hook for murder. You never know when you'll need a picture of yourself as an alibi.

So I press on the gas and feel the car surge forward.

I sometimes get the temptation to just drive and drive and drive.

If I didn't have to pick up my brother right now, I'd do it, too. I'd go. I'd drive off and never come back. Disappear. Wind up in a diner somewhere where everything's still in Technicolor. I'd get a job as a waitress working behind the counter. I'd keep wearing my glasses, and I'd pour sodas for little boys. I'd be the extra in that film where Lana Turner's trying to figure out how to keep the postman from coming back.

It occurs to me that my brother wouldn't mind taking off with me. He'd welcome the change. I could pick him up and the two of us could run away together.

What's the point, really, of sticking around? Of making promises to cops that I won't keep? Of trying to act like a grown up?

People think the worst of me no matter what I do. They take one look at me and decide that I'm angry, a murderer, a liar, a child.

So why not just do whatever I want, whenever I want?

After all, if the world doesn't exist, then there's no such thing as "doing the wrong thing," is there?

Supposedly, there was an argument in Gnostic circles about what people are supposed to do about the fact that the world isn't real. On one side, you had the Gnostics who thought that the way to salvation lay not in shunning the world, but in embracing it, because why not? If the path to enlightenment lays in contradiction, then it makes sense that people would think that it might be worth embracing the illusion, the very thing they were trying to escape. They were the most devout sinners, committing every kind of crime, reasoning that degradation and corruption had a salvific merit. On the other side of the debate sat the ascetics. Believing that salvation lay in denying the illusion, they tried to cut all of the links binding them to the lie.

Sometimes I wonder if the criminals were the ones who got it right. I wonder if they ended up getting their enlightenment in the end, except that no one could tell, because from the outside they looked crazy.

If that's what it takes, I'll never be enlightened. I'm no killer. And I don't want to be crazy.

AN:

Rec: An old favorite of mine - In the Days of Auld Lang Syne: Fix You by Feisty Y. Beden Reeling from traumatic events in high school, Alice hid away a part of her soul. Can Jasper help her find it again, when she didn't know she was looking? Story is rated M for language. A/J, AH, OOC. Part of larger series *In the Days of Auld Lang Syne* Twilight - Rated: M - English - Angst - Chapters: 28 - Words: 110,346 - Reviews: 651 - Favs: 218 - Follows: 116 - Updated: May 14, 2010 - Published: Feb 24, 2009 - Alice, Jasper - Complete