The wrong side of the wire

I was a woman with powerful psychic abilities. As a teenager I'd had a best friend. She was lively and fun, and we shared many adventures, but then we drifted apart.

I was in a labyrinth, wandering from room to room. I entered a dark room about twice the size of a tennis court. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all featureless gray concrete. Strung across the middle of the room at chest height was a single strand of twisted barbed wire. It divided the room into two dark halves, along its longest dimension.

I was on one side of the wire. I could see it stretching into the gloom. As I walked along it, I understood that the wire divided this world from some other one. The land of the dead, perhaps, or a dulled-out reflection of this world ... I didn't know.

I was most of the way across the room when, out of the blackness beyond the other side of the wire, my old friend loomed towards me. It had been twenty years since we last met. Her face was aged but recognizable. She bore an expression that was mostly blank, but tinged at the corners of the eyes and lips with a layer of despair just beneath.

In the barest whisper, mostly just mouthing the words, she said, "Help me."

I knew that since she was on the other side of the wire, something terrible had happened to her in the past, either all at once, or slowly, and now she was trapped in that other world. Her emotions, her memories, her will to live -- all were drained to the barest flicker. She was barely alive at all, and if she remained on that side, she would never truly live again.

Staring into her eyes, just a few feet away in the gloom, I knew I had to try something. I drew close until I was only a few inches from the sharp points of the wire.

"I'm going to try and help you," I told her.

She nodded, slowly.

"But you need to be ready."

I knew that, like myself, the apparition before me was my friend's spirit, but not her actual body. Her spirit was trapped here and it was only luck that I found her while my spirit wandered through. To bring her across the wire I was going to have to use power that would be dangerously intense. It might reach through to her physical body beyond the spirit world and give her a seizure, or even a heart attack.

"You need to make sure that your body is not near anything sharp, or in a high place. Can you do that?"

She nodded again.

"Okay."

I tilted my head forward. I closed my eyes, though even with them closed the image of the wire was clear in my mind. I pushed out with my mental energy. The wire trembled. Ripples ran along it. Then it began to bend away from me, flexing into the space on the other side of the room. More of the space in the room was on my side now -- in my world.

I concentrated very hard, pushing the wire. As I pushed I began to float through the air, moving alongside the wire, back the way I'd been walking. As I moved, the more distant parts of the wire began to un-bend, drifting back into place. I was frustrated to notice that I was moving away from my friend. I could make more space on this side of the wire but not where she was. I was failing.

There was one more thing I could try. Turning my head to face my friend, I dropped my concentration on the wire and instead sent a blast of will towards her. As loud as I could - which was a deafening explosion of sound - I shouted the words "WAKE UP!!"

The wire snapped back into place, shoving me with it, dividing the room exactly in half once again.
I ran up its length until I saw my friend again. She was awake, and alert. There was color in her cheeks. Her eyes were moving. She saw me and recognized me. But my heart wrenched in my chest: She was only inches from the wire, but still on the wrong side.

I ran over to her. She reached her arms out, extending them over the wire. I ran into her arms. The wire jammed between our bodies. I didn't care. I dropped my head onto her shoulder, with my arms below the wire and around her back. She circled my head with her elbows.

I cried into her shoulder, with massive, aching sobs, soaking her shirt with tears. "I'm sorry!" I bawled. "I'm so sorry. I can't bring you across!" I cried and repeated this for a while, burying the sound in her shirt. She hugged me tightly.

"I could try again," I said, sniffling. "But even if I try as hard as possible, the most I can do is pull you over to this side for one day. Then... You'll fall asleep... And the wire will reach out, and drag you back!!"

I sobbed some more. After a while my friend unwound her arms from my head. I looked up into her face. Her eyes were wet with tears. She was smiling. It was an expression of tragic resignation, mixed with forgiveness.

Slowly, she drifted backwards, out of my embrace, her arms still open, half-reaching towards me. Her expression did not change as she vanished into the gloom, lost in the silent darkness on the other side of the wire.

I woke up.