The Lyre: Guest Post By Dominic Deep

I lie.
It helps me think.
And I think it's very important that you know I'm a lyre, or you would find me very confusing.  Although, you'll find me very confusing any way.  It's not my fault.  I was born that way.
I was born dead.

She's in front of me.  Walking like a penguin on stilts.  Only short.  It would be entertaining to watch if I were the type to be entertained.
I can only see the back of her head, her knitted hat, but I know her face is tilted up, looking into the sky.  I better catch up with her before she runs into a lamp post.  It wouldn't be the first time.
I take wider strides, till I'm by her side.  I stay close to the side walk edge, but stiffen, feeling her too close.  Always too close.  Never close enough.
"Good morning Domino!" Her raspy, but high and happy voice chimes.
"Morning Qym."
It's the same thing every morning as I go to school and walk Qym to work.  Morning Domino.  Morning Qym.  And no other sound in the early morning but her breathing and the soft squeaking and clicking of her metal legs.
Qym lost her legs five years ago, but that's not the important thing about her.
Here's something that may come as a surprise to you.  So I'm warning you in advance.  I also want you to pay close attention to what I'm about to tell you.  Your not going to understand.  But maybe you'll salve the mystery if you look very very close.
Qym is dead.
I'm talking to a dead girl.  She doesn't know she's dead, she's still stuck in the past.
I listen to her breathing.  The very faint, squeak  of her metal knee joints bending.  Click-click  of her bent, plastic feet.  Things I hear every morning and never pay attention to.  I say goodbye to every move she makes.
It throbs in my head like a clock.  Gone.  Gone.  Gone.  Gone.
Maybe living people really are just dead people.  Maybe everyone's a ghost.  Not just me.  They're all ending up like me in the end any way.
All ending up like Savy.
We're passing the grave yard on our left.  It's small and pathetic.  A wired gate surrounds the grassy garden of stones.
I can't make myself not glance through the gate at the little flat stone.  I can just barely see it.  It's the closet one to the gate, probably not important enough to get a place in the middle, or a stone taller then the tips of the grass.
I've memorized the lable.
Selvester E Burns  2016-2029  Rest In Peace
I wish I could have written Savy a better epitaph.  No one would let me though.  He would have liked it if I wrote his epitaph.  I guess Savy and I never really discussed the subject of death until two minutes before it came.
Here's another thing you need to know that you wont understand, and I don't understand it either.  So if you don't want to read any more after you read this, I understand.  If I had to read my own life as a book, I would have stopped reading.
Here's the thing.
Savy isn't dead.
It's wrong, I know.  It's been wrong from the beginning.  For one thing, I can't be dead.  It's obvious because you've just witnessed me walking and talking.  Qym also cannot be dead, for the same reason why I can't be dead.  And lastly, Savy can't be alive because...Well...He is dead.
I'm starting from the beginning.  I'm going to sum all this up in a few sentences.
My name is Domino.
I don't exist.
And that's how I broke reality.