saw a movie once about teenagers in a government-sponsored program who are forced to fight to the death. Some children participate, because they are scared or insane or enjoy that sort of thing, but some join together to bring the program down. They don't quite succeed but they do escape and move on to live fulfilling lives as Japanese terrorists. Sometimes I create that world in my Ethereality, and the children battle the program just like in the book. They fail and murder each other. They all die because that's how it should happen. Usually the only survivor is the psycho with the machete.

"I'll be dying soon."

I glance at the girl. She'll die soon, just like always, but I haven't decided how. I want her surprised, but she's a figment of my imagination so my thoughts are hers. I've been imprisoned for five years and have lived an eternity in my Ethereality but I can't keep secrets from my creations.

The fork whistles as it cuts the air. I try to envision what must have shot the projectile and a fork launcher appears from the mist that always surrounds us, the mist bordering the limits of my imagination. I see a bizarre hybrid of a crossbow and a bubbling tea kettle. It is manned by the boy who is in love with the girl that sits next to me. He steps into the light so she might see him one last time. There are no happily-ever-afters in my world, only calloused realizations and recognition of fallibilities.

The girl lifts her hand to the fork and my Ethereality pauses, although we still hear the whistling. "You've done this already," she reminds me. "Michael told Suzanne he loved her, then you changed your mind. He ran into your mist and shot her with a fork. This bores us."

I nod. Are others who are sentenced to their Ethereality so bored? Some have hellish fantasies, whole eternities suffering through their inner demons. If those convicts are lucky, their Ethereal devils eventually forgive them. Therapists call that 'rehabilitation' and those convicts are freed.

There will never be a rehabilitation me, but the therapist visits me regularly anyway. She's a real person, someone they plug into my brain to observe me.

Some convicts are only visited by the therapist. I think I'd be bored but happy like that. I'm visited by scientists, reporters, bureaucrats, who can come and go all they like. I was the first woman sentenced to the Ethereality. I murdered seven men and I'd murder seven more. Everyone wants my story, regardless of their occupation. Since I'm a bane on modern society, my jailors let them all in. Do they know it tortures me, these strangers invading my world?

"The writer watches; you shouldn't kill me now."

The writer has been in the balcony seat of my brain for five days. She waits patiently; in her world only seconds have passed. She logs everything I dream for the book she's writing.

"She'll bother you about it, ask why you're always killing girls here. She never sees the boys die.”

The boys die, I just don't dwell on that. I already know how a boy dies.

I smile and pretend to touch the girl's hair. I've never been able to make her corporeal. "I think I've procrastinated enough," I tell her. Her hand drops and the fork stabs her in the chest. She vanishes into the mist as I wave to the writer. The writer frowns and makes a note in her book. That's all I am, I suppose.