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[YOU'RE... SOMEONE ELSE]

Chase: How can I... be someone else, whatever that means, if it's your dream?

Leo: Bullshit.

Leo: I may not know what this is, but I know it isn't a dream.

He looks upset.

Leo: I don't know who, or what, you are. I don't know how, or why, you're doing it. But you're pretending to be him.

Leo: You can look like him, and sound like him. But you're not my otter.

Leo: You're not Chase.

He looks real angry.

Leo: You're not the man I love.

And then there's a moment of surprise on his face, and he's broken through angry to hilarious laughter.

Chase: The dumb part is? I actually am.

Chase: All the time you spent loving him? I was already there, wolf.

Chase: I was looking through his eyes before you had your first kiss, Alvarez. Every time you kissed, every time you embraced, every time you held hands.

Chase: Every long walk you took down the abandoned railway. Every empty promise about how you were gonna inherit your family business and support him.

The laughter winds down, and he's back to angry.

Chase: That fucking week when the real bad shit woke up and tried to take you both.

Chase: Every time you fucked him, wolf.

And I've seen Chase angry. This isn't the way he does angry. It doesn't look like this.

Chase: I was there. I was in your arms too, every second that he was. He was one of mine long before he was yours.

The anger subsides. He's just blank now.

Chase: And you're one of mine too.

Suddenly he smiles.

Chase: So... what'll it be next?

Fuck.

He's... back to the bartender routine?

He doesn't expect me to fall for it after that, does he?

Leo: I don't think another drink is gonna fix anything, whoever you are.

Chase: I mean, no, probably not. But the drinks aren't going nowhere, and neither are either of us. Why the hell not?

The smile's brittle and bitter. He knows I'm not fooled. He doesn't care.

I sigh.

Leo: Fine, just... gimme a beer. My mouth feels like the bottom of a shoe.

He raises his eyebrows, but he reaches under the bar and plunks a can of cheap beer in front of me.

I eye it suspiciously.

Leo: Is this... just beer?

Chase: Course not.

Oh.

...

Fuck it.

I take a long drink. At least it tastes like beer.

The mirror fills with a desert sunset.

When I lower the can, I'm on my porch. My shirt is off, my hands smell like engine grease. It's late in the evening. I must have just come home from work.

Chase is sitting with his back against mine. In one hand he's got his own can of cheap beer. The other is intertwining his fingers with mine. The webs between his fingers fit my knuckles like a glove.

This isn't a memory.

Because I know, the way you know things in dreams, that this has been our life for years. He runs the town newspaper, which is just a webpage now. He writes articles freelance, mostly for websites, but sometimes magazines and newspapers. Weird history, mostly. Gotten some national distribution. Guests on some podcasts. Doesn't make much, but he's proud of the work.

He doesn't need to make much. Dad retired last year. I'm the owner and operator of Alvarez Auto in Payton. I work hard, make enough to make sure he's got everything and then some. The meth heads and the bigots in tetanus alley learned years ago not to mess with us. Most of them left town by now. A few more drift away each year.

They say Echo is gonna be a ghost town, soon. Nobody left but the two of us.

That's fine.

Why would I need anybody else?

...this never happened.

This is what could have happened.

What should have.

What never will, now.

There are tears soaking into my fur when I find myself back in the bar.

I force myself to look away from the impossible, perfect life together that I can still see in the mirror.

He only barely looks like Chase anymore.

Leo: Why are you doing this?

Leo: Why are you torturing me like this?!

I brace for him, whatever he is, to be angry. But he just looks at me, with that bleak, tranquil absence. And I can't deny it's exactly the sort of look Chase would sometimes have.

Chase: That wasn't torture.

Chase: If I wanted to torture you, that's not what I'd do.

He pulls up handfuls of shot glasses from under the bar, sets them up in two rows. He's fast, unnaturally fast, in a way that doesn't look real. He moves like a film being played backwards, at the wrong speed, frames missing.

Then he's holding an old-fashioned looking bottle. The glass is cloudy. The liquid inside is the color of dead pine needles.

He meets my eyes as he pours.

Chase: This? Is torture.

He takes one of the glasses, holds it up in a toast.

Leo: I'm not drinking these-

I'm interrupted by the sound of glass clicking against glass. I look down to see one of the shots in my hand, rim against the one in his.

Chase: Cheers.

He knocks his back. My hand comes up, my mouth opens, before I can think to try and stop them.

It tastes like the worst whiskey I've ever had.

I'm underwater.

And I'm in my old car, sinking into lake Emma. Something's hit us, run us off the road. The car is filling with water. I manage to open my door, squeeze out, but Chase... his seatbelt is stuck. I'm trying to get him out, but I can't hold my breath. And even though he should be able to hold his breath, I can see him choking. Gouts of bubbles escape his mouth.

He turns and looks at me as the car slides down into the dark water.

And I taste whiskey.

I'm outside the Hendriks castle. Chase is limping toward me, one of his ankles looks swollen real bad. But that's not what sends me running toward him.

There's a kitchen knife sticking out of his chest. Blood is soaking his shirt.

He collapses to his knees just before I can reach him. I see his eyes go empty.

I taste whiskey.

I'm handcuffed to a folding chair, in a survivalist's bunker. I smell gunpowder. Chase lies on the floor, staring up at me as the light goes out of his eyes.

I taste whiskey.

I slam my shoulder against a locked door in town hall, over and over. But by the time it gives it's too late. He's slumped in the corner, face puffy and discolored, dozens of tiny black spiders crawling all over him.

I try to stop my throat from swallowing, choke myself on it, but the whiskey goes down.

Please stop.

I press my face to the window of a rusted out trailer home. Inside, strapped to a table with leather cuffs at his wrists and ankles, Chase stares at me. Pleading for me to do something. A huge indistinct shape behind the table is slowly tightening the strap around his neck.

I can't move. I can't do anything but press my hands to the window, and swallow the next shot of whiskey.

Please stop.

I hear the sound of a train. Deafeningly loud. Close. I'm running, we're chasing it. Chase reaches the back, pulls himself barely aboard. I reach out. I tell myself that I'm reaching to grab the train too, to go with him, but I'm not. I grab the back of his shirt.

He stumbles.

Falls backward.

Oh god the noise.

I drag him back home with me.

What else can I do?

I hold him.

His blood is everywhere.

I sob.

I beg him to forgive me.

He doesn't.

He doesn't say anything.

He's not moving anymore.

Make it stop.

Make it stop.

Stop.

Please.

Stop...

I make myself take a good look at him, back in the bar. He's not Chase. He's not an otter. He never was. He's some kind of big cat, white fur, red eyes, and when I search my memory I realize this is what he looked like the entire time I've been here.

I have no idea how I thought this was Chase.

Leo: Please... stop...

Sam: Look at it this way. At least in that one he did spend the rest of his life with you.

Leo: Why are you doing this to me?

He pulls himself a shot of the dark thick liquid. I no longer pretend it's anything but blood.

Sam: Because, Alvarez, I've been around this town a lot longer than you have. And I know by now that there are only two endings to this story.

Sam: To any story in this fucking town.

He drinks it, grimaces.

Sam: There's only one place for them to end.

Sam: Here.

Sam: You're one of mine. So is your otter.

Sam: The only difference is how much it has to hurt before you get here.

Sam: I'm just trying to make it hurt as little as possible.

Sam: Take my word for it, there's way worse out there, in the dark, than winding up with me. Echo was an accursed place, tainted soil, yielding nothing but misery and death, long before I ever set foot here.

Sam: You both set out on the road that leads to me. He may think he's off it, but he's not the first to be wrong about that. All those other roads are dead ends. I tried em all myself. However many you try, however long you search em...

Sam: You're just going in circles...

And that was when I woke up back in my room. About five minutes ago, now.

It's already fading. I can't clearly remember most of what I saw.

I'm probably gonna be convinced it was just a dream by the time I get dressed. But it wasn't.

So while I still know what I have to do, I'd better do it.

[MESSAGE HIM]

[DELETE HIM]