I’ve made some pretty dumb choices in my time. I’m still trying to figure out if this was one of them.

I unfolded myself from my car and stretched. The grass swayed in the wind as if to grab my legs under my skirt, but I saw no other sign of life.

The only building over that silent field looked like the Space Needle coated in rust. It seemed to be missing a support beam, and I worried it would fall onto me while I looked at it. Even the top structure looked askew.

Surely it was abandoned. Surely I had mistaken the address or something. Surely no one waited in that tower to conduct an editor job interview.

My brain must have been faulty that day. Not because the appointed time seemed to change every time I checked, but because I approached the tower despite not knowing the first thing about this “HoleWorld” company I’d applied to.

My every step rustled the grass as if the rest of the world was set on mute. I flinched when I noticed a mailbox, as if it materialized by my approach. The surrounding grass looked well-trodden. Maybe this place wasn’t abandoned.

Just what did HoleWorld do? The application sounded like scientific work, but . . .

After I’d applied I had a phone interview (gag). The woman on the other end asked some pretty basic questions, but one was odd.

She’d asked if I had any formal science education. I said no.

Her response had been, "Good."

I’d wondered if she misheard me. Why would a negative answer be good?

At the tower base I glanced at a speaker on a pole, again as if my approach conjured it. It looked newer than the tower, as if only it and that mailbox saw any upkeep. I pressed the speaker button and it buzzed.

"The Duchess of Dimensions is not seeing anyone today," spoke a woman’s voice—the same I'd had the phone interview with. "Or, really, any day. At least in this dimension."

I stared at the speaker. In another universe, I turned around and didn’t look back.

I wouldn’t be telling you this story if I did that, would I? Now things were interesting.

"I have an interview here today," I said. "For the editor job?"

"Ooh, right! Finally, a fresh face! I’ll send the elevator down. Dr. Fara should be available soon."

Duchess of Dimensions, or Dr. Fara? This seemed an interesting place to work, at least. I entered what looked more like a freight elevator. As it rose I stood tense on hard steel; until halfway up I was bordered only by rusty frames and open air.

No matter how far across the fields I could see, I saw no other sign of life. Out here no one would hear me scream.

The dark elevator opened to a bright office. The spotless white walls and speckless black carpet looked night and day compared to the rusty exterior, the sterile office smell more at home inside a city. I stepped into a maze of plastic boxes full of gadgets and tubing and all odds and ends, bordered by scattered cubicle walls. Maybe this was a tech startup and this dying real estate was all they could afford. Maybe all the boxes were weight to balance the building. Maybe I shouldn’t think it so unsteady that one wrong step might make it topple.

Past a few towers of boxes I found a desk high as my chest, behind which stood a tanned woman who grinned and waved me closer.

"Hello!" she said. "You’re C____, right? Here for the editor job?"

I nodded as I stepped over boxes to reach her desk.

Her long, bushy, curly hair was dyed like a bright sea. She leaned over the tall desk as if to lounge on top. Her fuchsia sweater hung over her thin but shapely frame, one shoulder bare and showing enough cleavage for a rodent to make a burrow in. Between that and her dark sunglasses she looked more at home in a bar.

"Good.” She chuckled. “I've told Emma she's needed an editor." She leaned forward, chin on her hands. "And I can just tell you'll be perfect for the job."

I took a tense breath and coughed from perfume thick enough to classify as fog. I wanted to think she referred to the phone interview, but the husky way she said that last sentence made me feel she stared a hole into me behind those shades.

"I hope so." I felt a lump in my chest. I needed to prepare for conversation, so I gestured to the boxes. "Is this an intentional maze, or can I get hired as an organizer, too?" The lady laughed, sliding on the desk.

“That’d be nice, then I could sit around and do my scales—nails.” She extended a hand with long emerald nails. "I'm Alya, Cutie." The lump in my chest grew bigger.

"N-Nice to meet you." I shook her soft hand, my own trembling. She giggled.

"Likewise." She waved to a door near her desk, which slid open like a card into a sleeve. "Go on in, I let Dr. Fara know you're here." She fluttered her fingers to me. “I’ll be waiting.”

I nodded and stepped through the door. I was happy to get away—I’d lose all focus for my interview if she kept talking like she was flirting with me.

I entered a dimmer room where the quiet atmosphere fell to buzzes and beeps from machines lining the walls, swirling tubes transferring dark liquids around them. It certainly looked like science. I thought the walls were painted black until I realized they were covered with maps, or graphs, or—star charts?

"Great, here, hoooold this!"

A hand thrust the end of a rope into mine. I flinched and stared at a woman my height. She’d blended in with the star charts under a black winter coat and gloves in spite of the late summer weather.

"What?" I held the rope as if it would explain itself. It didn’t.

I watched her dash across the room. Her night black hair trailed behind her like a cape of tendrils. My vision blurred, and I thought I saw nebulae in her hair.

She pressed a button hanging from the ceiling. I jumped as the back wall disappeared, revealing an expansive room beyond. The thick carpet looked white as snow. I felt a chill; a howl like wind trailed through the room.

Bare pine trees dotted the room like a Christmas storage. Why did she have so many trees? It looked like a winter tundra.

If we weren’t in a tower, I’d have said it was a winter tundra.

The pale woman tied the other end of the rope to the only tree with leaves. She smiled and stepped back onto the black carpet. The wall reappeared behind her. The rope hung stuck like a decoration.

Dr. Fara removed her dark winter apparel, revealing an equally black lab coat, though it practically glowed compared to the endless darkness of her hair, and she pointed to the rope in my hand.

"You probably don't waaaant to be holding that."

"What?" I asked. She tied the rope to a metal pipe behind me.

With a saunter to the black marble desk in the center of the room Dr. Fara sat in a chair, upholstered with such dark elegance that it looked like it swallowed the soul of a regal throne and laughed at executive office chairs as peasants. She looked me in the eye and frowned.

"Whatever you'rrrre selling, we don't want it."

"What?" I shook my head. I needed to start saying something else. "Sorry, I mean, I'm not selling anything." Dr. Fara leaned over her desk, chin on her fingers.

"We currently haaaave nothing to buy."

"I'm not—"

"Well, there is the diiiinosaur, I suppose.” She twirled a hand in her twirling hair and stared off into space. “I liked it as a mascot but it's hard to keep fed."

"Dinosaur?" I gripped the back of the plush seat before her desk, wary of sitting before the miscommunication was fixed. "No, wait, I'm here for a job interview. My name’s C____."

"What job?"

I swallowed. I was sinking. I expected to be leaving very soon.

"The editor job?" I asked.

Dr. Fara pressed a button on her intercom.

"Alya, I thought I decided not to hire an editor."

"You changed your mind yesterday," Alya said.

"No, I changed it again this morning, did I not tell you?" She looked at me. "No joooob opening. My treatises are perfect as they are."

"Oh. Um." I slumped as the nerves twisting through my body bubbled into disappointment. "Okay. That’s fine."

"Thanks for holding the rope, though.”

I returned to Alya and the bright mess of boxes. She shrugged.

"Sorry, she's changed her mind on the subject like 5 or 6 times this week."

I glanced back. That was a lot.

"But," Alya said, body and voice leering over her desk, "since you won’t become an employee . . ."

I felt something soft brush my leg but I pushed it away, staring at the door to Dr. Fara’s office. The bubbles of disappointment popped.

"How many times did she change her mind yesterday?"

"Er.” Alya looked up and waved a finger. “Three."

"How many times might she today?" I asked. Alya laughed.

"If you’d like to wait and see if she changes her mind again–" Her desk buzzed.

"Alya!” said Dr. Fara. “Is thaaaat editor still here? Send them back in, I changed my mind."

Alya smiled and waved me back into the room, where Dr. Fara stood behind her desk. She gestured to the plush seat in front and I sat. She tossed a set of papers to me glued in one corner.

"I was thiiiinking an editor would only limit me.” She glared a hole into me. “I thought, I don't need someone telling me how to change my treatises. Is it reeeeally mad science if it doesn't come from the gut? Might someone noooormal not dilute the message?"

I wanted to protest being called normal but she kept talking. Her pacing footsteps clacked against hard marble—wait, wasn’t it carpet? I must’ve mistaken it with the room outside.

"But no, thaaaat's how my fellow mad scientists would think. That's noooot how the people I'm sending these treatises to would think!”

She wasn’t even looking at me. I shuffled through the papers. I started to suspect a joke was being played on me. Did she say mad scientist? She pounded a fist on her desk and I jumped.

"I've realiiiized something important! It's hard toooo instill fear of my brrrrilliance into the populace if theeeey only laaaaugh and point out my spelling mistakes!" She raised a twisted hand to the heavens. “And hoooow DARE thoooose fools laugh at me! IIII should be laughing at them!” She pointed a demanding finger at me. "Miiiight the powerrrr of an editor magnifyyyy the threatening aura of my disquisitions to show those fooools they will be the ones laughed at? Prove it to me!"

I skimmed through the rambling essay. Half was science jargon I barely grasped—something about dimensions being pear-shaped?—and the rest was threats about armies and domination.

Somehow that stopped mattering as I noticed the poor grammar and sterile word choice. Unbidden, my brain pointed out all the improvements I could make. I tore myself away back to Dr. Fara.

"I'm sorry, what kind of scientist are you?"

"Mad phycisist."

I still suspected a joke was being played on me. Nonexistent company, changing her mind, mad scientist—was this even a real job?

"What type of work do you do?"

With a thunk I felt a gust pass my head. A pipe clanged against the wall.

My heart hammered as my ears rang. I stared at the pipe as if to look away would lead to the discovery that it had instead embedded into my skull. The world felt blurry, thick as tar.

"Aha!” Dr. Fara grinned. “They took the bait!" With her whole body she heaved the pipe. She strained as if something pulled against her.

My head’s thrumming settled. My breathing steadied. I realized Dr. Fara was yelling at me to help her pull.

I stood and planted my hands on her desk. The chair teetered behind me.

"What the hex is going on here? What do you mean mad scientist? What is that rope? What is this place?" I wanted answers. I’m not sure I cared if they were satisfactory.

"I'll explain after we have cookies!" Dr. Fara said. "At least call myyyy assistant in here!"

I shoved my face in my hands but pressed the intercom. Hopefully Alya would bring some normalcy.

"Alya, get in here!" Dr. Fara shouted.

"What?" asked Alya. "I—did they sign? You told me to stay hidden until–”

"You!" Dr. Fara screamed at me. "Siiiign the employment paper on the desk!"

I babbled. My hands waved. I wasn’t in the mood to be given demands.

"Not until you explain what all this is!"

"Good enough for me! Alya, get in here!"

The door swung open. I stared slack-jawed as Alya rushed in with a sea of slithering aquamarine, past her miniskirt a long, scaly snake body. I watched her body slip along the floor like an effortless fluid as more muscles flexed and twisted than in my entire body.

"A naga?" I choked out. Alya grinned. She flicked her forked tongue to me.

"You recognize one, Cutie?" She gripped her tail around the rope and pulled.

I hate to say it, but in that moment, the fact a pipe had nearly hit my head stopped mattering. Nagas weren’t real. I knew that fact. I was sharply, sadly aware of that fact.

I’m not sure what I was thinking anymore. I wanted answers but they wouldn’t matter. I wanted to grip a rope to reality like those ladies gripped theirs. I wanted to grab their rope and let it pull me to whatever unreality I had found myself.

Frustration won out over other considerations: frustration with the situation, with not knowing, and with reality.

"Nagas aren't real!" I shouted. "None of this is!” I practically flailed my arms. “What is going on?"

"Listen, I'm a mad scientist," Dr. Fara said. "I deal in physics, incluuuuding universal and dimensional travel, like wormholes."

Alya grinned. "Like pulling a poor innocent naga from her home and not knowing where to send her back."

"So a dinosaur?" I asked.

"It's hard to feed because I don't know iffff its diet is extinct or from another dimension," Dr. Fara said.

I stared at her void-like hair.

"Are you even from this dimension?"

"Oh, I don’t know anymore." Fara grinned. “But something I do know . . .”

She heaved the rope back. The wall warped as small figures tumbled out.

"It’s howwww to find Christmas cookies at the source!"

Dainty elves danced about the room like ballerinas, barely as high as my knee. Their crimson-emerald garments billowed around them as gossamer as moonlight’s reflection. Their hair swirled like a stream of snowy mist, and through it I caught eyes flickering red and green like Christmas lights.

They would have given the impression of divine angels were they not snarling and growling like feral animals. As one they turned to look at us and charged.

"Whoop, scatter!" Dr. Fara and her assistant ducked to the sides.

I looked back and forth. Before I could think, the elves tackled me. Despite their size they hit like flying logs.

I slammed onto firm carpeting and lost my breath, arms pinned. The elf with the longest hair stepped its icy-hard feet down my chest. It grabbed my shoulders and leaned in close. Its fair skin and smooth features would have looked beautiful if not for its snarling.

With where Fara found the elves I expected them to smell like musty woods. Instead they smelled warm. It was an oddly familiar scent. A strongly familiar scent.

Cookies—these elves smelled like cookies. Well, Fara had said something about cookies. Maybe the elves had been baking.

The elf growled at me, but it softened to a murmur. I heard bells jingle in my ears, and the cookie scent washed over me. My thoughts struggled to form over the jingling. I clenched my head but the warm scent relaxed me. A hand soft as light caressed my face, kneading my rough brain into soft dough. I let the scent of cookies wash through my head as my thoughts faded into the bells, brain warm, baked, like cookies. The growls twisted into coos, fawning over a cute, delicious cookie.

All I could smell was cookies. All I could think was delicious cookies. Nothing existed but me, the sweet smell of cookies, and the gentle hands squeezing the dough, squeezing me, the dough, into cookies, the scent rising from me, the cookie, kneaded, baked, delicious.

I was a cookie. I felt gooey from the heat. I sank into the warm baking, rising into the bliss of being a delicious cookie. My mind floated through a warm wonderland of sugary snow as it baked into the belief I was a cookie. I was a delicious cookie to be eaten, no sweeter joy in life.

My vision sparkled until a hole swallowed the sparkles up. The bells silenced. I saw Dr. Fara laughing as she held a butterfly net full of snarling elves.

“If theeeey don’t work out as an editor, they can make a good meat shield.”

The oven fell cold. The baking stopped.

I dropped into silent darkness.

With a jolt I awoke, sprawled on cushions in darkness. I twitched upon smelling cookies, but I looked at my hands and felt my cold arms. I was not a cookie. I was human.

How long was I out? I stood and followed the cookie scent towards laughter and found Dr. Fara and Alya at a table.

"Ah, you're up!" Dr. Fara offered me a frosted cookie shaped like an elf. "Christmas cookie?"

I gripped the back of a chair and babbled. I wanted to ask what anything that just happened was, how it happened, what she was doing, anything, but all my questions jumbled into a pile.

"Christmas is months away!” That was all I could manage. Dr. Fara chuckled.

“It’s always Christmas somewhere.” She bit off the cookie’s head.

I gripped the chair as if letting go would send me careening through space, back to the warm bliss of—back to, no, back to the terror of whatever that chaos was!

“What the hex is going on here?”

"I allllready explained,” Dr. Fara said. “I'm a mad scientist. I work in physics. I need an editor. You start Monday."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "No, no, no, no, no. I haven't agreed to anything. I’m not going to—” Not going to? I knew even then the only thing I wasn’t going to do was walk out without further discussion. “That is, I’m not—isn’t—”

I seethed. I had a feeling this mad scientist knew I wasn’t leaving.

“We're going to have to discuss terms and perks,” I said.

Out the corner of my eye I saw Alya grin. I slowly looked at her with the straightest face I could muster, teeth clenched in my closed mouth to avoid a single twitch.

I wondered if she could tell I was particularly attracted to nagas.

Fara grabbed my chin and turned me to face her. She held the self-assured smile of a witch satisfied with their expert stitching on a doll. I couldn’t see anything in her eyes, not even a sparkle. I tensed to not tremble from her grip, soft as sunlight but strong as a black hole.

"There's nothiiiing to discuss. You're gooooing to take the job regardless of the terms."

"What makes you say that?" I tried to ignore the thought that her response might be that she would mind control me. I tried to squash the thought insisting that, much as I’d hate if she did, I’d still find it hot.

"Simple,” Fara said. “You haven't glossed over the weird stuff, and you haven't screamed and ran away. Yoooou've stayed. You're interested. And you're not going to walk awayyyy from something outside your old reality."

She stood from her chair, pulling me closer to her face. I tried and failed to not tremble as I stared into her eyes. I wasn’t sure how much was fear, how much was attraction, and how much was simply my lack of balance as I leaned forward, arms limp. She squeezed my face tighter.

"I checked what you've written online, you silly, saucy freak." Dr. Fara smiled, low and smug as a cat playing with a toy mouse.

“It’s so good!” Alya proclaimed. “You’ve captured my kind perfectly! I’m gonna read it all!”

Half of me wanted to wither and die. The other half inflated with pride—a naga thought my work of her kind was good?

"You'll be perfeeeect to edit my work,” Fara said. “And maybe other tasks I need you for."

I twisted from her grip like yanking out of a vise, and I stumbled back.

"W-Well, I st-still n-need to”—my hands waved over my face as if seeking a spot to grasp—“I need to think it over! Just give me some time, I’ll—”

"Just come in at 9:00 on Monday wheeeen you've decided," Fara said. I turned to her.

"14:00!"

She actually blinked. That was the only beat she missed. "11:00."

I was about to haggle for 13:00 but found myself answering, "Deal. I mean, if I decide to come.”

I stepped away but stopped.

“And, oh, um, please email me all the details of employment so I can decide."

"I'll do that," Dr. Fara said. "I'm looking forwarrrrd to seeing you on Monday." Alya slithered over the table, every part of her body from her head to her arms to her eyes and chest and butt leaning towards me.

"I'm really looking forward to working with you!" She laughed. I swallowed.

Was I really going to start working—I mean, consider working with these two? It seemed like a dangerous idea, but what other option was there? I mean, obviously the option to not work. Because I hadn't decided yet. What I would do.

As I left the tower I tried to weigh the pros and cons, but the pros circled my mind. I needed a job. It would be interesting. I could do what I enjoy.

My mind struggled to stay above the event horizon of adding to the pros “pretty ladies”.

I folded into my car. When I grabbed my keys from my purse I found a key fob. An attached tag held an imprinted pair of black lips and a message:

Press the button to see a job perk ;) -Dr. Emma Fara

I stared at it. I should’ve tossed it out the window and never looked back.

I pressed the button.

I dropped weightless into a void and darkness strangled my eyes. My screams echoed backwards and never began. I felt every inch of my skin, every organ, every cell twist through space, stretch through time, condense into a single moment in a single point lasting for no time nowhere all time everywhere until I shuddered onto an upholstered dining seat.

"Hello, C____," Dr. Fara purred. She sat next to me. "Welcome to my private zone. Feel free to continue screaming. No one can hear you scream in here."

I panted as I gathered my bearings. My voice faded quickly as if sounds couldn’t carry far in this space. I stared at Dr. Fara, the gleaming table, the sparkling glasses, the fresh-scented candles, all as if set out for a meal. My body loosened as the chair molded to it, holding me like a gentle hand of the universe. I followed Dr. Fara’s black gown to the equally dark floor where they appeared to merge.

"What?" I asked.

"A pocket dimension I creeeeated where time and space don't apply." She leaned closer. "You've been worrrrking for me for several months, from my point of view."

I glared.

"I thought you messed with space, not time."

"Time, space, it's all relative." Fara squeezed her cool hands on my hot face and pulled me closer, her gown billowing over my skin like silken spacedust. "I have a date with the present you, but firrrrst I’m going to give the past you a taste of what's in store if you come work for me."

I tried to ask how she slipped that device to me from the future, but she pulled me to her lips and kissed me, a long, deep kiss, somehow dark as if pulling me into a shroud.

For the duration of the kiss my thoughts felt muffled. All I could focus on was her cool embrace, a dark void swirling around me. I tasted a chill, even as my body warmed up, her tongue a vortex of taste that never settled as if cycling through the entire universe. Her kiss felt human, and yet inhuman, beyond human.

Who was this woman who had taken an interest in me, who seemed innocently eccentric until you looked closer and by the time you noticed that unearthly madness you were clawed in?

She'd said she didn't know if she was from my dimension. How much of her was from any normal dimension?

These things I did not think at the moment. I only thought them later. At that moment I had no thoughts as she wrapped me in her shadowy embrace.

I really shouldn’t have gone back after that, the way she kissed me without consent, the way her tongue gripped control of my mouth. Her arms wrapped around my head like tentacles, with a force that suggested she could have cracked my skull or suffocated me in her enfolding grip. Her gown billowed around and seeped between my legs, and I’m sure if I’d tried to stand, tendrils would have pinned me in a commanding, yet somehow cozy, grip. I couldn’t move my arms, and I’d have sworn she gained two extra arms to deepen her engulfing embrace.

The fact was, I found it hot, too hot to actually want to pull away, even if I could.

She’d said she looked up the kind of stuff I wrote. She must have known I’d find this too hot to resist.

Outer space shouldn’t taste like anything, it shouldn’t smell like anything, but the darkness I felt could only be interpreted by my brain as the taste of the universe. It felt like I kissed a portal, sucking my thoughts and desires into her, a portal I would be pulled through inexorably before too long.

Later I thought I'd glimpsed myself on the other side, writing these words.

The thought didn't make sense at the time. Writing what words? I didn't know.

What I did know was working for her would be the worst decision I could ever make.

I also knew if I didn’t, nothing else I’d ever do would feel like it mattered.

Above all, I knew one thing.

I started work Monday.