I.
She’s peering down into the cauldron more often these days.
This is fact she’s aware of. Someone comes to check on her.
Deja, there’s nothing you can do.
She doesn’t look up, but the cauldron’s colors stop swirling as beautifully when the voice starts talking. The glowing energy around her figure suddenly becomes gray, guarded.
I have nothing left to say to you, the goddess says.
II.
Then, on a whim, she goes into the cauldron.
The planet.
Fossil fuels barrage her first. Her soul feels stripped away from itself like falling through 1,000 hells.
And surviving.
Or at least, remembering.
III.
There’s a bar up ahead. A grocery store.
The park is boarded up for some reason.
No soil.
Kids skateboard down paved areas, having broken in.
The graffiti makes her laugh.
Why do they like living here?
Why do they live, at all?
Deja, they don’t, she hears from outside the cauldron.
She says, how you can be so sure.
IV.
The bar, then. Obviously.
Gods, it smells.
What did you expect? says the voice. She doesn’t answer.
The bar is well populated. It’s the most colorful place on the block.
She goes in. It’s mostly European men, but they aren’t paying attention to her.
One of them looks more punk rock than the others, sitting alone at the bar. Easy target.
She watches him take a drink, and then she blinks into more detailed vision.
Such a solid red.
V.
She doesn’t waste time. They could pull her out of the cauldron.
Or they could destroy the planet entirely. With her inside it.
That is the plan, Deja, the voice says.
Get out of my head.
VI.
Deja grabs the back of that punk-rock neck and sends an electric shock through the man. She doesn’t stop to think whether she had calibrated herself to human or not.
He turns, startled, stunned, eyes red from crying.
And immediately kisses her.
She could not have predicted this.
Is this what you call agency?
VII.
She has her hands in his hair in seconds. Pulling, biting, nails, lips. Hunger.
For something, anything.
They’re all starving, like you. You know that right?
Fuck you, she says to the voice from elsewhere.
She keeps kissing.
VIII.
She’s doing what little she can at this point to be discreet, but it’s still obvious as hell.
Deja grabs punk rock by the hand and practically throws him in the men’s bathroom.
Fuck the binary, she thinks.
For once, the voice from elsewhere agrees with her.
IX.
She shocks punk rock again, through the neck, before the door even closes. Locks click.
It takes a few more steps, but she slams him into the wall, grinding immediately.
He bites her jaw.
X.
Before long, she flips him with his face toward the wall and unbuckles his pants.
This isn’t where you like to do this, the voice says.
She bites back.
XII.
“Tell me. Something. You love. About. Being. Alive,” she says, punctuating thrusts into punk rock with whispers in his ear.
“This,” he says, after a moment.
XIII.
At first, Deja thinks punk rock means her.
You’re as bad as they are, the voice from elsewhere says.
Shut up, she says.
But, no, punk rock meant whatever the fuck was happening between them.
The flow—the energy—the spark.
Right?
She fucks him harder.
XIV.
His moans are audible throughout the bar and occasionally spill out onto the block.
Dozens become embarrassed. A few complain to the bartender.
Eventually, they hear sobs, too.
XV.
She doesn’t stop. He begs her closer, hand reaching around her hip.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asks her.
“You tell me,” Deja says viciously.
“A figment of my imagination.”
“Close,” she admits, her hands hungrily grasping at his chest. “You’re a figment of mine.”