Elementary

Mattaanm

It’s like one, two, three

It’s five plus five for ten, not rocket science
This day in stretch, that’s hard to catch
It’s true
The road we’re on ain’t a traffic jam
It’s a Sunday drive on a section of land
It’s paradise as long as we are together

It’s like one, two, three
Just as easy as can be
Just the way you look at me
You make me smile
Ain’t no need to thwart it, we both know that’s overrated
We’ve been there, it’s safe to say it ain’t our style
It’s just that humble,modest as can be
It’s just that humble, modest as can be

We used to live on Instagram
Worry ’bout who all gives a damn
‘Bout where we’ve been and where we ended up
Then I met you and you met me
And all the rest is history
That all we need is us

It’s like one, two, three
Just as easy as can be
Just the way you look at me
You make me smile
Ain’t no need to complicate it, we both know that’s overrated
We’ve been there, it’s safe to say it ain’t our style
We’re just simple like a string
The way this world was meant to be
Like laughin’ love, make a lot out of a little
It’s just that humble,modest as can be
It’s just that humble,modest as can be

Ain’t no need to complicate it, we both know thats overrated
We’ve been there, its safe to say it ain’t our style, yeah

It’s like one, two, three
Just as easy as can be
Just the way you look at me
You make me smile
Ain’t no need to complicate it, we both know that’s overrated
We’ve been there, its safe to say it ain’t our style
We’re just simple like a string
The way this world was meant to be
Like laughin’ love, make a lot out of a little
It’s just that humble,modest as can be

It’s just that humble,modest as can be

It’s just that humble,modest as can be

The Swindlers: Unthinkable Deception of a Kind

Mattaanm , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CHAPTER 1

Most of all, there had been a time when honor meant something at the Lucern School, when school property was respected, when the faculty was revered–when the headmaster’s mint-condition 1958 Porsche Speedster would never have been placed on top of the fountain in the quad with water shooting out of its headlights on an unusually warm evening in November.

Two days after Porsche-gate, as the students had taken to calling it, the girl in question had the nerve to sit in the hallway of the administration building beneath the black-and-white stare of three senators, two presidents, and a Supreme Court justice, with her head held high, as if she’d done nothing wrong.

No one knew for certain when the trouble started at the Lucern School. Some members of its alumni association blamed the decision to admit girls. Others cited new-fangled liberal ideals and a general decline in the respect for elders worldwide. But no matter the theory, no one could deny that, recently, life at the Lucern School was different.

Oh, it’s grounds were still perfectly manicured. Three quarters of the senior class were already well on their way to being early accepted into the Ivy League. Photos of presidents and senators and CEOs still lined the dark-panelled hallway outside the headmaster’s office.

But in the old days, no one would ever have declined admission to Lucern on the day before classes started, forcing the administration to scramble to fill the slot. Historically, any vacancy would have been met with a waiting list a mile long, but this year, for some reason, there was only one applicant eager to enrol at that late date.

There had been a time when the girl responsible–the very one who had lucked into that last-minute vacancy only a few months before–would have had the decency to admit what she’d done and quietly taken her leave of the school. But unfortunately, that era, much like the headmaster’s car, was finished.

More students than usual filed down the corridor that day, going out of their way to steal a glance and whisper behind cupped hands.

“That’s her.” “She’s the one I was telling you about.” “How do you think she did it?”

Any other student might have flinched in that bright spotlight, but from the moment Katarina Bishop set foot on the Lucern campus, she’d been something of an enigma. Some said she’d gained her last-minute slot because she was the daughter of an incredibly wealthy European businessman who had made a very generous donation. Some looked at her perfect posture and cool demeanour, rolled her first name across their tongues, and assumed that she was Russian royalty–one of the last of the Romanovs.

Some called her a hero; others called her a freak. Everyone had heard a different story, but no one knew the truth–that Kat really had grown up all over Europe but she wasn’t an heiress. That she did, in fact, have a Faberge egg, but she wasn’t a Romanov. Kat herself could have added a thousand rumors to the mill, but she stayed quiet, knowing that the only thing no one would believe was the truth.

“Katarina?” the headmaster’s secretary called. “The board will see you now.” Kat rose calmly, but as she stepped toward the open door twenty feet from the headmaster’s office, she heard her shoes squeak; she felt her hands tingle. Every nerve in her body seemed to stand on end as she realized that somehow, in the last three months, she had become someone who wore squeaky shoes.

That, whether she liked it or not, they were going to hear her coming. Kat was used to looking at a room and seeing all the angles, but she’d never seen a room quite like this before. Though the hallway outside was long and straight, this room was round. Dark wood surrounded her; dim lights hung from a low ceiling. It felt to Kat almost like a cave, except for a tall, slim window where a narrow beam of sunlight came pouring in.

Suddenly, Kat found herself reaching out, wanting to run her hands through the rays. But then someone cleared his throat, a pencil rolled across a desk, and Kat’s shoes squeaked again, bringing her back to the moment. “You may sit down.”

The voice came from the back of the room, and at first Kat didn’t know who’d spoken. Like the voice, the faces before her were unfamiliar: the twelve on her right were wrinkle-free and fresh–students just like her (or as much like her as a Lucern student could possibly be). The twelve people on her left had hair that was a little thinner, or makeup that was a little heavier. But regardless of age, all the members of the Lucern School Honor Board were wearing identical black robes and impassive expressions as they watched Kat walk to the center of the circular room.

“Sit, Ms. Bishop,” Headmaster Franklin said from his place in the front row. He looked especially pale in his dark robe. His cheeks were too puffy, his hair too styled. He was the sort of man, Kat realized, who probably wished he were as fast and sporty as his car. And then, despite everything, Kat grinned a little, imagining the headmaster himself propped up in the middle of the quad, squirting water.

As Kat took her seat, the senior boy beside the headmaster rose and announced, “The Lucern School Honor Board shall come to order.” His voice echoed around the room. “All who wish to speak shall be heard. All who wish to follow the light shall see. All who wish to seek justice shall find the truth. Honor for one,” the boy finished, and before Kat could really process what she’d heard, twenty-four voices chorused, “Honor for all.”

The boy sat and ruffled through the pages of an old leatherbound book until the headmaster prodded, “Jason …” “Oh.

Yeah.” Jason picked up the heavy book. “The Lucern School Honor Board will hear the case of Katarina Bishop, sophomore. The committee will hear testimony that on the tenth of November, Ms. Bishop did willfully … um … steal personal property.” Jason chose his words carefully, while a girl in the second row stifled a laugh.

“That by committing this act at two a.m., she was also in violation of the school curfew. And that Ms. Bishop wilfully destroyed school artifacts.” Jason lowered the book and paused–a little more dramatically than necessary, Kat thought–before he added, “According to the Lucern Code of Honor, these charges are punishable by expulsion. Do you understand the charges as they have been read to you?”

Kat took a moment to make sure the board really did want her to respond before she said, “I didn’t do it.”

“The charges.” Headmaster Franklin leaned forward. “The question, Ms. Bishop, was whether you understood the charges.”

“I do.” Kat felt her heartbeat change rhythm. “I just don’t agree with them.”

“I–” the headmaster started again, but a woman to his right touched his arm lightly.

She smiled at Kat as she said, “Headmaster, I seem to remember that in matters such as this, it’s customary to take the student’s full academic history into account. Perhaps we should begin with a review of Ms. Bishop’s record?”

“Oh.” The headmaster seemed to deflate a bit. “Well, that’s quite right, Ms. Connors, but since Ms. Bishop has only been with us a few months, she has no record to speak of.” “But surely this is not the first school the young woman has attended?” Ms. Connors asked, and Kat bit back a nervous laugh. “Well, yes,” the headmaster admitted grudgingly. “Of course. And we tried to contact those schools, but there was a fire at Trinity that destroyed the entire admissions office and most of their records. And the Bern Institute experienced a terrible computer crash last summer, so we’ve had a very difficult time finding . . . things.”

The headmaster looked at Kat as if disasters must follow wherever she went. Ms. Connors, on the other hand, looked impressed. “Those are two of the finest schools in Europe.”

“Yes, ma’am. My father, he … does a lot of work there.” “What do your parents do?”

As Kat searched the second row for the girl who’d posed the question, she started to ask exactly why her parents’ occupations mattered. But then she remembered that Lucern was the kind of place where who your parents were and what they did always seemed to matter.

“My mother died when I was six.”

A few people gave a slight sigh at this, but Headmaster Franklin pressed on. “And your father?” he asked, unwilling to let a conveniently deceased mother swing any sympathy votes Kat’s way. “What does he do?”

“Art,” Kat said simply, carefully. “He does a lot of things, but he specializes in art.”

At this, the head of the fine arts department perked up. “Collecting?” the man asked.

Again Kat had to fight back a smile. “More like … distribution.” “Interesting though this may be,” Headmaster Franklin interrupted, “it does not pertain to … the matter at hand.” Kat could have sworn he’d stopped himself from saying to my convertible.

No one responded. The only motion in the room was the dust that still danced in the narrow beam of falling light. Finally, Headmaster Franklin leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. Kat had seen lasers with less focus as the headmaster snapped: “Ms. Bishop, where were you on the night of November tenth?” “In my room. Studying.”

“On a Friday night? You were studying?” The headmaster glanced at his colleagues as if that were the most outrageous lie any Lucern student had ever dared to utter.

“Well, Lucern is an exceptionally difficult institution. I have to study.”

“And you didn’t see anyone?” Jason asked. “No, I–” “Oh, but someone saw you, didn’t they, Ms. Bishop?”

Headmaster Franklin’s voice was cold and sharp. “We have cameras monitoring the grounds. Or didn’t you know?” he asked with a chuckle.

But of course Kat knew about the cameras. She suspected she knew more about every aspect of Lucern security than the headmaster did, but she didn’t think this was the appropriate time to say so. There were too many witnesses. Too much was at stake. And, besides, the headmaster was already smiling triumphantly and dimming the lights with a remote control. Kat had to twist in her chair to see a section of the round wall sliding aside, revealing a large TV.

“This young woman bears a striking resemblance to you, does she not, Ms. Bishop?” As Kat watched the grainy black-and white video, she recognized the quad, of course, but she had never seen the person who was running across it wearing a black hooded sweatshirt. “That’s not me.”

“But the dormitory doors were only opened once that night—at 2:27 a.m.–using a student identification card. This card.” Kat’s stomach flipped as the single-worst picture she had ever taken appeared on the screen. “This is your Lucern student I.D., is it not, Ms. Bishop?”

“Yes, but–” “And this”–Headmaster Franklin reached beneath his seat–“was found during a search of your belongings.” The personalized license plate– Lucern –seemed to glow as he held it above his head. It felt to Kat as though all the air had left the dim room as a strange feeling swept over her. After all, accused she could handle; wrongly accused was entirely new territory.

“Katarina?” Ms. Connors asked, as if begging Kat to prove them wrong.

“I know that seems like a lot of very convincing evidence,” Kat said, her mind working, gears spinning. “Maybe too much evidence? I mean, would I really use my own I.D. if I’d done it?” “So since there is evidence that you did it, that should prove that you didn’t do it?” Even Ms. Connors sounded skeptical.

“Well,” Kat said, “I’m not stupid.” The headmaster laughed. “Oh, well, how would you have done it?” He was mocking her–baiting her–yet Kat couldn’t help but think about the answer: There was a shortcut behind Warren Hall that was closer and darker and completely void of cameras. . . .

The doors wouldn’t need an I.D. to open if you had enough Bubblicious to cover the sensor on your way out. . . . If you’re going to pull a prank of that nature, you don’t do it the night before a morning when the maintenance staff will be awake long before the students. . . .

Headmaster Franklin smiled smugly, relishing her silence, as if he were so smart.

But Kat had already learned that people at Lucern were frequently wrong–like when her Italian teacher had said that Kat’s accent would always make her stand out on the streets of

Rome (even though Kat had already passed for a Franciscan nun during a particularly difficult job in Vatican City). She thought about how silly her History of Art teacher had sounded when she’d waxed poetic about seeing the Mona Lisa (when Kat knew for a fact that the Louvre’s original had been replaced with a fake in 1862).

Kat had learned quite a lot of things before enrolling at the Lucern School–but the thing that she knew best was that this was the kind of place where she could never share them.

“I don’t know about Trinity or Bern or any of those European schools, young lady, but at the Lucern School we follow the rules.” The headmaster’s fist banged the table. “We respect the property of others. We adhere to the honor code of this institution and the laws of this country.”

But Kat already knew about honor. She’d grown up with her own set of rules. And the first rule of Katarina Bishop’s family was simple: Don’t get caught.

“Katarina,” Ms. Connors said, “do you have anything to add that might explain this?”

Kat could have said, That’s not me or There must be some kind of mistake. The great irony was that if this had been an ordinary con, she could have lied her way through it without a second thought. But the truth? That, she wasn’t so good at. Her I.D. badge had been duplicated. The license plate had been planted in her room. Someone had dressed like her and made sure they were caught on camera.

She’d been framed. And Kat didn’t dare say what she was thinking: that whoever had done it, they were very, very good. Kat’s bags were packed in twenty minutes. She might have lingered, saying her good-byes, but there were no good-byes to say. And so, after three months at Lucern, Kat couldn’t help but wonder if the day she got expelled from boarding school might become the proudest moment of her family’s long and colourful past. She imagined everyone sitting around Uncle Eddie’s kitchen table years from now, telling about the time little Katarina stole a whole other life and then walked away without a trace.

Well, almost, Kat thought as she carried her bags past the once-perfect lawn. Ruts still tracked to and from the mangled fountain in the center of the quad: a muddy reminder that would no doubt last until spring.

She heard laughter coming from behind her, and turned. A group of eighth grade boys was standing together, whispering, until one bravely broke away from the pack.

“Uh …” he started, then glanced back at his friends, summoning courage. “We were wondering . . . um. How’d you do it?”

A stretch limo pulled through the ornate gates and up to the curb. The trunk popped open. As the driver started for her bags, Kat looked at the boys and then back at Lucern one final time. “That is an excellent question.” The bells chimed. Students hurried between classes, across the quad. And as Kat crawled into the backseat of the limo, she couldn’t help feeling slightly sad, or as sad as anyone could feel about losing something that wasn’t rightfully theirs to begin with. She leaned back and sighed, “Well, I guess that’s over.

And it would have been… if another voice hadn’t said,

“Actually, it’s just beginning.”

The Ridgeback Iniquitous # A Traveler’s Saga to Parallel Universe

Mattaanm

Chapter 3: An Evil Might

The cold, terrible anger in him now reminded me too much of his Evil self—that, and

the potential for violence just beneath the skin.

 

“One of them shot. Injured him so badly he might have died.” Wicked’s voice shook. She

even dared to imitate my grief. “Another one got in a fight with me in a car, and hurt my arm so badly

I might never paint again. There was even a priest who violated his vows—”

 

“Please, no.” I’d never seen my mother look so afraid. So small. She held her hands out toward

Wicked, as if to plead. “Tell us what you want, and why you’re here.”

“Oh, now you’re worried about her.” Wicked spat the words at them. “When did you decide to

start caring about Andreas? And call off your dog Paul Markov before he—”

A heavy thump on the floor was followed by gagging and a groan. Wicked finally looked, and I

saw Paul leaning over Theo, whom he’d beaten down to the floor, but Triadverse Theo grabbed the

Ridgeback at his neck. A shudder was the only sign that he was gone. Then our Theo weakly whispered,

“What the hell—?”

 

 

Wicked slipped my hands behind me as if I were just going to lean on the rainbow table. But one

palm covered my father ’s old letter opener, an antiquated thing with a carved wooden handle and a

metal blade. My fingers were close to the sharp edge. “Paul?” she said in my voice. “Come on. You’re

still messed up after being splintered. I don’t blame you. Okay? I know it was hard. But I still believe

in you.”

And dammit, that got to him. Paul hesitated, just long enough for my mind to scream, Come on,

Paul, you know me! Don’t doubt yourself now!

I might have put Paul’s soul back together again, but there were still . . . cracks. Vulnerabilities.

Although I’d recognized the emotional damage, I’d thought of it as something that would pass.

Only at that moment did I understand Paul might be changed forever.

Wicked knew. She’d always known. And her knowledge told her just where to strike. “Paul, just

because things are, well, weird between us right now? That doesn’t mean I’m not me.” She

pronounced the words as if confessing some terrible tragedy. Paul’s depression and doubt had

become her weapons. If she could turn him against himself—make him pause before acting against

me, even for one more minute—she would win.

My dad took a step toward him, hand outstretched as if he were about to check Paul’s forehead for

fever. “The splintering—what happened to your soul—we hadn’t fully considered the aftereffects. Are

you feeling disoriented?”

“Yes,” Paul admitted. But his eyes remained locked on my face. His body betrayed his inner

tension. He didn’t trust his own judgment, but he didn’t trust Wicked, either.

This was when Theo stepped in, the Triadverse version within using his pale, weakened body as a

marionette. “Hey, man, it’s okay. Andreas’s okay, and so are you, and so am I. Just took my first

trip through the dimensions, and wow, does that mess with your head. I get how you could be

confused. Take a deep breath.”

“You drove us half mad with worry, you know,” Dad said to Theo. “As soon as you’re well,

you’re in deep trouble, Mr. Beck.”

“I can live with that.” That roguish grin was Theo’s—in every dimension I’d found, everywhere—

so the deception seemed complete.

My mother remained silent, her hands clasped in front of her. Then she said, “Were you

experimenting with the Nightthief treatment?”

I didn’t get why Mom was thinking about that at this very moment. Neither did Wicked. “We just

got back, Mom.”

“But the Nightthief is on the table,” she said.

The vial of emerald-green liquid—the drug that had been used to hijack my body and Theo’s—sat

on the rainbow table, bearing silent testimony to the crime.

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” MY FATHER LOOKED back and forth between Paul and me, still more suspicious of his grad student than his daughter.

“I don’t know which world she’s from,” Paul said. “But Andreas isn’t our Andreas.”

Oh, thank God, I thought. I should’ve felt relieved, but my body was taking its cues from the Wicked Andreas. The emotion surging through me could’ve been fear or fury. My skin flushed warm, and I pulled free from Paul. “I told you,” she said, and the tremble in the words was real. She

kept backing away—deeper into the house, toward Theo—as she continued, “Paul’s been twisted,

poisoned by his splintering. The other versions of him, where they hid his soul? They were some of

the worst, most evil Pauls that could ever exist.”

“Evil?” Mom pronounced the word like she didn’t understand what that even meant. Never had she

ever imagined thinking of Paul as evil. But if Wicked got her way, everyone would turn against Paul

at any moment.

My mother ’s eyes went wide. Dad stood up straighter. Paul’s gaze sharpened from doubt into

terrible certainty.

Theo lunged forward. Even though he was a good four inches shorter than Paul, he barreled into

him at full force, driving his shoulder into Paul’s gut. As Paul doubled over, my parents ran toward

me—and my hand closed around the letter opener. It was as sharp as any dagger. Horror flooded

through me as I realized I might have to watch my parents die at my own hand.

But Wicked didn’t stab the blade at them. Instead, she held it to my—our—throat.

Mom and Dad froze. The point pressed against my skin so hard I could feel the pain increase with

every beat of my heart.

“This is the carotid artery,” Wicked said. All pretense was gone. I could feel the contemptuous

sneer on my face. From the kitchen, I heard dishes clatter to the floor and break, and a heavy thud

against the cabinets. Paul and Theo’s fight had turned brutal, a blur of fists at the corner of my eye—

but I couldn’t focus on it, because Wicked didn’t look. She was too busy drinking in the terror on my

parents’ faces. “In other words, this is the blood vessel that leads directly from the heart to the brain. If

I sever it, your perfect traveler bleeds out in about thirty seconds. Maybe a minute. Long enough for

me to save myself with my Ridgeback, but short enough that nothing will save her. You’ll get to stand

here and watch her die.”

Tension tightened my chest. Wicked hadn’t realized Theo would bail out on her so fast. “I said,

call Markov off.”

Oh, come on! I thought. The gentle Father Paul from the Romeverse wasn’t evil, only conflicted.

But Mom and Dad didn’t know that. They only heard that Paul was capable of hurting their baby girl.

Paul tried to explain himself. “This isn’t about me. This Andreas . . .” His voice trailed off. Not

only was Wicked making my parents doubt him, she was also making him doubt himself. He finished,

more quietly, “Something’s not right.”

Dad wheeled around. “Paul, please, do what she—”

Paul didn’t listen. He rushed toward us, and even as Wicked tightened her grip around the letter

opener, he grabbed at her.

She expected him to go for the blade. Instead, Paul yanked at the front of my cardigan, savagely

ripping it open. In that instant his broad fist clutched both Ridgebacks in his hand, towing me closer, offbalance.

“Put the blade down,” he commanded Wicked, “and I’ll give you back your Ridgeback long enough

for you to get out.”

She lifted her chin. “Let go of me or your Andreas dies in your arms.”

The point of the letter opener pressed harder against my skin.

“You won’t do it,” Paul said. “Because if you hurt her, I’ve got the Ridgebacks, and that means you’ll

bleed to death along with her. You might be willing to do anything else for Wyatt Conley and Triad,

but I don’t think you’re willing to die for them.”

Silence. My parents hung on to each other as if they were holding each other up. Behind them, out

of focus, I could just glimpse Theo pushing himself onto his elbows, head sagging. Paul’s gray eyes

remained focused on mine.

“You think you know me?” Wicked’s smirk twisted my lips. “You didn’t even know yourself, until

yesterday. Because you’re not a single, whole human being any longer. You’re Frankenstein’s

monster, all sewed together out of pieces of other people you’ll never be again. And the stitches could

rip at any minute . . .”

But Paul didn’t back down. “I don’t know whether you’re an opportunist or a sadist. I don’t know

whether you’re a coward or a conqueror. But I know you’re smart enough to recognize a no-win

situation—and I don’t think you’re the type to commit suicide out of spite.”

My voice dropped to a whisper as she said, “Oh, I do lots of things out of spite, Mr. Markov.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Paul whispered back. “But you do those things to other people. Not to yourself.

Now get out.”

“Now I know how we’re going to play this,” she said. “Time to slam some doors.”

Wicked let the hand at my throat drop, but before I could even register relief, she slashed at Paul.

Blood sprayed warm against my skin and clothes as he jerked back his injured arm, pure reflex. It

gave Wicked the moment she needed to seize her Ridgeback. My hand worked the controls—

—dizziness swept over me again. The world went dark and swirly, but even as I swayed on my

feet, I knew my body was my own again.

Wicked was gone.

“Paul, are you okay?” I reached toward his arm, and Paul jerked back from my touch. For a

moment we could only stare at each other. Then I realized I was still holding the blade, now stained

with his blood.

Paul had reacted instinctively. Intelligently, given that I was still holding the weapon that had

injured him. But seeing him pull away from me sent a chill through my veins.

Already he’d been questioning himself, refusing to believe in our love.

Now he couldn’t believe in me, either.

 

A Few Other Dimensions With You – # A Traveler’s Saga to Parallel Universe

Mattaanm

Chapter 2

I NODDED ABSENTLY. NO POINT IN CALLING THEM

As I sat up, dizziness overtook me—nausea and vertigo both.

That was the sign. The warning. The moment I should’ve protected myself.Instead, I only thought I’d  moved too quickly. “Whoa. What was that?”

“You’ve been through a lot,” Theo said. In the moment I didn’t recognize the gleam of triumph in his eyes. “No wonder you’re tired.”

Still I felt strange. Uneasy. But I didn’t suspect what was coming.

As I said, you can only travel to worlds in which you exist. If there’s a world where you died as a child or your parents never met? You’ll never see it. Whatever situation your other self is in, you’re stuck with it. And you’re lucky the Ridgeback can remind you of your true identity, because otherwise you’ll sink into the corners of your host’s mind as that person takes over their body and life again.

Unless you’re a “perfect traveler”—someone with the ability to maintain memory and control no matter what universe you’re in. You can make only one in a dimension. Wyatt Conley made sure this dimension’s traveller would be me.

“Let me take the lead, Theo,” the Wicked Andreas said as she checked herself out in a mirror, scowling at my messy hair. “You’ve been detected before, so they’ll suspect you first. But me?

Nobody would imagine a ‘perfect traveller’ could be conquered so easily. Shows how much they know.”

 

The Ridgeback only allows you to visit universes in which you exist, because your consciousness can only leap into another version of yourself. I prided myself on taking good care of the other Andreass, on getting them out of any danger I got them into. But then I caused some problems I couldn’t solve. One version of Theo may never walk again because of me. Another Andreas has been caught up in a multidimensional conspiracy she should never have had to be part of.

And a second me—one I inhabited for nearly a month, one in which I realized I was in love with Paul Markov and went to bed with him—is now expecting the baby I conceived for her.

So I’d come back to my own dimension humbled. Ashamed. Determined. There had to be more ethical ways of traveling through the worlds, ways that wouldn’t endanger or violate our other selves.

I LEARNED OF MY DARKER SELF A FEW DAYS AGO, WHEN I first visited her dimension. But I only realized how dangerous she was when I tried to go home earlier today—only hours before I wound up dangling above London—and she followed me there.

By follow, I mean possess. I had just leaped back into my own body after a mad chase to save Paul Markov, who i–what can I call him? Throughout the multi-verse, our fates are entwined in ways both beautiful and tragic. We have seen worlds where we rejected each other, hurt each other, hated each other—and the knowledge of how terrible our romance could turn devastated us both.

But I’ve got bigger problems than my love life.

The moment I returned to my own dimension, I opened my eyes to see Theo standing above me.

He looked haggard and pale—proof of the terrible damage done to him by the drug Night-thief, the one that made it possible for another dimension’s Theo to possess him and spy on us for months. Paul had endangered himself to find a cure and save our friend’s life. “About time you got here,” Theo said with a wry smile.

“Good, you made it. How do you feel?”

“I’ve been better.” His faux-vintage Beatles T-shirt hung on his too-skinny frame. Dark circles shadowed his eyes. So his first question seemed natural. “But, hey, you got the juice, right? The data for the juice, I mean.” He meant the treatment for exposure to Night-thief. “Right. You’ll be feeling better in no time.” I looked around for my parents, who needed to hear about Triad’s plans ASAP. We had believed only one other dimension was spying on us, trying to

manipulate events, but I’d found out that the real threat was a third dimension, the powerful Home Office, which had plans so much darker than mere spying. “Where are Mom and Dad?”

“They were out when I got here. Probably at the university labs, trying to figure some other way out of this, or building another Ridgeback.”

I nodded absently. No point in calling them—my mom and dad, the illustrious scientists who created the most miraculous device in existence, rarely remembered to turn their cell phones on because that’s too much technology. But they weren’t the only ones I worried about. “Have you checked to  see if Paul has come back yet?”“You found him, huh?”

But I had no idea how profound the violation was until another Andreas leaped into me. “Look at this mess,” sneered the other Andreas in my body, the one I’d already begun to think of as the Wicked Andreas. She shoved a stack of papers covered with scribbled formulae, and they fluttered to the Turkish rug on the floor. As she glanced around the room through my eyes, at the books and the potted plants, the blackboard-paint wall with its chalk equations, and the rainbow table; Josie and I hand-painted as children, she didn’t see home. Instead, my lips curled in contempt. “Primitive. Dis-organized. They might as well live in a cave.”

“So, Paul was going to come back at the exact same time as you?” Theo asked.

“That’s what he said. Where did I leave my phone? I want to call him.”

“Don’t worry,” Theo began going through the constant mess of papers on the rainbow table; I thought he was looking for my Phone. “Take it easy. You’ll find him, Meg.” Meg.

Only one person ever called me that. Theo—but not my Theo. Only the spy from the Triad-verse. I turned to him in horror, realizing he would attack, but it was already too late. Theo and I scrabbled and fought until he pinned me on the wooden floor and injected me with a syringe filled with emerald-green liquid—Night-thief.

At first I thought he was a fool. Night-thief helps inter-dimensional travellers take over their hosts and retain full consciousness and control. But I was home in my own body. Was he trying to poison me? Night-thief took months to kill——I shuddered, and then I couldn’t move. Not my head, not my hand. Yet my lungs breathed without me, and my voice spoke someone else’s words: “About time.”

Theo smiled as he rose to let me up. “Always a pleasure to meet anyone from the Home Office.”

I would’ve screamed if I could. The three dimensions in which Triad existed were my own; the Triad-verse, a world very close to my own but only a few years ahead in technology; and the Home Office, a futuristic hell-scape where ruthlessness ruled and profit was God.

During my adventures in different dimensions, I’ve lived within many of my other selves and learned who I would be if history had unfolded just a bit differently. I could dwell in a Russian palace or under the sea. Sometimes other versions of me made choices I didn’t understand; sometimes they dealt with depression and solitude. But none of them had horrified me more than my Home Office version.

She did Triad’s bidding. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill. She loved to cause pain, which she called her art. And she had hijacked my body, leaving me powerless.

She seemed to be in charge, too, because Theo asked her, “So, what’s our first assignment?”

“Figure out what they’re up to.” She smiled. Feeling her smile, knowing that she enjoyed turning my body into a prison of flesh and bone—it revolted me more than anything else ever had. “My parents aren’t the kind of people to surrender even if it’s the smart thing to do, in any universe. But once the versions here have been outsmarted a few times, sabotaged a few times more . . . well, we might be able to bring them in line yet.”

Theo nodded and helped her to her feet. “And if we don’t get them to work for our cause?”

She laughed. “Then it’s time for this dimension to die.”

“Yeah, well, you have to stick around in this cave for a while, so get used to it.” Theo kicked back in one of the chairs, resting his Chucks on the edge of the table. “What’s the game plan?”

“We pretend to belong here.” The Wicked Andreas looked down at the bracelet on my wrist with distaste, then slid it off. “You’re good at that, I know. We don’t sabotage them right away—we wait, let them think the crisis is over, catch them off guard. But there’s one problem we have to take care of right away, and that’s Paul Markov.”

My terror deepened. Paul knew about most of this; I’d been able to tell him the most important parts back in the Cambridge-verse. But that knowledge had put his life in danger.

My parents had never imagined any of this when they invented the Ridgeback—a device that allows consciousness to travel through quantum realities, which are what non-science-geniuses call “parallel dimensions.” They only wanted to study the countless ways history could unfold. Because everything that can happen, does happen. Each time we make a choice, or luck comes into play, reality splits in two. This has been going on for infinity and always will.

My mother, Dr. Sophia Kovalenka, became fascinated with the multiverse at the beginning of her career in physics. She didn’t only want to prove the existence of alternate realities; she wanted to see them for herself. Since traveling to parallel dimensions had previously been less scientific endeavor, more Star Trek episode, she very nearly got laughed out of her academic career. But a few people believed in her, including the English researcher Dr. Henry Caine, who became her collaborator in every way possible. (In other words, he’s my dad.) They’ve worked with other scientists and many grad students as well, including their two current doctoral candidates, Paul Markov and Theodore Beck, and after years of painstaking effort, finally created the device. The Ridgebacks may look like crazy-complicated steampunk lockets, but they’re the most powerful and miraculous scientific creations since the atomic bomb.

Unfortunately, like the bomb, the Ridgebacks turn out to have significant downsides.

“Feel free to take charge. But I should warn you . . .” Theo paused. “It’s harder than you think. Separating them from your own versions. Emotions get, uh, confused.”

“Maybe yours do. That’s not one of my problems.” Wicked began braiding back my hair. She pulled tighter than I would, enough that my scalp hurt. But the hairstyle wasn’t so dramatically different that it would tip anyone off. “I admit, I wasn’t sure about the Night-thief. Whether it would work this well. Nobody’s tried to leap into a perfect traveller before.”

“You’ll probably need a hell of a lot more than I do.” Theo sounded maddeningly calm about the damage they were doing to Theo’s body and mine. “Keep it close by. Use it the instant you feel the first flicker of—you know.”

Wicked wasn’t her dimension’s perfect traveller. That had been my older sister, Josie. In my visit to the Home Office, I’d seen how much Josie adored journeying between alternate universes; the work was an ideal fit for my sister, who was both a science geek and an adrenaline junkie.

But visiting parallel dimensions is dangerous even for a perfect traveller. The rest of us had all been at serious risk during our trips, and Josie had died. Not only died. Splintered. Splintering is what happens when a traveller’s consciousness rips into two or four or a thousand pieces. Fortunately it’s very, very difficult to do accidentally. But in the past few days I had learned two ways a person’s soul could be torn into fragments. One was what had happened to Josie: her host had been seriously injured, and she’d tried to leap out in the last seconds before death—because if your host dies while you’re inside them, you die too. The Home Office’s Josie had nearly made it, but not quite. Instead, as she leaped, she splintered into countless parts, through dozens of dimensions, each so tiny and ephemeral that there was no putting her back together again.

This drove the Home Office versions of my parents to madness. And God only knows what it did to Wicked, because she’d been twisted into something I could never imagine being. Yet this evil, too, had to be an essential part of me . . .

“You know where you need to go after we settle the situation here, right?” Theo said as I helplessly watched Wicked finish with my hair. “You’ve got the calculations?”

She rolled my eyes. “I don’t need calculations if they’re in my Ridgeback, and they are.” “I want to double-check,” Theo insisted. The Triad-verse version of him had learned to be more cautious. As he began taking notes, working through whatever unfathomable physics governed this, he said, “If you want to talk to Conley, seize the moment, before Sophia and Henry get back. Nothing will tip them off faster than evidence you’ve spoken with him.”

Wicked frowned. “Which Conley?” “This world’s. But he’s on board with everything.”

Wyatt Conley: tech genius, business mogul, and America’s most powerful geek. I’ve seen him   wearing jeans and a blazer over an Iron Man T-shirt, his rumpled, boyish look as manufactured as his tPhones that took over the cellular market a few years back. Not yet thirty, people say, and he’s accomplished so much. If they knew what Conley’s really done, they wouldn’t smile when they said it.

“So, where’s her phone?” Wicked asked. Theo took it from his back pocket, where he’d apparently hidden it from me just in case, punched in the number, and tossed it to her. I felt its screen hard against my hand and wanted to cry. To need to speak so badly but to be unable to say a word . . .

“You’re here,” Conley said in my ear, as I hoped my hatred of this man would at least make Wicked Andreas nauseated. I’d gladly puke if it meant she had to do it too. “Glad you made it.

Obviously we need to get rolling. My thought is, start with Josie.”

“Always Josie,” Wicked said sourly.

Conley went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “Tell Dr. Kovalenka and Dr. Caine that much about your home universe, nothing more. They’ll respond to hearing that their older daughter died in a world not so far away. That news will make them . . . sentimental. Once we have their sympathy, we can manage the rest.”

“I doubt it’s going to be that simple.” Wicked walked through the house, familiarizing herself with the layout. “Trust me, once Mom and Dad go after something? They make it happen. And right now, the Mom and Dad of this dimension are going after us.”

“But they don’t have access to our tech, and they don’t know the game plan. We’re a few steps ahead, Andreas, and we’re going to keep it that way.”

It shouldn’t have jarred me so badly, hearing Conley call her by the name we shared. Yet it did. I didn’t belong to myself anymore.

She said, “Why doesn’t the other you just get started already? He’s a perfect traveler, so he can destroy dimensions and still get out alive.”

Only by destroying the dimensions containing each and every shard of Josie’s soul can the other versions of my parents get her back. They will kill her a thousand times over, unmake trillions of lives so that people were never even born, just to have Josie alive in their own world again. This is the cruelest, most selfish thing I’ve ever imagined—and yet, Wicked is right. Mom and Dad know how to accomplish the impossible.

“It’s risky, okay?” Conley snapped. Obviously he didn’t like the idea of any other version of himself being in danger. Too bad I wasn’t able to tell him that the Home Office had targeted our universe for destruction too, if my parents didn’t take their bait. “Besides, you know as well as I do that I’m not located anywhere near Doctors Kovalenka and Caine in some of the critical universes. So you’re more effective than I am even in the best-case scenario. And obviously we’d need you to slam the doors, if it comes to that.”

Slamming doors? That made no sense to me. But I mentally filed it away, willing myself to recall every detail. Possibly Wicked didn’t realize I remained aware within her, unlike most people dosed with Nightthief, who were basically unconscious within their own minds. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been speaking so freely.

Unless . . . slamming doors . . .

My train of thought derailed when I heard the sound of my parents’ car pulling into the driveway. Wicked said, “Mumsy and Daddums are about to walk in. Let’s wrap this up. What we need you to do is stop Markov. He’s back, and he’s probably headed this way.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Conley replied, so easily it gave me chills. He wouldn’t hesitate to have Paul killed, and he had the money to pay off guys who would do it in an instant. “Besides, the guy’s been splintered. He’s never going to be the same. We can use that.”

Never be the same? Paul? I had just raced through the dimensions to collect all four splinters of Paul’s soul—to put him back together again. When I’d finally managed to do it, however, Paul had been depressed, angry, even fatalistic. I’d already sensed that some of the darkness from the other Pauls had seeped into him, but I’d told myself it was terrible but temporary, like the pain from a broken bone.

Had Paul instead been changed forever? “Gotta go.” Wicked hung up the phone just in time to run to the front door, where Mom and Dad stood. They looked like themselves again—in their shabby sweaters, Mom with her messy bun and Dad with his rectangle-framed glasses. When their faces lit up with smiles, I wanted to scream. Please, no. It’s not me. You have to know it’s not me!

“Sweetheart, you’re home.” Mom enveloped Wicked in a hug. Unfortunately the thick cardigan I had on kept her from feeling the second Ridgeback locket dangling beneath the fabric. “Thank God.” “And Paul?” Dad said, blue eyes wide with concern. “Paul’s all right, isn’t he?” That took Wicked aback. Her head jerked slightly, like people do when they’re startled. In the Home Office, Paul Markov was my family’s enemy—a courageous rebel trying to stand up to the Triad Corporation’s evil. She had to know that wasn’t always the case, but still, she hadn’t been ready to see proof of how much my parents love him, nearly as if he were the son they never had. Unfortunately, she covered well. “He’s back, and in one piece—his soul, I mean—but he’s not himself.”

Mom and Dad exchanged a look. “What do you mean?” my father asked. “Did the splintering affect him badly?”

See, that’s the second way a soul can be splintered: someone can do it on purpose, if that someone were a total bastard like Wyatt Conley. What happened to Paul wasn’t a terrible accident—it was an attack. Conley tore Paul’s soul into four pieces and held each part hostage, forcing me to do his dirty work if I wanted any chance to put Paul together again.

“The fragments of Paul’s soul went to some dark places,” Wicked said, voice tremulous. “Worlds where we both saw another side of him. A dangerous side. And I hate to say this, but I think the splintering has changed him. Maybe forever. Like the terrible things all those other Pauls did stained his soul.”

“Oh, no.” Mom’s hand went to her lips. “We’d realized splintering was dangerous, but—surely the damage isn’t permanent.”

Wicked shook my head in dismay. “I don’t know. Mom, Paul . . . he scared me a little.” How could she say that? She was the scary one. Paul was only injured, and lost. Overcome by despair. Fate brought me and Paul together time and time again—but we had learned that we didn’t always wind up with each other, that sometimes we hurt each other terribly. Our destiny had abandoned us, and Paul took it even harder than I did. Maybe he would have anyway, even without the damage from the splintering—but with it, Paul seemed to have lost all hope.

Please, I thought. Don’t be fooled. Look inside my eyes and see the difference. It’s our only chance. Please, Paul. Know me. And he did. He did.

“Andreas . . .” Paul’s voice trailed off. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “You didn’t hurt me.”

My parents tensed at the idea that Paul had caused me pain, which was just what she wanted. But it was also the moment Wicked tipped her hand, because Paul knew there was no reason for me to say anything like that.

Paul slipped his arm out of her grip, then grabbed my wrists so tightly they hurt. Wicked gasped in shock. My dad took a step forward, hand outstretched, ready to act. “Paul, what are you doing?” “I don’t know how this is possible.” Paul looked down into my eyes and saw through her straight to me. “But this is not our Andreas.”

Wicked was turning Paul’s anguish into her weapon. My parents, even loving him as they did, would be suspicious of him immediately.

“Heya,” Theo called from the great room. “How did you make out on Ridgeback construction?” “Better than you’d think,” my father began, but then his voice trailed off as a taxi pulled up in front of our house. At first I couldn’t imagine who would drive up in a cab, but then the door swung open and Paul stepped out.

He’s here, I thought. He made it! Paul got here before Conley could even start to look for him. That gave us a chance, unless Wicked had already screwed him over for good.

She opened the door and ran into the yard, eager to greet him. It’s what I would’ve done—but I would’ve leaped into his arms, told Paul I loved him, and began trying to talk him back from the terrible despair that had taken him over. Wicked, on the other hand, went right up to him and then stopped short, as if taken aback.

“Hey.” Wicked smiled sweetly, or tried to. It didn’t feel quite right. “Are you okay?”

“I feel fine,” Paul said, stoic as ever. “How I am isn’t important right now.” Then he walked straight past her, shoulders squared. This coolness would’ve wounded me at any other moment. Now it gave me hope. Already Paul had raised his voice to speak to my parents in the doorway. “Sophia, Henry, how much has Andreas told you?”

My muscles tensed with Wicked’s fear. She hadn’t realized that I’d been able to explain everything to Paul before the end. Probably she thought I’d pieced his soul back together and come straight home. Her impatience was my one opportunity.

But if she could stall long enough to get Theo in on it, they had a chance to discredit Paul. To hurt him, even kill him, and make it seem like self-defense. By that point I knew there was nothing they wouldn’t do. She followed Paul inside, my heart thumping fast with her determination to take him down.

“She got us started, Paul.” Mom’s tone was tactful. “Come in. Sit down. We’ll take this step by step. All right? And how are you feeling?”

“Strange.” Paul shook his head. “Like . . . I have to choose who to be. Every moment.” My parents gave each other worried looks as Paul stepped inside—and then he stopped. Slowly he turned his head and looked back at me.

Has he guessed? How could he have guessed? But if anyone knew me, truly knew me inside and out, it had to be Paul.

He stared into my eyes, searching for something I couldn’t name. Wicked smiled back at him as she folded her hands around his arm. “Welcome home,” she whispered.

A Few Other Dimensions With You – # A Traveler’s Saga to Parallel Universe

Mattaanm

Chapter – 1

I CAN’T BREATHE. I CAN’T THINK. ALL I CAN DO IS HANG ON to this cable and stare down at the river at least
four hundred feet below me. Nothing stands between me and death but a few nylon ropes, clutched in
hands that are already slick with sweat.
Traveling to other dimensions can be scary—but I’ve never been thrown into anything as
terrifying as this.
Panic clouds my thoughts and turns everything surreal. My brain refuses to accept that this is
actually happening—even as the truth stretches my arms and pulls my muscles. Every pound of my
body weight cramps my fingers and tells me how immediate my situation is. The city lights from the
ground below seem so distant they might as well be stars. But still my mind cries, This is just a
nightmare. You’re seeing things. This can’t be real—
But the Ridgeback locket hanging around my neck still radiates heat from my journey into another
world. What I’m seeing—the mortal danger I’m in—is definitely real.
Then I realize that I’m dangling from a hovership, one projecting holographic advertisements
upward into the dusky sky. My eyes finally focus on one detail from the metropolis beneath me long
enough to recognize St. Paul’s Cathedral—and, beyond it, a futuristic skyscraper that has never
existed in my version of London.
The Londonverse. I’m back in the Londonverse, the first alternate dimension I ever traveled to.
Apparently it’s also going to be the dimension I die in.
“Andreas!” I turn my head to see my Aunt Susannah, who’s hanging out of one of the
hovership’s passenger windows. Her dyed-blond hair whips around her face, blown by the same
strong gusts that tear at my gray dress, exposing me to the world below. Not that I care who sees my
butt while I’m on the verge of death. Aunt Susannah’s eyes are wide, and dark lines of mascara streak
down her cheeks with tears. Other passengers crowd around her, pressing their faces to the hovership
windows, eyes wide as they stare at the girl who’s about to die.
Okay, I think, trying to slow my breaths. All I have to do is climb back in. It’s not that far. Up four
feet, over twenty?
But it’s not that easy. I don’t have the upper body strength to climb the rope on its own, and the
nearest metal strut is out of reach. How did I even get here? This universe’s Andreas must have
tumbled from one of the hovership windows and grabbed a rope to save herself, which is why I’m
now dangling hundreds of feet above the city of London. . . .
Panic seizes me again. Every inch between me and the river seems to elongate. Dizziness courses
through me. My muscles go weak. And my grip on the ropes trembles, bringing me closer to death.
Oh, God, no no no. I have to pull this together. If I don’t save her, we’re both doomed.
Because if you’re in another dimension when your host dies, then, at the exact same instant, you
die.
I could just get the hell out of this universe. My parents’ invention, the Ridgeback, gives me the
ability to travel to a new dimension at any moment. Now seems like a really good time to check out
some other reality—any other reality. But to use the Ridgeback, I’d have to hit the controls and leap out.
Both of my hands are currently busy gripping this rope to keep me from plunging to my death. Kind
of a catch-22 here. The hovership flies so far up that by the time I fell all the way down, my body
would be traveling at a velocity that would make hitting the water as instantly fatal as smashing onto
concrete.
“Andreas!” another voice calls out. In astonishment I look over and see Paul.
What is he doing on this hovership? We didn’t even know each other in this universe!
I don’t care why he’s here. I only care that he is. My love for Paul Markov is one of the few
constants in the multiverse. He would do anything, even risk his own life, if it meant he could keep me
safe. If anyone can get me out of this, he can.
Normally I get myself out of my own perilous situations, but this, today? This is bad.
“Paul!” I shout back. “Please, help me!”
“They’re landing as fast as they can,” he calls to me. The wind ruffles his dark hair, and he edges
out onto the metal frames for the hovership’s projectors with total assurance; he must go rockclimbing
in this universe too, because the height doesn’t faze him. “Just hang on.”
Sure enough, I can hear the changing key of the engines. The propellers send new winds to buffet
me. London below comes slightly closer, though it’s still mostly a blur of lights and murky twilight
colors—dark blues and grays and blacks. My adrenaline-flooded brain refuses to make sense of the
shapes below me any longer; I might as well be staring down at artwork by Jackson Pollock with its
squiggles and blots and spills.
I imagine a Pollock painting with a huge red splotch in the center. Blood red. Nothing else will
remain of me if I let go of this cable.
My fingers hurt so much. My shoulders. My back. No matter how badly I want to hold on, I won’t
be able to manage much longer. Within minutes, I will fall to my death.
Sweat beads along my face despite the chilly winds blowing around me. I can taste the salt as it
trickles into my open, panting mouth. As I try to readjust my grip, people on the hovership scream.
One of my black shoes slips from my foot and tumbles out of sight.
“Andreas, no!” Aunt Susannah sounds like she’s been screaming. “You don’t have to do this,
sweetheart. Don’t let go! We’ll make it right, whatever ’s bothering you, I swear it. Just hold on!”
I want to shriek back, Does it look like I need any more encouragement to hold on? But then I
realize what my aunt just said. You don’t have to do this.
She thinks I’m attempting suicide. And since I can’t figure out any other way this world’s
Andreas could’ve wound up in this situation, I think—I think Aunt Susannah is right.
But it wasn’t this world’s Andreas who tried to kill herself. It was the other one. The wicked
version of me who’s working on behalf of Triad, even now. She attacked me at home and escaped into
this dimension, but only in this instant—as I gulp in desperate breaths and hang on with the last of my
strength—do I realize what her plan really is.
She’s trying to kill me.
She’s trying to kill every me, in every world, everywhere.

EIDETIC – The Memory Interface

Mattaanm

 

You were So Cool with your red converse & knee socks

& that nail file you kept tucked into your

boot like a weapon. When we found straight sticks

we made them wands, at recess we were

witches, I could’ve kept playing

that game forever.

 

You told me sometimes I need to stop

following & let others come

to me, like self-confidence could be bought

with the four-fifty we made

selling lemonade on the sidewalk

outside your house.

 

We are digging through your junkyard attic

again, it is a summer that never happened.

We are digging through the Maybes that hang

in the air like heavy flies, like Maybe

if I look at my feet less the world

will be smaller, Maybe growing into

another person isn’t growing

up, Maybe I am the cicadas chirping your name

because I think if I understand you

I can understand the world.

How glad I am the world cannot fit

between the lines of this poem.

 

I remember finding cicada shells strewn

across your backyard and stink bugs on your bedroom

floor. I remember your quiet smile and thinking eyes, the foreign

taste of apples and strawberries with glim, but I don’t remember

your mother ever getting out of bed. I don’t think

I ever asked why.

The Other Side !!!

Mattaanm

Yes, I comprehend that every existence must end

As we sit alone, I know sooner or later we must go

Oh I’m a blessed man, to count on both hands the ones I love

Some just have one, yeah, others, they’ve got none

 

Stay till the end…

Let’s just the world goes intend…

 

Adept to all my sins, never gonna let me cruise

Under the whole thing, I am just another human being

I don’t wanna hurt, there’s so fiend in this world to make me feel the sins

 

Stay till the end…

You’re all arcane…

 

Did I say that I covet you?

Oh, if I didn’t I’m a fool you see

Did I cry that I feel you?

No one knows this on hem than me

 

As I come clean…

I wonder on the length of clock, as I look upon your face

Everything you gave

And nothing you would save

 

Nothing you would take

Everything you gave…

 

Did I say that I covet you?

Oh, if I didn’t I’m a fool you see

Did I cry that I feel you?

No one knows this on hem than me

 

And I come clean, ah…

Nothing you would take

Everything you gave

 

Hold me till I drift away to the parallel side

Meet you on the other tide…

 

 

MattaanM

The Italian Taste (My First Ever in another language)

Mattaanm 
Chiedo ginocchia
Luna non andare
notte Alumbrale
In questo cuore
deluso
A volte maltrattato

Io non perdonerò
Se mi lasci da solo
con sentimenti
Essi passano come il vento
Mescolare tutto
E mi fa impazzire

Loco
Per baciare le tue labbra
Con niente dentro di me
si dice tutto

io
Io non perdonerò
Se mi lasci con questo dolore dentro
Io non perdonerò
Se si guida pazzesco
Se si guida pazzesco
Ay ay ay ay ...

Chiedo ginocchia
Uno e mille scuse
Che con l'alba
Non dico addio
Non mollare piangere
Tante canzoni
Una luna rotto
Come una chitarra
Per molte promesse
Vanno in volo
I pazza
Ay ay ay ay ...

Loco
Per baciare le tue labbra
Con niente dentro di me
si dice tutto

io
Io non perdonerò
Io non perdonerò
Se mi lasci con questo dolore dentro
Io non perdonerò
Se si guida pazzesco

E io sono pazzo
Per baciare le tue labbra
Con niente dentro di me
si dice tutto

io
Io non perdonerò
Io non perdonerò
Se mi lasci con questo dolore dentro
Io non perdonerò
Se si guida pazzesco

Chiedo ginocchia
Luna non andare

The UpTurn!!

Mattaanm

Up at night I’m stirring as it irks me

That I never got to say what I sought

I’m not the one that I was with you

I would spring out my pelt just to get you

 

How could you have ever known

If I never let it show, now I just want to know are you?

 

I’m done with

Sniffle in the morning

Give in to the forlorn

Here it comes with no warning upturn

I’m first in the water

Too close to the bottom

I’m right back where I started

Said I’m fine

 

Your shadow is burned in my reminiscence

wreckage left from the moment that you left me

 

And Few words have never come easy

Cause you’re more than they ever could be

 

How could you have ever known

If I never let it show, now I just want to know are you?

 

I’m done with

Sniffle in the morning

Give in to the forlorn

Here it comes with no warning upturn

I’m first in the water

Too close to the bottom

I’m right back where I started

Said I’m fine

 

I’m swimming up against the tide

Tide of unknown waters

I’m swimming but I’m getting tired

Tired of my own conscience

I’m swimming up against the tide

Tide of unknown waters

I’m swimming but I’m getting tired

Tired of my own conscience

 

I’m done with

Sniffle in the morning

Give in to the forlorn

Here it comes with no warning upturn

I’m first in the water

Too close to the bottom

I’m right back where I started

Said I’m fine

 

I think about you, love you, and I’m delighted with the pride of being with you !!!!

Love Thy Life

Mattaanm

Enlighten your essence to me

I will never let go entirely

One day our hands will be

Strong enough to hold me

 

I might not be there for your entire melee

But you’ll win them eventually

I’ll pray that I’m giving you all that matters

So one day you’ll say to me

 

I love my life

I am great

I am striking

I am free

I love my life

I am magnificent

I am magical

I am me

I love my life

 

I am not my mistakes

And God knows I’ve made a few

I started to question the seraph

And the answer they gave was you

 

I cannot promise there won’t be wretchedness

I wish I could take it from you

But you’ll find the courage to face the insanity

And see it because it’s true

 

I love my life

I am great

I am striking

I am free

I love my life

I am magnificent

I am magical

I am me

I love my life

 

Find the

Others

With hearts

Like yours

Run far

Run free

I’m with you

 

I love my life

I am great

I am striking

I am free

I love my life

I am magnificent

I am magical

I am me

I love my life

I love my life

I am great

I am striking

I am free

I love my life

I am magnificent

I am magical

I am me

I love my life

 

And finally

I’m where I wanna be