I was hovering in front of the black hole, still eating the star from the inside out. The black hole itself was now only about the size of a toolshed. The whole mass looked less like an eye now and more like gargantuan maelstrom, with a holographic black orb in the center, hiding the true heart of the quantum singularity. I was a hundred feet away from the surface of the black hole and the girl from my dreams was hovering in front of me. The two of us were naked, and while she was smiling, her smile was sad and there were tears running down her face.
“So, you couldn’t wait. I hold nothing against you for it; it’s unimaginable that anyone could even last half as long as you did. I’m so proud of you, Marcus. Your will is unparalleled.”
“What’s going on?” I asked as she and I were pulled closer and closer to the star-eating black hole.
“We are moving onwards into eternity. It’s a shame, it was my dream for us to live our lives happily and together, but as long as we have each other in this eternal realm, I have no complaints.”
“Wait, what do you mean?”
I reached out and tried to grab her hand, even though she was well out of reach.
“I wanted to live my life with you, to exist solely for you, and to die with you. I wanted to see the world before coming here, to see everything before returning to nothing. It’s pointless now, you made your choice, one that I fully understand and love you for. Come to me, Marcus, and let us return to the Source together. Let us become one within the end of all reason.”
I began shouting her name, but as always, I heard nothing but that indescribable noise. I had not been able to find out her true name, so this moniker was all I could use. I cursed as the girl slowly made contact with the surface of the black hole, resting upon it like she was sunbathing on a boulder. After only a second, I was forced to watch in horror as she slowly began to be absorbed into it, sinking beneath its surface like it was made of tar. I followed soon after, desperately trying to bring myself to a stop but unable to fight the gravitational pull. I collided with the black screen, feeling no pain in the impact even with it being quite solid. I tried to push myself off, to fight gravity, but with the slightest exertion, the surface beneath my hands gave way and I began to be sucked in. Simply acting on instinct, I took a deep breath before my head was pulled in. The girl was in front of me, just out of reach, hovering in a vast spinning torrent of bright violet light, a vortex leading onwards into infinity.
As my lower body was slowly absorbed into black hole with me, the girl looked me and smiled. “Your dream was to live happily with the one you loved, so that too became my dream. Your wish was to find your soul mate and be happy for the rest of your life, so I sought to grant you that wish. Do not be afraid, we can still be together forever.”
My eyes widened and I fearfully gasped as her body slowly began to dematerialize, breaking up cell by cell. Looking down, I realized that I too was falling apart, my flesh and blood literally being shed from my physical form, but without any pain or sensation.
“If I had waited, what would you have been?” I shouted desperately as I finally entered the vortex fully.
With her legs and much of her torso gone, she opened her eyes and smiled at me. “Whatever you wanted me to be.”
From her words, a blinding epiphany flashed in my mind, I now understood, and I had regained something I thought I had lost. I reached out to her while the flesh painlessly melted off my fingers. “Tell me, what was your wish?!”
“To live and be happy with you,” she murmured, as the top of her head and her left arm began to disappear.
“That was my wish too, so I’m going to grant it! I want to live my life and be happy, and I refuse to do either of them without you! I change my mind, I want to live, and I want to live my life with you!”
I then called out her name, her true name, finally able to hear it. At the sound, the girl’s one remaining eye bolted open, and the twisting vortex of violet light began to churn violently. I shouted her name again and reached out with everything I had and grasped what was left of her hand with what was left of my own. As soon as she and I touched, our bodies were fully reformed.
“Marcus,” she gasped.
I said her name in return, making her smile warmly and blush.
Holding onto her tightly, I looked back at the surface of the black hole. It was so close and yet so far, like fresh air to a drowning man. Pulling the girl with me, I reached up with all the strength in my body and soul, not caring if my muscles tore and my bones snapped in the process. Just as I thought I was about to fail, my fingers broke through the surface and I grabbed on, feeling the exterior become hard beneath my grip. Roaring in desperation, I pulled the two of us back up and the dark hole released us with a geyser of violet energy shooting out like a volcanic eruption. The girl and I were thrown out into the cosmos, clutching each other for dear life.
“So can we live our lives together and be happy?” she murmured with her face buried in the side of my neck.
I smiled and held her close. “Yes, we can live and be happy. We’ll be together always, Angel, my Angel.”
My eyes opened and I immediately turned my head and threw up, emptying the contents of my stomach onto my bedroom floor. The majority of the pills were still intact, letting me survive by the skin of my teeth, but enough had been absorbed and dissolved into my bloodstream to leave me feeling sick and dizzy. Gasping for air and shaking more than ever in my life, I spat out the last of the vomit and wiped my face. I had tried to kill myself and lived, but that dream, had I really chosen to live or did I just throw up as a natural reflex?
As I lied back and stared up at the ceiling, I realized that I was not the only one in that bed. Looking over, my eyes widened as they fell upon the unconscious Angel. She was right beside me, covered in blood and some sort of other liquid, but… she was there. I knew that this was different than all of the other times I had woken up next to her. The way she was weighing down on the mattress, the way the blood on her skin was staining my sheets, just the way she looked… she was real, she was completely real. This wasn’t a hallucination.
My initial shock was replaced by fear, realizing as if for the first time that she was covered in blood. I reached out and pressed my fingers against Angel’s neck, checking her pulse and finding a strong and steady heartbeat. Moving as quickly as my chemically-shocked body would allow, I dashed out of my room and over to the bathroom, grabbing all the towels I could and coming back. Climbing back onto the bed, I rubbed her down with the towels and wiped away the blood and the other mysterious fluid that covered her. I looked desperately for any cuts or signs of injury, but I found nothing. She was completely unharmed.
After again checking her pulse, I stopped and just stared at her, completely memorized. Angel, the light of my life and the girl of my dreams was literally right here in front of me. How had this happened? How could a human being just suddenly materialize out of thin air? My questions were interrupted by the noticing of a foul odor in the room. Oh yeah… I had vomited on the floor.