This is an alternate branch of the storyline continuing from [18A]

The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[19A]
For the Primary Branch [19]

Giselle kept her eyes tightly focused on her visitor while she felt around for the nurse call button. This “Blessin” didn’t appear threatening, but she knew enough from the last encounter to not judge on appearances. Giselle braced herself with her muscles trembling as the woman’s eyes slipped over her.

“I’m sorry.” ‘Blessin’ sounded like a wounded balloon struggling to draw air while it was seeping out. “I don’t really have any good news for you. And it looks like you’ve already encountered plenty of bad. Can you tell me what happened?”

Giselle‘s good hand dug under her until she finally unearthed the call button and pressed it several times. “You don’t know?”

The visitor shook her head. “It’s complicated. What can you tell me about the creature that hurt you?” Giselle gripped the side rail. She wanted Rachel here and Olivia and maybe even Dennis.

Being alone with this uncertain presence made her stomach feel like it was knotting ever tighter. “I don’t know. He messed with…my wife’s mind and threatened everything I know and am. Someone I know bashed him in the head. He had this remote thing.”

The strange woman clasped her hands together. “I know how much you love your wife. How much you love Rachel. She has a beautiful, creative mind. And she loves messing with you in video games. Friendly fire in Halo, poisoning in Minecraft, blowing you up in GTA, and putting a hit out on you. You’re one of the sweetest couples I’ve ever seen.”

Giselle let her arms relax. “None of that exists on YouTube anymore. How do you know?”

Blessin Cross leaned forward. “Your reality split in two. It happened when you kicked Hanako‘s sister’s seat. I come from the other reality.”

Puzzling, Giselle asked, “Hanako?” The woman wiggled her hands. “Toilet seat girl. Do they have different names here? Where I come from, Hanako and Mari.”

Still with lingering wariness, Giselle answered, “Olivia and Athena.” Blessin half closed her eyes and mouthed the names to herself.

“All right, to the important part. Although I suspect part of the answer. Have you fought Cerberus here and have you learned anything of his weaknesses? Also, when you made the choice to kick the seat, did you do anything in particular?”

Giselle found herself confused again. The woman started off by saying she would explain and bring her up to speed. She nodded when Giselle brought this up. “Of course, what would you like to know about where I come from?”

Does she know Rachel and is she okay? “Yes. She’s defaulted to a man named Finn… But everything is fine.” On this point, she noticed that Blessin tightened up. There was something more. She asked about the other version of Olivia, to which her visitor noted that Hanako received an injury from Cerberus that exposed her spirit. Giselle asked if their kind were demons. To that, Blessin shook her head and pronounced, “That bastard‘s claims. No matter what they are, he’s something worse.”

So far as her question about the kicking, Giselle didn’t have much to offer. She said it was just after she woke up and had to go to the bathroom upstairs. She got upset. No momentous choices. No special techniques. Just a moment in her life. So far as weaknesses, she gripped the rail tightly and explained that Cerberus appeared as a repair man, who her friend Britney smashed with a heavy backpack. Then he hid as her other friend from school before unleashing into a tangle of black threads like a swarm of spiders barely contained in human form.

The only defense they managed was Olivia transforming it into inanimate objects. And she focused her love for Rachel on the bastard before he took her hand. She wasn’t sure if the strange woman knew what she lost from the way the covers fell across her, but she raised it up to show. Blessin lowered her head and quietly apologized again.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you. I had a faint hope that if I looked into this reality I might find the secret to stopping him. We battled him in much the same way. He gloated about the same things. And it was love that forced him back. We know about a warehouse owned by the strange toilet supply company, Flush with Pride. It’s in the DC area. Let me write down the information. I can do that for you.”

It actually took some effort to find some writing paper. The instructions were detailed and involved cross streets and precise coordinates. Giselle stared at the paper and shifted her mouth around in uncertainty. Eventually, she had to ask, “What happened to the Rachel over there?” Blessin opened her mouth as though to reiterate what she had said in reassurance. But she paused and released a restrained sigh, as though she only had so much breath to draw from.

“Cerberus took her right eye same as the fucker took your right arm. He’s taken a lot from all of us, and he’ll take even more.”

Even though it was in a reality she couldn’t reach, even though it was the word of a woman she met mere minutes ago, with so much confusion about what to trust, a bonfire ignited inside Giselle‘s small body. Athena’s presence stoked boiling lava swirling in her skull. Giselle wanted to scream, latch onto that shadow monster of spiders, and burn every last one of them to ash.

“What are you doing…?” A note of concern wafted up from her visitor. It took Giselle a moment to realize that her right side was arcing as though a flashlight was turned on. Looking over, she saw a tangle of blue light woven together into the luminous presence of a hand shifting and flowing from the end of her wrist. Before it drew back into her flesh, she was able to wield it to grip the railing on the right to lift her up.

Both of them looked on in shock at what happened. Quietly, Blessin took a faint breath. “You are incredibly resilient, Giselle. Especially with Rachel at your side. Never forget that. There are other things I can tell you, but I worry if I speak them then they will be destined or lost. I’m from three months in your relative future. Much has occurred since then. Cerberus really is a piece of shit. I don’t know for certain what will happen to you and those you love. But our best opportunity to do something lies in this warehouse. I wish there was more. I wish I knew some kryptonite against this monster. But this is all I have. Thank you for telling me everything you know. All I can say is remember love.”

Giselle wanted to summon her electric hand again, but it felt like a candle snuffed out and she couldn’t figure out the lighter. Blessin was still dancing around some issue, she knew it.

It was immensely frustrating because she had already shared the truth that this other version of Rachel had been wounded in the worst way possible. Her eye! Just imagining it triggered the worst fears drenched in scalding fury. Rachel is in pain. She may not exactly be her Rachel, but she could still feel it, like something worse than a phantom limb.

Blessin slowly stood up from her seat. Giselle frantically kept her eye on the woman and the paper she gave her. She wanted to know why she was already leaving. Giselle knew nothing about all this, truly. She just managed to beat back the monster with a bit of random luck and Olivia. Even then, she lost so much. How was she going to remember all this to pass along to everyone else?

Slowly, Blessin turned around. She looked over at the paper and resolved she could add a few more things but noted, “I don’t know how much longer I can stay here. I’m dreamwalking in my other self’s body. Only by her grace and acceptance am I able to stay. It’s her call.”

It took a few more minutes but, before long, Blessin finished and passed the paper back. Before she let her go, Giselle scanned every single mark and line for certainty. Scrunching up her eyes, she inquired, “Promised to see the first eight seasons of the Simpsons?”

Giselle didn’t need to explain her experience or lack thereof with the show, as Blessin knew quite well. “Unfortunately, I can’t really help you any more than that. No sharing accounts across the universes.” Giselle gave a faint smirk and nodded. It was clear she had talked to some version of her.

Stretching out her arms and lowering her head, Blessin told her, “Don’t bother trying to keep the other me around. She’ll just head home thinking she had the weirdest sleepwalk of all time.”

Giselle went further than just pushing herself up. She pulled her body up into a sitting position in the hospital bed, no small feat. It was a tenuous pose, but she used it to beseech Blessin, “Could I ask her to help me? Would she do that on her own?”

Blessin’s expression shifted with uncertainty. “I can’t guarantee you she’ll help. From her perspective, she just recently began looking into considerations of the Flush with Pride Company. She’s three months behind me. Showing her your hand and your friend Hanako might be enough, but I can’t say. What I have told her through dreams to convince her to help me will vanish. I’m sorry. I don’t have much left. Good luck, Giselle. Stay strong.”

With that, a certain tension slipped from Blessin. It was like she had to hold a certain pose along with her breath for the entire time she was in the room but now her body  relaxed into its natural position as her lungs found peace. A different presence asserted itself across her face as she gazed around the room in quiet concern and confusion.

Before the woman could give voice to the question of what she was doing here, Giselle jumped in, “Thank you so much for visiting me, ma’am. And thank you for your kind prayers.” Gingerly, the Blessin from this universe picked up on those hints and edged over to Giselle‘s bedside. She offered a familiar faint prayer and wished love and healing for the little girl before her, even though she wasn’t sure where she knew her from. Giselle accepted this offering gladly.

Further confusion set in when the woman noticed the paper at the young girl’s side with several curious statements spread across in her own handwriting. Carefully, Giselle chanced, “Could… could we keep in touch? Your stories are wonderful, especially what you mentioned to me about things we can’t really explain or comprehend. Some parts are scary with monsters, others with a human presence no less terrifying, like companies flush with pride when they should be more careful, and so forth. Would that be okay?”

For a long, troubled moment, it appeared as though this version of Blessin just wanted to reject all those notions and fling herself through the open doorway and back to spaces she understood. But she’d been through a lot, she had faced challenges few could understand, and she wasn’t one to flinch from the unexplained. Resting on a careful breath, she nodded despite understanding little of the situation before her and wrote the addition of a phone number, an address, and times she was available.

The times were concentrated around her local church and volunteer counseling hours. It made sense with the glimmer of reality she was working from. Clearly, she had somehow placed herself in a tense spiritual state during a mission of comfort and love taking her to this Children’s Hospital. She prayed with Giselle to cover her bases and briefly took down the girl’s information to her cellphone despite some nagging notion that she should’ve asked for her parents' information instead.

Amidst the myriad confusions and uncertainties Blessin had to push through, she did so without apparent panic. And before long, she stepped with quiet confidence back through the doorway. Giselle stopped trying to support herself in bed and let the curve of the terrible mattress sink her back below the stiff pillow. At this time, the freaking nurse finally showed up to ask what she needed. She brought around some ice water when Giselle started coughing and informed her that her family would be back in just a moment.

It felt even less than that before Rachel and Olivia returned. Olivia seemed like an entirely different person. It wasn’t just her face, features, and radiant blond hair since the egg of her initial appearance was split open. But her eyes moved with a human energy, and she actually smiled little smiles as though some internal joke was tickling her. At the moment, she had ice cream cradled in her hands like a rare prize. Stains of chocolate lightly decorated her mouth as Rachel dabbed her with a moist towelette.

It was a trace of the kind of world that Giselle really wanted. Where she could just hop up from this blasted bed and hug Olivia. Where Rachel could get the biggest embrace of all, an affirmation of love that lasted despite all the changes. Kind respect to Dennis, but Rachel was the one.

Maybe Rachel could figure out what on earth was going on with the universes. She was smarter than her and she took no indignity from that. She just trusted. It didn’t take long to show off the paper that Blessin gave her. Of course, Rachel‘s immediate fretful concern was that an adult she didn’t know wandered into the hospital and talked to Giselle. The mother within shining out.

It hurt her sometimes in the quiet Jeremy moments to understand intimately how much she knew her wife would be the most amazing mother she could imagine. There was some definite competition when it came to her mom, Lily. The woman could bake, cook, and satiate any hunger like no one‘s business. She also encouraged Jeremy‘s dreams of filmmaking and delight in forgotten games.

All the suffering and quiet reservations since they first met. Not wanting to upset and unsettle anyone else. Wondering in a thousand ways if it was all in her head and if there was nothing wrong with her uterus or anything else down here. They were each hesitant of invoking gaslighting, but those motherfucking doctors gaslit her to hell and back. For money, for ego, for who the hell knew. She was sure that the people in this hospital were far better than any dealing with her wife’s situation. But the looming price and the dawning understanding that this was not a matter for them to fix pressed Giselle to plea that they needed to get her out of here.

Rachel was just starting to comprehend the swarm of information laid out on that paper and formulate questions she wished she could’ve asked the woman who vanished, but she looked into Giselle‘s eyes despite the terrifying stump that used to be her right hand, took a deep and careful breath, and quietly agreed.

[Since this is meant to be interactive, feel free to suggest ideas and prompts for future/alternate branch storylines. Some branches are already written but this will allow me to best pick new/alternate ones. I'm currently just rolling dice.]

Poll below