((Okay, I don't think I'm going to submit this to Canolli Capolini's Flash Fiction contest thingy, but I did want to see if I could get this entry a)done and b)within the 600-word limit, since I'm usually the most verbose creature in the world. I may have broken Second Life TOS by quoting Miss Dreamscape directly from a private log, but it's only one in-character line and I don't think she'd mind too much, in spite of the bleh quality of the context. Here's what I came up with.))
It was funny to think that Shaqad had once been afraid of locomotives. Here she was riding one of her own free will for the second time, and fear was the last thing on her mind. Actually, that last part was strangest of all: Her first trip was to hide from a monster, which was still there. But this time...this time she was going to make lemonade from life's lemons.
"Mirage Mother," she said to the hypnogogic hallucination beside her, "do you think my real parents will like the new me?"
"Don't be silly," the hallucination replied. "We are your real parents."
"Speak for yourself," said the hallucination of her father. "I still say it was the milk man."
The first hallucination rolled her eyes.
Shaqad took the unfinished construct head out of her unreasonably voluminous pocket. "I did the best I could," she whispered.
"The seams are very messy," remarked Mirage Mother. "It's hard to believe it's your best."
"It's a decent first try!" Mirage Mrs. Lowey offered.
(Meanwhile, the only other passenger on the train who actually existed got up and discreetly moved to another car.)
"I know I could do better," Shaqad decided, trying not to let her imagination's words impact her, "but this is really very urgent. This needs to be sewn onto my body before it gets unusable, and the Sparkpeople still need to give it a nice brain--"
"You shouldn't always rely on other people!" interrupted Mirage Father.
"Oh, but Father, you know how I am with machines! I'm doing this for you. I want the new me to be perfect. She--I'll be part construct and part clank, better than what nature did! I'll be clever and talented and"--here she locked eyes with her "mother"--"friendly and charming and graceful, and everyone will love me!" Shaqad took a deep, wavering breath. "Even you."
"It dun make senze, though," said Mirage Valdyr. "Forst hyu run away from der monster, und then hyu run right beck to it to keel hyuself?"
"Oh, but I'm not killing myself!" exclaimed Shaqad. "I'll only have my head replaced! The King of the Whippoorwills just said to 'Go home'. He didn't say how much of me."
She gazed out the perpetually reshaping window at a grove of trees that was playing ball with an uprooted rosebush. A solitary farmhouse stood nearby, slowly melting onto the grass.
"I wish the mirages would stop," she remarked.
"Well," said Mirage Mother, "it's as the Whippoorwill said. God punishes children for staying up a week past their bedtime."
Shaqad sighed, then smiled brilliantly. "The new me won't do such silly things. I bet she won't even have nightmares."
Just then, the subway train came to a stop in the middle of Steelhead. It took Shaqad, in her sleep-addled haze, almost a minute to notice, but when she did, she gathered her things and rushed out.
Unfortunately, the door frame in her world was melting; she misjudged what to hold onto and fell spectacularly onto the cobblestone.
"Ach! Are hyu hokay, Mizz Ashbourne?" cried Mirage Valdyr.
And then her world came apart at the seams. It was a quote from her memory: A real quote from a real person, and that gave it power. Where were her defenses? Tears came; she permitted them.
"Get up, Little Lady! You're embarrassing me!" Mirage Mother scolded. But that no longer mattered, for her world was undone. In this strange new universe, quite possibly, she was not okay. Even more strangely...it mattered.
Less than an hour later, she had stumbled into a warehouse full of soothing mint and cried herself to sleep. She awoke two days after that, having shed all her plans and waking dreams.
She never found the construct head again.
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