He woke up covered in a fine misting of sweat. A cool breeze was gently blowing across cold, hard stone beneath him with an annoying little whistle. He blinked and looked around blearily at the room he was in. It was less of a room and more of a place, a place made from grey, interlocking granite blocks with a thatched wooden roof above him. The walls weren’t strictly walls in the literal sense, they were crumbling things that more suggested the idea of being a wall, rather than devoting any great effort towards following through on it.
Bits of crumbling stone was strewn about the floor and he found he was laying on top of a pile of dry hay that smelled vaguely of wet fur. He looked down to his hands, slightly concerned that they might be the source of the smell and was relieved to find very little fur on them, and none of it particularly wet.
He was covered with soft pink skin which meant he was human. He wasn’t sure exactly how he knew that but felt it was probably significant. While there might be stuff on the outside of his head there was certainly nothing on the inside and he found that he couldn’t remember much of anything.
“Your name is Bob!” a voice said.
Bob, if that was his name, jumped up startled. Next to him a metal thing skittered across the stone floor and laid resting at his feet. It was a sword, although not a very impressive one. It had the look of a sword you’d buy if you didn’t have the money to buy a proper sword. He snatched it up and pointed the sharper end at the source of the voice anyway. If he was intending to look threatening it wasn’t entirely successful.
Bob said in surprise, “You’re a dog!”
The small black and white dog huffed wearily to itself and sighed. “I’m a cat!” it told him grumpily.
Bob narrowed his eyes. Although he couldn’t remember very much of anything, there was one thing he was certainly sure of. “No, you’re a dog. You’re big and pointy and your tail is wagging. I’m pretty sure that those are definite signs that you’re a dog,” he told the dog. “If I wasn’t absolutely certain that you’re a dog, I could at least be completely certain that you’re not a cat!”
The dog growled a low and menacing rumble, bearing its teeth threateningly. “You’re a dog!” it told him with a very dog-like snarl.
Bob lowered the sword and said, sounding a little confused, “I’m not a dog. I’m walking upright on two legs and holding a sword that’s secured between my fingers and my opposable thumb. I’m human!”
Wind blew into the crumbling building and the dog’s fur bristled. “Humans are worse than dogs!”
Bob frowned curiously. “And eggs don’t taste as good as chicken but you can’t expect to throw a chicken-leg into a frying pan and end up with an omelette.”
The dog told him proudly, “I am a cat!”
Bob shook his head. “No, you’re a dog. I don’t think the world works like that. If you’re born one thing then you are that thing. If you can’t accept what you are then you’re suffering from mental illness.”
“That’s hate-speech against my feline kind!” the dog warned him.
“I think it’s just common sense!” Bob shrugged. “At least it is where I come from!”
The dog stepped closer and looked him over suspiciously. “And where do you come from, Bob?”
That was actually a rather good question and answers were certainly thin on the ground. Bob shrugged again, turning to keep a watchful eye on the dog as it padded around him. “I don’t know. Where am I?”
“You’re Here!” the dog told him, giving a little chuckle. “Nobody knows what this place is called so we all just refer to it as ‘Here’.”
“The doesn’t really help very much if I want to be somewhere else!” Bob grumbled. “I don’t think I come from Here, I think I come from somewhere else.”
“Everyone comes from somewhere else!” The dog laughed and then turned to face him, glaring at him with clear menace. “But you don’t know where There is, do you?”
Bob had to admit, “I don’t. But how do I get There?”
“Where?” said the dog.
“There!” said Bob. “The there that isn’t Here.”
The dog sighed to itself. It explained unhelpfully, “Well you’re Here so if you want to go There, you have to stop being Here. It’s obvious really.”
Bob narrowed his eyes. “Like working out the fact that you’re really a dog and not a cat, because you’re clearly actually a dog?”
“I’m a cat!” it told him haughtily. “How dare you question my identity! I’m free to make this choice.”
Bob smiled at the ridiculousness of all this. “The only choice you’ve made is to lose all grasp on reality.”
“Humans!” the dog growled. “No imagination!”
Bob chose to ignore it. He looked around the crumbling stone building. There was a small stool with a metal jug on it in the corner. He slowly edged over and peered dubiously inside. He was hungry and he noticed and the jug was filled with milk. He poured some into a battered clay cup.
“Hey,” the dog protested. “That’s my breakfast!”
Bob reached for the sword that was now held in a leather sheath at his side. He narrowed his eyes and glared as threateningly as he could, but it wasn’t particularly threatening at all. “It’s my breakfast now!” he said bravely with his hand hovering just above the handle of his disappointing weapon.
The dog sat down and seemed to smile in a very catlike way. “Sure, you enjoy it.”
Bob grinned to himself in victory. “I will,” he said, drinking the whole cup at once. It was deliciously creamy. He put the cup down and said, “So what’s your name anyway?”
The dog said, “Snowflake!”
Bob rolled his eyes. “That’s a strange name for a dog. Is it because of your white fur?”
The dog glared at him and said with a hiss, “It’s hair, not fur and I’m actually ginger, not white.”
“But…” Bob began. He stopped himself and decided to just let this go. He began to pour another cup of milk. “This is great, where did you get it?”
The dog smiled at him broadly. It said, “Are you enjoying it?”
“Yeah!” Bob told him. “It’s great. I don’t see any cows around here, it must have been hard to find.”
Snowflake sat down and stared at him, an odd smile on her pointy dog-face. “No cows around here.”
Bob thought about this for a moment and began to frown. “Goats?”
“No,” the dog said evenly. “There’s nothing like that around here. There’s just me!”
Bob stared at her in growing concern. He looked to the cup and then back to the dog. “Oh my…” he said in disgust, spitting out a mouthful and wiping his tattered sleeve over his face.” He grunted, “Don’t tell me that was-”
“I won’t tell you then!” Snowflake said. “But by your own logic, that won’t make it any less true.”
Bob sneered at the dog. “How could you not tell me?”
Snowflake seemed to shrug. “You didn’t ask!” she said. “Anyway, resources are scarce here, you’re probably better off There.”
Bob couldn’t agree more. “I need to get out of Here.”
“Yes!” Snowflake said.
“Well…” Bob flustered, the taste of warm, fresh, creamy delusional-dog milk still on his tongue. “What’s going on? Where is this place?”
The dog, Snowflake, got up and walked around. “Who knows!” she said. “I woke up here, remembering nothing except that I was a cat. I am a cat, you know!”
“I don’t care!” Bob told her, and really meant it.
“I was told by a Dwarf, who looked rather tall, that there’s a magician at the top of the mountain who can help you get out of Here. You have to answer a question correctly and if you do, he sends you There,” Snowflake said.
Bob realised there was probably an ominous side to all this. “And if you answer incorrectly?”
“He gives you the delusional belief that you’re really the opposite of what you are,” she said. “It didn’t seem to work on me though, I held firm in knowing that I’m really a cat.”
“A ginger cat!” Bob suggested sarcastically to the white dog.
“Exactly,” she agreed. “A beautiful ginger cat.”
Bob sighed to himself as his stomach began to growl at him. “I need to get out of Here.”
“Then you need to see the dark magician,” she told him. “He lives on the small mountain in the Valley of Light.”
“Of course he does,” Bob grumbled and rolled his eyes.

The journey was a long and dangerous one across the ‘Mountain of Pain’ which jutted high into the grey clouds above. Luckily there was also a nice paved path that led right to the magician’s village which wasn’t dangerous at all and was lined with bushes that had the tastiest fruit he’d ever tried. Sadly, he couldn’t try very much of it because his stomach was violently protesting about being filled up with dog milk. He did unspeakable things behind several of the very same bushes for that very same reason.
He finally made it up to the door. It was a huge wooden barricade, held together with blackened straps of wrought iron. It was an ominous sight and he hesitated as he raised his hand to knock on it. Above him the sound of flying animals screaming at one another filled the air.
He touched the cold, hard hilt of his pathetic sword and rapt his knuckles against the door with the other. He swallowed his apprehension, knowing he could only wait now as his fate revealed itself to him.
The door clanked from the inside as bolts were pulled back. Then it creaked open.
He felt a rush of fear and found himself stepping back as a daunting sight filled his vision.
“Hello!” said the dark magician with a happy smile. He looked like a favourite uncle, perhaps someone who gave to charity without bragging about it. He was dressed in a dirty, but not very dirty, robe tied together with a ropey, but not very ropey, piece of rope.
It wasn’t a particularly intimidating encounter at all and left Bob feeling largely disappointed.
“Are you the dark magician?” Bob said with a slight shudder of nervous anticipation.
“Well yes…” he said. “It’s Ian, actually. Ian Dark. I do magic and stuff so the whole name thing stuck.”
“I see,” Bob said, not really seeing at all. “I want to go There but I’m Here. I was told when I wasn’t here, but somewhere else, and not the There I want to go, just not the same here as Here,” Bob explained. “I was told you could help.”
“Makes perfect sense!” Ian told him. “Why don’t you come in?”
“You haven’t invited me!” Bob said.
Ian frowned to himself and then stepped back and said, “Please come in!”

“It’s all very simple,” Ian explained. “I merely ask you a question. If you can answer it correctly then you don’t have to be here anymore, you can be There.”
“And if I answer it incorrectly?”
Ian smiled at him, showing off a set of slightly wobbly, mismatched teeth as if they each belonged in a different head. “Try not to do that. Life is confusing enough already without any more of that.”
“Any more of what?” Bob shuddered to think.
“People being cursed forever to being the opposite of what they are,” Ian explained. “It’s dreadful and terribly confusing. Myself, I’m an accountant from Surrey, I think. I’m pretty sure my name wasn’t Ian at all, I think it used to be Shaniqua.”
“OK!” Bob frowned. It was too late now to turn back. “So that’s all there is to it, you simply ask me a question?”
Ian nodded. He said, “I don’t know how it all works here in Here. I found all this written on the inside of a magic stick when I arrived and it’s been working ever since. I find it’s best to go along with it and not ask too many questions.”
Bob frowned. “But there are so many questions,” he said. “Doesn’t all this work by you asking me another one?”
“Oh yes!” Ian said darkly. “My question is this. Who are you really?”
“What?” Bob flustered nervously as a wave of terror crashed down on him. Was his fate to forever be cursed to imagine himself as the exact opposite of what he really was? How would that even work? Was he really Bob, a human, or was that already the delusion? What was the opposite of ‘human Bob’?
“I don’t remember!” he said, his voice almost pleading. “How can I answer that?”
“You must…” Ian said with a sigh. “If you don’t, you will be cursed forever into the horrific darkness of identity confusion. Would you like a nice cup of tea?”
“But…” Bob closed his eyes and sunk into his chair. “But… I can’t answer that.”
“You have no choice!” Ian told him grimly. “It’s started and there’s really nothing else for it. The magic-stick was quite specific about the details.”
“Don’t you mean a ‘magic-wand’?” Bob said.
Ian shrugged and said, “It’s probably the opposite of that!”
Bob didn’t know what to say.
Ian’s voice came to him in a most unwelcome way as he heard him say, “It’s time to answer.”
Bob looked up with a pair of sad eyes. He said simply, “I don’t know!”
Ian smiled happily. “Of course! None of us do, not really. We get ourselves into trouble when we start to decide that our own flawed ideas about things are the only possible truth. That is, of course, the correct answer. That’s the one admission that lets us go from Here to There. Good luck with all that!”
Bob slowly faded away into nothing as he stopped being in Here.