elizabeth closed her eyes and asked herself who the fuck had tattooed all these clouds onto the backs of her eyelids. she'd thought she'd be safe here, the final frontier, but maybe this was some kind of joke, the fact that the only place she had left to hide was in the monster's lair.

she told herself to stop shivering, it wasn't going to help.

she told herself to stop breathing, it wasn't going to help.

well, at least when you're in the belly of the beast it means you're already past its teeth.

the best is yet to come, she whispered to herself.

and then she got the call that the best had been in a car crash, fatal, and the best wouldn't be showing up after all.

the clouds were getting deeper, darker, oh how could that be happening? didn't she already have enough to be afraid of? didn't she already have it all?

but wait, she knew this routine. she had seen this all before, felt this all before, feared this all before. and yet it surprised her every time, that this time wasn't different.

the definition of insanity, doing the same things over and over while expecting new results.

she didn't know why it helped or that it helped, but she had to remind herself, she was only flesh and bone. only another shoddy temple to another shoddy god. and look where that had gotten all the others, all the jupiters and junos and neptunes past— even the immortals were all dead now and even worse, now they were nothing more than jokes.

"how could anyone even believe in stories like that?" billy had asked her the day before the christmas break before the fallout.

wine and water, fish and loaves, christ has died, christ has risen, christ will come again. top of the best sellers list, rave reviews. people loved the conflict, people loved the characters.

elizabeth just shrugged. "i've asked myself the same question."

except she was still asking herself. she didn't have billy's convenient answers, didn't have billy's convenient god.

and now came the thunder in her head, and now came the lightning. smite the heretic, shun the nonbeliever! well, which would it be, then? cast her out now or keep her around for thirty lashes in town square? it wasn't as if elizabeth had all day here, not like she had anything but the rest of her life. and in the end, what did that even mean? in the end there were couches with more staying power than a girl and her battle scars.

she looked for faces in the clouds and hoped she wouldn't find them and did. she'd done this all a hundred times. they'd break apart, soon enough, hydras in the sky. a million more demons. she was opening pandora's box again and again, still amazed at all the things that kept coming out.

her grandmother, cold blue eyes and cold blue hands, saying more in her silent sleep than she ever had in her silent hospital bed. enjoy the slumber, bible thumper.

her third grade teacher, mr. shaw, teaching her about two to the second power, but never explaining why multiplying yourself with yourself made you end up with something greater than the sum of your parts. one time she wrote on the back of her math test, is that what it means to love? to multiply yourself by yourself and come out with something better? that hadn't been in third grade, but it might as well have been.

even billy was there, eventually, with his stupid black hair covering his stupid black eyes. she couldn't hear him over the claps of thunder but she could read his lips.

"ridiculous fairytales!" he was saying.

except she didn't even need to read his lips when she could just read his mind.

"everyone knows there's only one god!"

but what about all the people who don't know that, she wanted to ask him, what about all the people who don't think it's just that easy?

and what about all the lost girls, cold and confused, who felt your lips once outside the church parking lot behind your mother's silver minivan in the snow and wondered what it'd mean to multiply themselves by you, and vowed never to believe in math or love again?

elizabeth knew what was coming next, but even now she didn't understand it. the rain, it was pouring from the clouds; and then it was washing them away, eating them from the inside. so she waited for the rainbow. it spelled her name across the backs of her eyelids, blues and greens and golds, as if to praise her, as if to warn her.

then the sky went black and the girl went falling and it was years until she woke up just in time to hit the ground.