Or, the tale of a dreamer compelled to navigate their cryptic inner world on the painful but necessary journey from death to rebirth.
Head west toward the setting sun, against the shadows of the stones. And woe to thee, son of the crow, if nest in you thoughts of your home.
Follow the omen flying low through pieces shifting like the sands, and capture tones of visions sown when sleep casts spells upon this land.
Let lunar glow direct your steps; find power in its beams. If dreams you wish to rest in, descend into the book of Weston.
The old man follows the shuffling queue cutting through the humid evening. The rain just stopped, and heat-phantoms rise from the concrete underfoot. He does not remember how he came to be here. A long road stretches out behind him, curving out of sight. Glancing back at it, his mind is filled with a confused mixture of satisfaction, regret, and weariness. More than anything, he longs for rest.
He fiddles with an old coin in his pocket and looks up at the ebony dome that sets something slithering over his insides. Handing over his last coin, he grabs the damp, black ticket and slips through billowing curtains.
Submerged in the tropical lobby, the wallpaper sweats and peels, and hushed speculative whispers condense in the air. A bell tolls, and the crowd snakes through thick obsidian doors.
He considers turning back, but he has no energy left to fight, so he's trapped in the current flowing over the threshold into the crescent-moon amphitheater.
Spectators settle into slick leather seats descending toward the murky pool: a perfect, placid circle in the center of the theater. He remains standing, pondering, as the dome is plunged into darkness, then a circle of lights just below the surface illuminates the perimeter of the tank.
Dead silence from the crowd. He grips the frayed insides of his empty pockets as the waters churn and some immense shape rises. He bites his tongue to trap the scream as a single tentacle breaks through the waves, exposing rows of gaping suction cups to the spotlight shining from the rafters and flinging gallons onto the cheering crowd before slapping the surface triumphantly with a crack.
The roar he hears could be the crowd or the beast or both. He clenches his fist to stop the trembling as four more tentacles emerge like fingers on one monstrous hand, tips twisting over the audience like desperate searching periscopes.
What have I done? wonders the creator, for he knows what summons this frenzied kraken from its depths.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” booms a voice, “I present to you . . .”
But a tentacle whips over the congregation, leveling an entire section with one swift movement. Collective gasp. Panic. Loudspeakers crackle, helpless, as another arm pulls them into the swirling pool with a brilliant shower of sparks.
He steps back, but it reads his mind. An appendage snaps and a steel beam falls, barring the exit. A slimy mass engulfs his waist in a lover's embrace, and he flies toward the pool, toward spiraling circles of teeth like concentric crowns of ivory thorns. Rows and rows and rows in the warm, familiar darkness.
She is the girl of rounded corners,
rubber floors, and padded bars.
The keeper of a thousand rooms,
a thousand shades of comfort.
Her golden voice reverberates
off curving white vinyl walls
of an echoey bathroom, warm
water gurgling out of spouts
the shape of animal mouths
open wide to the world.
No fear, open wide.
She is a store of endless aisles
of fog and multicolored lights
and free toys from floor to ceiling.
She is the golden restaurant smells
of salt and sugar overflowing.
She is the glow of Christmas lights
on a manicured lawn at night.
She is the chest burning with
memories out of reach.
She is a labyrinth of faux rooms
in a furniture store, layers
of curtains and bowls
of ageless plastic fruit.
She is the sun shining through
the windows of a doorless playroom,
toys spread across the carpet.
She is an office above the mall,
sunset slanting through blinds
and glistening headlights
on the road below,
and the scent of warm carpet,
printer dust and analog optimism,
the business of the world humming
forever at a safe distance.
There is a bedroom in a labyrinth underground, and in the bed, a child is dreaming. Plastic stars scattered across the ceiling glow down on him, lighting his nocturnal wanderings. He embraces a plush teddy bear that, sensing the beginnings of a nightmare, softly sings to him a lullaby: “I see the moon, and the moon sees me..."
He never wants to leave this place, and he knows he never will. There is no time down here. The future is a vague mist easily forgotten. Now is real. Now stretches to infinity in all directions.
But his bedroom door creaks open, casting a sliver of golden light on the wallpaper teeming with smiling nursery rhyme creatures watching over him. A young girl approaches his bed, kneels down, and touches him gently on the shoulder. His eyes flutter open. He smiles.
“Sophia."
“Time to wake up," she says. “You've been sleeping for so long. Come and play with me."
He rubs his eyes and sits up. She takes his hand and guides him out into the glowing hallway. She has always been with him; he doesn't remember a time without her. She crawls behind the walls with him, into the secret places of this subterranean house.
Adults exist in a cloudy dimension three feet above. They've seen the future, and they are scared. They murmur of impending danger.
Curious, he searches for the object of their fear, stalking down dark halls with a plastic sword. He knows he'll beat it if he finds it; he's the hero.
Sure enough, as he explores the upper levels, he hears a beast growling in the distance, drawing him upward, begging to be vanquished. Sophia begs him not to go. She weeps and rends her golden hair. She tugs at his arm, but he breaks away. She does not follow.
He ascends, through door after door, until the passageway narrows so that he must crawl, squeezing himself up and out of a hole in the base of a large fruit tree. He rises to his feet and walks mindlessly into the dark world.
In the woods, he finds another: a boy like him, a younger brother. They form a team to find the monster. The younger knows just where to find it. He found it before, carving a path of destruction through the trees behind his home, but, alone, he could not face it.
Now, under the milky moonlight, amongst the fireflies, the two boys rage. With righteous fury, they beat the sleeping dragon with its claw, the monstrous caterpillar threatening their woods. They must defend their territory while it still exists.
They smash its glass eyes with knotted ends of tree branches. Pocketknives out. Pine straw, leaves, and lighter fluid. Fire heats their upturned faces and shines in their young eyes. Covered in sweat and full of pride, they marvel at their easy victory.
A nearby dog starts barking, and the elder begins to leave, but the younger remains. He calls out to him, but, instead of turning, the younger walks, transfixed, toward the dying beast, his body only a small shadow in the roaring flames. Before the elder can react, the shadow is extinguished. He flees before the beast can consume him also.
The wind picks up and thunder rumbles as the boy makes his way back home. He wrestles turbulent thoughts, wondering what had compelled his companion into the flames. Out of breath, he stops and hears a distant grinding sound he cannot comprehend. Could the beast have survived? No, he shakes it off and continues forward, arrogant in his youth.
In the gloom, he spies the fruit tree and the hole from which he emerged. Relieved, he runs toward the tree, but a black mass moves in front of it, blocking his way. He skids to a stop. Two yellow eyes pierce the darkness and a low growling rumbles.
The boy takes a tentative step forward, and the snarling grows louder. The boy steps back. He circles to the left and then the right, but the vicious hound follows his every movement. As if sensing his stubbornness, the beast sprints toward him, barking loudly. The boy retreats through unforgiving branches and thorns that scourge his face and arms and legs. He continues running long after the barking fades, until he could not possibly find his way home.
The sun rises on the boy's wanderings. Lost and alone, time begins to reveal itself. He stops to stand in a white sunbeam that pierces the sparkling green canopy above, and he marvels at the size of his shadow projected against the bark of a sturdy oak tree. His body is changing; the woods seem to have stretched and distorted his limbs. Did the monster infect him? What is he becoming?
Drawn toward the gurgling whispers of a stream, he steps lightly through lush greenery, meandering with the waters until alien stone peeks out at him through thick underbrush. At last, shelter! He approaches a hidden temple, overgrown with vines and anchored by clinging roots to the forest floor.
He runs his thin fingers over the contours of a carved lion and feels its face split vertically down the middle. He pushes the right side and a section of wall caves inward, a door. Into the cool sanctum, he steps.
The interior walls are decorated with vast stone reliefs depicting a complex cosmic saga that the boy can't possibly comprehend. Instead, he looks toward the center of the room where an opening in the roof lights a round, placid pool.
As he timidly approaches, the light shines off a small object half-buried in the sandy floor. He bends down to grab it: a golden coin with a pentagram engraved on both sides. The coin is strangely heavy and warm. The boy carefully places it in his pocket, looks ahead, and sees a smaller version of this first coin in the sand. Its faces are blank. He picks it up then sees another and another. Soon a trail of coins is visible, leading toward the quiet pool.
Under its crystalline water, he spies a myriad of bills, gleaming coins, and holographic trading cards of all shapes and sizes, and of immense value, so he wades into the pool and reaches his hands under the warm water, and starts harvesting the riches.
He fills his pockets to bulging and still there is more that surfaces as he digs into the sandy bottom. And his heart drives him on, beating with the rhythm of more...and more...and more...
He straightens up. A rich, satisfied relaxation settles over him like he's just eaten a large meal and is ready for a nap. He wades out of the pool feeling grateful to this place, new thoughts pulsing through his head. He exits the temple, and a rough hand grabs his shoulder.
He turns with a jolt, and the grizzled face of a homeless man with a white moustache and dirty, tattered clothes fills his vision.
“Hey, what are you doing here?" the man grunts.
The boy rips his shoulder free from the man's grip and backs away, but he hears the sounds of others moving through the brush behind him.
“Boy, you can't be in there."
“What does he have in his pockets?"
“You aren't supposed to be here!"
“He thinks he's clever, don't he?"
“Police! Police!"
He dodges past the gathering crowd of adult protestors, disoriented, cheeks red with shame. Jealous hands grab at his hair, the back of his shirt, his pockets. He hears the squeal of a police whistle close behind him, a hand catches his ankle, and the boy falls and skids to a stop.
Handcuffs clinch his wrists tight, and he is jerked up and turned around. He fights back tears as the restless crowd gathers all around him, laughing, pointing and exchanging “I told you so's." He doesn't see any officer; the whole crowd claims authority here.
Some in the crowd start telling him about a machine they have. This is part of his punishment. From their cacophony, he gathers the following: they plan to hook his brain up to this machine, and life as he knows it will cease to exist. His identity will be annihilated, along with all his deviant tendencies. But slowly, painfully, he will find his new “self" by learning how to communicate through the machine.
A delegate approaches with glowing tablets that show him a presentation about the machine. A graphic shows a sampling of the people who've been hooked up so far and how many have committed suicide; their pictures are back-lit red instead of green. There is a shocking amount of red.
The boy points this out, but another crowd-member steps forward and calmly explains why the machine didn't cause the suicides. The boy is not convinced. He begs them not to do this. He pleads with his parents who have arrived and are watching the proceedings with cold eyes.
As they lead him away to the facility that houses the machine, the boy wonders why they bothered to explain it all if he has no choice in the matter. Perhaps his belief in the machine is required in some way. He also realizes they never emptied his pockets.
So he keeps his awareness there, on his untouchable treasure, as they lead him farther away from his sanctuary.
The family van rolls into the empty parking lot of a dentist's office at dusk. Parents lead their son by the arms into the abandoned lobby to a door with light underneath.
A dentist with a white moustache greets them with a smile. He has been expecting them. There is something vaguely familiar about the man, but the boy doesn't know exactly why.
He shows them an X-ray on a large projector screen. His parents nod seriously as the dentist gestures. The dentist invites the parents to wait in the lobby. They exit without even looking at the boy.
The dentist leads him to a too-large room in the back corner of the office with a lone dental chair in the center under a spotlight. He shuts the door and locks it.
“Have a seat."
The sky stands bloodied behind veiny tree limbs outside the sole window. A young bleach-blonde assistant enters and seals the door. She parts red lips, flashes a gentle smile, and inserts a syringe deep into his gums.
He grabs her wrist instinctively and resists the pressure but she removes a square chunk of mouth-flesh as a sample. He sobs repentant, and apologizes for resisting. She smiles sweetly.
“It's okay. Just relax." She does not know what she is doing.
The dentist hastily inserts an IV into the patient's right forearm then scurries down a trap door. A green liquid crawls down the tube and through the needle. From below, a machine rumbles to life, vibrating the whole room. The boy turns his head and sees a blown-up technicolor photo projected on the wall: a gaping mouth with an ugly pink mass where teeth should be.
He's feeling dizzy. How long should this take? He comments on the photo, but the assistant doesn't seem to hear. She approaches with two more IVs, one of which she slides into his left palm and the other underneath his middle finger. His thumb convulses.
The dentist reappears, applies another shot to the gums, and disappears. The room starts to rotate.
On the edge of his peripheral vision, the boy sees a tray lined with an assortment of sharp, gleaming utensils. The assistant runs fingernails through his hair, and whispers into his ear: “Everything is fine. This is not the end, not the end."
The dentist reappears holding a long, clear tube attached to some kind of pump. The patient's gums are throbbing but painless now. Everything else is numbing. Walls fade. A cold tube slithers down his throat. The spotlight above him intensifies until there is nothing else left. His family is gone. They've abandoned him. This is the end.
The room is moving again. Up this time, he thinks, but it's hard to tell.
He looks around at the rumbling yellow padded walls, a color now burned into his retinas by time and drugs. He rattles the chains clamped around his little wrists and laughs hoarsely because there's nothing else to do. Foreign thoughts fight for residency in his fractured mind.
The room squeals to a halt. One paneled wall opens, and the man with the white moustache enters. The prisoner averts his eyes and holds out his arms, ready for another injection, not ready to face the punishment he received last time he resisted. But rough hands unlock his chains, yank him onto his feet, and shove him out of the room.
Metal doors line both sides of the hall, a room for each student. He knows their names, their faces, but nothing else about them. They sit in rooms together, listening to the man lecture for hours as if in a trance. They sit in cells alone, hooked up to the machine as it pumps its messages – which are like the man's but stronger and more distilled – directly into their veins. He tries his best not to listen.
He assumes he's on the way to another of the man's lessons, but the man instead directs him down a new passageway. The boy walks unsteadily on atrophied legs down the long corridor until the man shoves him through unlocked double doors. Humid air, so foreign yet familiar, embraces the prisoner once again. There is a van backed up to the building, doors open. The man lifts him up and places him inside, then slams the doors shut.
From the darkness, dozens of eyes stare back at the prisoner, the young eyes of his fellow pupils, some swollen shut, most surrounded by dark circles. Each child is in some way disfigured: one is missing an ear, another a nose, others an arm or a leg. Their skin is riddled with the scars of lessons well-learned. The boy is desensitized to these things, and without access to his own reflection, he often wonders what was stolen from him.
He opens his mouth to ask something, but the man with the white moustache jumps into the driver's seat and barks, “Keep quiet," and revs the engine.
They drive down curving, desolate roads that cut through suffocating woods. The prisoner grows tired of waiting. What could the man do that would be worse than what he's already done? He curls his fingers through the steel lattice separating the back of the van from the cab and clears his throat.
“Where are you taking us?"
In the rearview mirror, the man's black eyes widen and flutter wildly.
“Shut up, boy!" The man grips the steering wheel tightly and, for a brief moment, the setting (or rising?) sun reflects off of the gold ring the shape of a ram's head that he always wears on his right middle finger, temporarily blinding the prisoner. But nothing can quell the rebellious rage expanding inside of him.
“You won't get away with this," he blurts out. “People will find out."
The man laughs quietly, almost relieved. “People already know. They don't care."
They're on a main road now, approaching a church. Teachers and older students are lined up outside the building, waiting expectantly for the new arrivals.
They herd the schoolchildren into the gym where tall piles of blue mats are stacked along the walls. Sensing danger, the boy hides in a crevasse between the mats, but a teacher tells him to come out. So, reluctantly, he sits in the bleachers at the end of the gym and watches his peers gather on the gym floor, which is scattered with various objects: glass, bricks, rebar, electric prods.
The participants chat excitedly, stretching, jogging in place. Then a buzzer sounds and chaos erupts and the boy stares in horror as his classmates turn to savages.
He sees Sarah bleeding from the nose and laughing hysterically right before she's knocked to the ground and jabbed in the neck with a buzzing taser. Nick sucker punches John who falls, skull cracking against the laminated floor like a gunshot. He spasms and foam pools out of his lips while Nick does a victory dance. Kate's eye is knocked out of her head by the impact of a concrete block and she cups it in her hand, smiling stupidly at it. Sneakers slip as bodily fluids pool across the basketball court, and the snapping of young bones echoes through the room. Dead-eyed custodians roll out carts full of rancid food for the players to throw at one another: goat cheese, sauerkraut, rotten eggs. Students laugh and vomit together.
The boy on the sidelines averts his eyes and rigidly sneaks along the perimeter. His stomach is tense and bile tickles his throat. They've cracked, all of them. The machine has infiltrated their spirits. But how was he able to resist? Why is he different? He could never stoop so low as them. Never, never.
Teachers and other spectators stand on the sidelines cheering, distracted. The boy slips out of the doors into fresh, clean air.
The parking lot is crowded with tailgaters watching the proceedings on TVs, and as he hurries across it, people murmur, wondering how he left unscathed. He stares at the ground feeling confused, agitated, superior, alone.
He runs into his uncle and fair-haired niece. They greet him excitedly; they are on their way inside. He tries to tell the girl she wouldn't like it, but his uncle shushes him, shaking his head. It's obvious he wants her to enter without warning. The boy feels a heaviness in his heart. They're all in on it.
Suddenly, a young teacher lunges out of the gym doors and points at the boy and shrieks: “Somebody grab him!"
He flees into the woods behind the school, branches whipping at his body, briars tearing his skin. He stumbles over a lumpy mass hidden beneath the leaves.
The shape rises slowly as if from a long slumber: a young man in his late teens, head shaved, a crooked row of stitches snaking across his forehead. He stands hunched and looks at the boy with sad eyes. “Who am I?" he croaks. “What am I doing here?"
The boy retreats, passing dozens of other leaf-piles stirring to life. He scrambles down a rocky hill then crawls on his belly under a barbed-wire fence and up into a plowed field that stretches to the horizon.
Panting, he gapes up at the numberless stars shining down on him, and his whole body grows still, and all the pain and fear of the past is sucked out of him and light years away by these celestial healers.
But a fresh jolt of adrenaline floods him again when he notices a gaping black spot in the middle of the stars. And when he looks into that darkness, the darkness penetrates his mind, and he recognizes it from the pupils of the man with the white moustache. The very same color. This is the source, and it's moving closer, swallowing stars.
A dog barks, and he looks down to see flashlight beams criss-crossing toward him, so he sprints back into the woods in the direction of a tall ridge, on top of which are a row of houses, their windows shining from the first hint of dawn.
Hours later, the boy squints into the sun and lifts his gaze to a dirt mound pushed to the side of an unfinished road on the outskirts of a neighborhood and sees a slim, female figure emerge: raven black hair cascading down the small of her back, she strides naturally to the summit, plants her feet wide and stares down at him, a queen surveying her kingdom.
In her right hand, a tomahawk fashioned from a thick branch and wedge-shaped stone, and twine. Wearing moccasins, small khaki shorts and a fluttering green tank top, she is backlit by the sun, which appears like a golden halo around her darkened face. He is transfixed.
She descends, revealing natural tan and faint freckles around her cheeks, but a stoic expression and piercing emerald eyes that analyze and extract information from his startled visage. She comes close enough that he can inhale her strangely pleasant scent of sweat, smoke, and pine straw. Her voice is soft but subtly threatening, and she keeps a tight grip on her makeshift weapon.
He shares his name, and she hers: Silvia, like a cool drink from a woodland stream. They're both runaways. She leads him to her camp.
At dusk, she leaves for far too long. He goes to find her, crouching behind a small boulder jutting out of a hillside. Crunching grows louder until it sounds right next to him. He squints but cannot see.
Then he hears a baby crying, so out of place in these dim woods, and out of the gloom emerges a spotted fawn limping, glancing around, lost. Its leg hangs a few inches off the ground, twisted at an unnatural angle.
The creature cries again and fresh goosebumps fill his arms. It freezes and its narrow face points at the boy. He is anchored in its pure black eyes until a crow caws above them, and the fawn looks up, and a larger shape rises from the ground behind it. The boy shrinks back. The fawn looks at him, and he wants to scream a warning, but there is no time.
There is a quick whooshing sound, and the fawn's gaze disconnects as it falls. The dark figure raises its arm again and again, chopping into the fawn as it squeals and struggles and a finger of blood rises several feet into the air before splashing onto the dead leaves. With one final blow, all is silent.
The boy backs away as the shape rises, and her voice calls his name: “Weston."
“What'd you do that for?” he responds.
“Dinner,” she says flatly before yanking her tomahawk out of the fawn's throat.
It is madness, but he fears her, loves her more. They feast in firelight under a full cream-colored moon, which has escaped from its cloud prison to scorch the night and plunge the boy into a queasy pit of swirling dreams.
The dawn casts an eerie, pink, barely visible light over everything. The fire is now a pyramid of ashes from which a thin ray of smoke slithers up through a beam of morning sunlight. She is gone. He searches desperately, fruitlessly.
After many hours of wandering, he collapses onto a carpet of freshly-cut grass. A group of black birds bursts from the limbs above and fills the sky with merry cawing. He drifts into darkness. The next thing he knows, he is waking up in a new bed and looking up into the worried faces of his parents.
A gale of laughter pulls him from his reverie as he pushes his way through the crowd queuing for the merry-go-round. The sun is low on the horizon, and the park will close in a few hours, but he needs to visit one more ride.
The haunted house stands apart from the other attractions, isolated on top of an impossibly-steep hill, surrounded by false, leafless trees. He trudges up the incline that grows steeper as it reaches the summit. Not many parkgoers attempt this climb. Some make it halfway but give up and turn around.
His family was not interested in coming out again; they ensconced themselves back at the resort and wished him a good time. He was surprised. Ever since his return, they had hovered over his every move and finally suggested this trip in an attempt to cheer him up, but also, he suspected, because this particular park sits on an isolated island six hundred miles off the nearest coast. There is nowhere to run.
The setting sun dyes the world in an uncanny golden-green hue, portending storms, but he climbs on, grasping the crooked edges of loose cobblestones with his fingertips and pulling himself up the last of the hill, where it finally begins to level out. He is here: the dilapidated manor stands like the amalgamation of all people's dreams of a haunted house spliced together. He enters the queue, running his hands along the red-roped barrier as thunder rumbles in the background. Is it a recorded sound effect coming from the speakers hidden amongst the plastic gravestones or is it real?
He enters the black doorway, into the dark lobby where a procession of leather buggies snake their way through the room without stopping. He picks one and falls in. A steel bar immediately lowers, pinning him into position. The buggy passes through an archway and makes a sharp, sudden drop down a black tunnel. This is it.
A finger of bile rises up his esophagus as he realizes his utter helplessness in this ride. It chooses what he sees, where he goes, what he must endure. Every turn, every door, holds the potential for new anxiety. There is no clear time limit, no way of knowing how deep this ride goes for him. The outer facade of the house is an illusion. He is trapped, trapped, going down, tilting and spinning until any sense of direction is lost. He enters rooms that, at first, appear empty and innocent, only to suddenly reveal animatronic ghouls popping out at him from unexpected angles. He is thrilled but growing tired, fighting the panicked thought that this ride will never end.
And, suddenly, just at the edge of his endurance, the ride grinds to a stop, the taunting organ music fades to silence, and the bar lifts from his chest, releasing him. He hesitantly stands and surveys his surroundings. There is no one else in the other chairs; he is alone, stopped in a large open dining room, every surface charred blue-black and draped with cobwebs. Two symmetrical staircases spiral up in different directions to a balcony overlooking a long wooden table spread with plates and platters filled with bones.
He takes a few steps away from his buggy and looks up to see the purple stage lights shining down from the rafters. Somehow, getting this behind-the-scenes peek doesn't quell his unease. Why did the ride let him out? Is this a new part of the ride? A red glow emanating from under a doorway catches his eye. He can't resist; he approaches. He thinks he sees the doorknob moving slightly, but when he gets closer, it is still. He takes a deep breath and opens the door.
Inside is an ordinary bathroom, unnaturally clean and modern for this house. He closes the door behind him and looks around. The bathroom is divided into two sections separated by saloon-style swinging doors. In the first half, where he stands, are two sinks and mirrors he dares not stare into. The red glow that he followed emanates from the second half of the room, behind the saloon doors he now pushes through. There is an ordinary toilet ahead, a shower on the left, but, mounted in the center of the right wall, is a large, opaque, rectangular light: the source of the red. It pulses like a slow heartbeat as he approaches.
Suddenly, a strong wind blows against him, lifting and pushing him back an inch. He spins around. "Is someone here?" he blurts out. There is a presence here; he can feel it. A gentler breeze from the other direction swirls around him, cooling him.
“Weston," a quiet, familiar voice whispers in his ear.
No, he thinks. No, this is not him. He is not here.
“I am," the voice insists, reading his thoughts. "Do not be afraid."
He glances at the red light and sees that it flickers in sync with the voice. Hesitantly, he reaches out his hand and places his palm against the warm plastic. The identity of that presence, although absurd, is undeniable.
Brother, he thinks. The lamp brightens in response.
“I found you. I didn't think it was possible," the voice whispers.
“It isn't. You're dead." And the absurdity of this fact strikes him as he remembers where he is: a haunted house in an amusement park in . . . where exactly? At the end of this thought, a sharp wave of vertigo embraces him, and the entire room seems to tilt out of alignment.
“Just relax," the voice reassures him, sounding a little nervous. “You're fading. We may not have long, but there's so much I want to tell you."
“Wait, where am I?" Weston wonders aloud. “And where are you?"
“You think this is the end, but this is just the beginning." Sometimes the voice is only half-there, wobbling in and out of his ears like a dim transmission. “It's hard to stay focused. The brain rebels, but there are guides who will help you. Not everyone you meet is a guide."
“What are you talking about?" he responds, growing frustrated at the cryptic nature of his brother's messages, but his brother continues without pause.
“This place is vast, but I've learned that it can be a quick heaven or a long hell depending on how you react. We’re lucky that we overlapped. My stay here is longer; I had more ground to cover."
“You're the one who cut your life short before it had even started!" The words burst out of his mouth sounding much more bitter than he had intended. There is a long silence that makes him nervous. Has he angered his brother? Has their connection broken? The red light is dim but still there. To break the silence, he asks, “Why did you leave? Just tell me that. What did you gain?"
Finally, there is an answer, “Freedom. Or at least that's what I thought. But it doesn't work like that. It's not that easy. I felt that I had seen everything, solved the puzzle, and the full picture devastated me. The future was nothing but a sad, grey, disfiguring fog that would never lift. I would destroy myself before it could destroy me. But now I know: death is not an escape. If I could've pushed through a little longer, I could've had a long life similar to yours. I could have . . ." But the voice fades.
“Are you there?"
The red light pulses helplessly. “The way . . . freedom . . . other side . . . trials . . ."
“No, no, no!" He strikes the light with his palm, but it strobes weakly like dying embers before fading to nothing. He steps backwards, wiping tears from his face, losing himself in the black. But the rectangle of light suddenly flashes on, a bright blue this time, temporarily blinding him. He raises his arm to cover his eyes, and the world shifts.
Immersed in a dark, sunken den on a musty brown couch, green shag carpet underfoot, his parents sit on another couch on the left wall. Blue light illuminates their faces as two monstrous sharks fight on-screen, biting chunks from each other, crimson swirling in the deep.
A fair-haired girl lounges to his left, a family friend. She scoots closer and he feels a warm surge of affection pulse through him as she lays her head on his shoulder, but he glances toward the adults, and they cast suspicious looks at him.
Paranoia overpowers the girl's paralyzing warmth, and he stands irritated, feverish. He mutters goodnight and climbs out of the den and across the hall into the bedroom suite, hoping the girl will follow but she doesn't.
He enters the dark apartment made of stone and wood. A decorative tomahawk hangs above the mantel of an empty fireplace. The floor is a patchwork of iron vents through which dozens of small fires heat the room. He steps directly over one and the sole of his foot is warmed. One of the subterranean fires has ignited a long burgundy sock draped over the back of a wooden chair. The chair smolders, also.
He stamps it out and enters the adjoining bedroom, lifting and rustling cool scarlet sheets, feeling warm comfort in his heart rekindled. But his cousin appears in the doorway and tells him they must share the bed. The flame is extinguished. He stomps across the apartment, and his cousin disappears.
He undresses and walks into the adjoining bathroom with checkered tiles, blinding white walls and toilet and sink. The shower has perfect mirrors on the ceiling and floor, creating an infinite vertical shaft. He marvels at the skinny black lamps slithering out of the ceiling like inverse tulips, but he also spots a large red bug perched in the corner.
He smiles at it, and it flutters its rosy wings at him in a particular pattern, as if trying to communicate, and he is suddenly struck by an absurd feeling of familiarity. How could a bug feel so familiar? But, just at that moment, his white-haired uncle barges into the bathroom and immediately assumes that he is afraid of the bug, His uncle grabs it with his meaty hand and thrusts it toward him. He cowers back, so his uncle throws it at his face. He hurries to brush it off and sees its broken body drop to the tiles drained of color. One crooked wing shudders pitifully then stiffens.
His elder laughs heartily and slaps him on the back and booms: “See, isn't it better this way? Face your fear and get it over with!”
He halfheartedly agrees but feels a warm throbbing on his cheek where the insect bit him. The bathroom dims as he sinks to the cold tile.
He opens his eyes and rows of yellow fluorescents flicker to life, revealing a labyrinth of stalls stretching into the humid darkness. He desperately needs to go.
He stumbles forward, pushing gently on each greasy door until one of them gives. But the toilet is filled to the brim with thick shit and wads of pulpy toilet paper dripping over the edges onto the tile floor. He tries several others and is met with similar gruesome sights.
Every stall is desecrated in a uniquely awful display of human waste. The walls, floor, toilets, and doors are smeared with bodily fluids of all kinds and colors. He did not realize people could excrete such variety. He moves faster, desperation growing.
For all its filth, there are few others in this smelly maze. He hears occasional evidence of them in the distance: doors slamming, unseen liquids gushing into unseen receptacles, enormous outbursts echoing through the expanse – juicy farts, phlegmy sneezes, rattling coughs. He imagines what this place must look like under a blacklight, every surface glowing bright, and he shudders.
The further he goes, the more warped and alien the stalls become. Some are missing doors, others are triangular or octagonal. There are clusters of stalls inside stalls inside stalls, and there are toilets without stalls, placed at random. Rows of misshapen urinals line the walls, many without drains, others blasted with excrement, some knocked to the floor while a fountain of brown water sprays out of exposed pipe. He must make a decision.
Finally he finds a functioning toilet with only a sprinkling of amber-colored urine around the seat. There is a small roll of wet toilet paper half-submerged in a puddle on the floor. Carefully, he grabs it with two fingers and wipes it around the seat, which only spreads the urine evenly across its surface. He has no choice; he sits.
As soon as he does, the stall door rattles violently. There are black shoes under the door and heavy breathing without.
“Occupied," he mutters.
Dirty fingers grip the top of the stall and a smiling face peeks over. He recognizes the mischievous eyes of Nick, his classmate. “I said 'Occupied'!"
He attempts to cover himself, and the voyeur cackles and bangs on the stall wall. He cannot relax. He stands angrily, pulling up his pants and opening the door to confront Nick. But there is no one out there.
He circles the stall. All is quiet. Then, suddenly, Nick reappears out of nowhere, hunched forward with his hands gripping his belly.
“Oh, man, I don't feel so good." A shocking stream of vomit arcs out of his mouth and onto the boy's pants and trickles down into his shoes.
Panic. His desire to escape overwhelms his more bodily urges. He flees, but there is no end to this place. Oh god, he has to get to a sink or shower or something quick or else he will get infected. He will become sick. He cannot be sick. He won't make it. No exit signs. Nothing. What the hell is this place?
Suddenly his foot slips from under him, and he falls into a puddle that blinds him and soaks his hair and face and the front of his clothes with a concoction of chunky bodily fluids. He gags and lifts himself and desperately wipes at his face with his wet sleeves. Only a few feet in front of him, there is a glowing red exit sign pointing to a door.
Something breaks in him. There is a surrender. He laughs and laughs until he loses his breath and a giddy, lightheaded relief washes over him. This is his filth, no one else's. He is not separate from it. He never was.
He looks down at his hands and they appear clean, as do his clothes. But, more importantly, he feels clean. Triumphantly, he exits into the hallway of his high school.
The victim enters the classroom and his adversary is there, watching. He keeps him in his peripheral as he moves near the back, but it doesn't matter: good old Nick finds a way.
Someone else is helping him. They tie his backpack to his desk. Their victim struggles to untie it as they cackle, faces red with mischief, and he quietly moves to an empty desk closer to the teacher. Poker face, not wanting to give them any satisfaction.
It doesn't matter; they move behind him. The class is doing a science experiment. They design tiny microchips, place them inside syringes along with a saline solution, then inject the solution into slabs of artificial meat. While he is working, the victim feels the pinch of a needle in the back of his neck. He turns and grabs a syringe out of Nick's hand, breaks it in half, and shouts, “Stop it, Nick!”
The teacher approaches, and he hands her the broken needle. He rubs the back of his neck, worrying that infection is a real possibility. Still, Nick seems angry that his fun was spoiled. Class dismissed.
Apparently safe for now, the victim walks alone across a dusky campus, hiding amongst shadows, and just when he's starting to relax, he feels a tap on the shoulder.
Nick's grinning sidekick holds a beeping receiver. How were they tracking him? The microchip . . . The victim snatches the receiver, tosses the batteries, and struggles to escape their grip.
Nick is closest, so the victim takes hold of his neck, righteous anger boiling. He squeezes hard and hits Nick's laughing skull against a brick wall, but they're still grabbing, clawing.
He yells, panicked, “Help! Help! Call the police!”
A group of guys are having a Bible study at a nearby picnic table, but they continue praying in the lengthening afternoon shadows.
It's Saturday morning. The automatic doors open to an arctic A/C breeze as the bruised victim limps into the grocery store, on a mission, sword hanging from his hand.
He sees Nick working a checkout line and is about to attack when he notices a girl approaching him with a cart, and he is instantly transported into a long-forgotten dream as he stares into the same emerald eyes that had disappeared into the woods all those years ago.
Silvia! The surrounding face has broadened. He sees a few new beauty marks and a faint scar on her forehead, and her hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail. Their eyes meet as she passes and there is no recognition.
His heart breaks. She even looks slightly annoyed. He wonders if he could be mistaken. But before she disappears through the sliding doors and into the forest of cars, he spots a tattoo on her left calf: a small, red tomahawk. A sign! It has to be. He knows this must be what she wants him to do.
He lunges and swings, without hesitation, at Nick's neck until he falls, tennis shoes squeaking, slipping in his own blood. Screaming, clueless customers flee. The victim chops and chops until nerves are visible, until bone is visible, until the head separates and rolls sideways and blood pools under it like a crimson shadow.
And suddenly the victim sees his face reflected in the pool, a face full of rage but also . . . pleasure. He feels a heavy sense of loss and, touching his neck, is shocked to find his own blood on his fingers.
The following week, the victim sits on a bus next to Nick, talking casually, laughing at a beautiful, horrible secret only they will ever know.
Taking the final exam at a picnic table in a field under a weeping willow, the young man notices a mysterious temple-like structure with large golden doors that he didn't remember being there.
He goes inside the massive high school to hand in his test. Did he pass? Who knows. No one stops him. Something makes him walk outside again, around the building toward the golden doors. They're dragging him in. Inevitable. He ascends the ancient steps and grasps the gnarled oak handle and pulls.
Dense cool air rushes out as he crosses over the threshold. A long hallway stretches before him. He holds a tribal mask close to his face as he glides down the sacred hall, applause from all sides. His bare soles sink into thick red quicksand carpet. Blood of the fallen. The walls are covered with intricate artwork that drives him forward. Golden mirrors reflect his old selves.
A second set of heavy black doors stands at the end of the hall. He knows that once he passes through, there is no exit. On the sides of this hall, the mirrors show not his reflection but, instead, dim woods where piles of leaves stir restlessly, and the young man remembers what lies beneath and heeds their warning. One shaking hand reaches toward the black handle. Grasp, pull, step.
He stops as the doors seal shut behind him, knowing this means no turning back, no escape until death. His hair stands on end as a powerful force hovers over and around him: holy ghost watching, ready to strike if he dares turn and run away.
The brightness of the room beyond the black doors originates from everywhere and nowhere. He changes into a waiting robe, shaves head over bronze basin, opens red doors, and enters a final room with others who've also given their lives to the order.
He walks past tables where machine parts are being assembled. Tiny cogs and wheels and cylinders that are passed down an assembly line that disappears into a dark hole in the wall.
He recognizes the grinding sound emanating from that hole, but he cannot show fear. This is what he was prepared for. This is the way of things.
And on his off days, the young man is allowed to explore a cavernous mall with a group of school friends. They are trying to find something that once was there but now is painfully absent. They smile empty smiles and laugh hollow laughs. They barely know each other anymore.
They discover a gaping rectangular hole in the tile floor, jutting out of which is the top half of a musical paddle wheel with piano key seats that rotates drowsily, invitingly.
The young man sits on a blade of the wheel, which emits a sleepy tone and lowers him down. The black floor disappears overhead, as do his companions. There is a long moment when all is dark and full of possibility, and fear squeezes his heart as he contemplates whether or not he has just made a major mistake. He feels letters carved into the blade he sits upon; he traces them with his finger: Y-H-V-H.
He inhales and opens his mouth to pronounce the carved word but, just then, his eyes adjust, and he sees a placid ocean stretching out before him, and he is rendered breathless. The wheel dips him into its warmth: toes first, then legs, waist, torso and arms, shoulders, neck, ears. Balmy waves slide through his body, and his seat turns away into the oily depths.
He floats lazily toward the near/far orange sky-wall. The closer he swims, the further it recedes, but this distance drives him forward, and he stretches and melts out toward the tangerine sun.
It is morning on the surface. The sun rises and fades to yellow as the young man swims until, eventually, he looks behind him and realizes that the wheel is no longer visible. He also sees a familiar girl bobbing in the surf, following him. The girl comes closer and says she has seen two sharks fighting. She hands over goggles, and the young man peers under the surface at faint blood billowing like clouds. The girl points deeper at sea centipedes rising from the depths, waving like trees in an underwater breeze. She warns the young man not to go deeper.
It is afternoon. The young man's curiosity overwhelms him. He descends and the girl reluctantly follows. They circle around centipede stalks, carefully avoiding their tenuous legs for fear of paralyzing toxins. Without breathing apparatuses, they make frequent trips to the surface as their endurance builds. Each dive becomes easier, deeper.
Below, the centipedes harden and form the supports of a concrete structure, layers upon layers, like a great empty parking garage. They are careful not to get stuck under the expansive roof, deprived of oxygen forever. Nervous, they flee to the surface again.
It is night. Deeper below the structure, they find an underwater city, its schools of street lamps the only refuge from the black abyss. An expectant feeling overwhelms the young man as they glide over rooftops of shimmering skyscrapers and watch shadows of unseen lives moving in the bright windows.
One of the silhoettes captures the boy's attention: a dark-haired girl. She places clothes in a suitcase on her bed, preparing for a trip. A black dog lies curled up next to the suitcase. The young man wants to swim closer, but he suddenly notices his diving companion holding a spherical bomb and a lighter.
“What is that for?” the young man asks.
“To kill,” says the girl matter-of-factly.
“Kill what?”
“Them.”
“No, no, we can't do that. This is wrong.”
“They are dangerous to you. They must be destroyed,” the girl insists.
“We just can't. It's wrong!”
But the girl lights the fuse. The young man protests and struggles to wrestle the bomb from his hand. He pursues her down to street level, and finally gains control, grabbing her in a tight bear hug.
He forces the girl up, past city, past concrete structure, past centipedes. Too fast. His joints ache and his legs grow numb. He panics thinking he's swimming deeper. Then he hits concrete. The structure. Not as high as he thought. Trapped!
He races to the horizon edge. Faster, faster. Up and out, scraping past the centipedes. Forget the bends: oxygen! His ears begin to ring, sounding just like a saxophone blaring the melody: E – E♭ – E – E♭ – E – F# – F# – – looping over and over, rising to crescendo. He swims out of his body. He swims out of his mind. The bomb explodes.
He emerges from the warm ocean, inhales, treads water, and spins disoriented in the waves. His arms are empty; he is alone.
A fiery sunset warms his left cheek, but a shadow cools his right. He turns and sees a thick rope rising straight out of the water toward the bruised sky. It swings from the bow of an approaching ship towering over him like an aquatic skyscraper.
He grits his teeth and grasps the rough cord and climbs, arms burning, old water plummeting off of him into the sea. Reaching the top, he grabs a steel corner with his left hand then right, legs dangling precarious as he struggles to secure them in slippery crevices.
He rests a minute, breathes, then stretches and grasps railing. He pulls and manages one last burst of energy before tumbling over the edge of gravity onto the deck.
Raising his head, he sees a blonde couple cuddling on a lounge chair. Another chair sits empty beside them. He finds his footing and approaches. A warm lateral breeze caresses his hair. The seated pair shares friendly smiles.
A stoic girl stands to the side, aloof and alone, staring at a comet trail. The swimmer admires her dark profile, a jet black hole cut out of the orange sky. The girl turns, and her placid face opens into an expression somewhere between sadness and longing, dying sun reflected in one eye, falling star in the other.
She places her hands on the swimmer's wet shoulders, and they lower onto a cool cushioned chair. She leans back on his bosom. Unsure, he crosses his arms over her belly.
Soon their breaths synchronize, their heartbeats merge, and they grow drowsy. The last fraction of sun slips below the horizon, and twilight blooms. There is a distant scream and a splash; someone has fallen overboard. The young man lifts himself up on his elbows, ready to investigate, but the girl presses him back down. She smiles up at him and whispers, “Just cruise."
He awakens on an airplane traveling alone at night over the dark ocean. He knows he is far from home, but can't remember where he's heading. His brain is still foggy. He rubs his eyes and looks down the aisle toward the front of the plane as his vision clears.
That's when he sees her. She's one row ahead, wearing a red knit sweater and blue corduroy pants, dark hair falling in loose curls, ivory wrist dangling prettily off the armrest like a dead leaf about to fall.
There's a strange guy sitting next to her, leaning in close and talking enthusiastically. The guy gets up and hobbles forward and disappears into the restroom. Here's his chance. He stands up, walks forward, sits.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hello,” she answers.
Their words tumble out drowsily, naturally, as if they were picking up a conversation that had been briefly interrupted. The weird guy never returns from the bathroom.
“Oh, before I forget.” She produces a piece of paper and writes something.
He grows suddenly light-headed. She whispers in his ear and hands it over, but her large, curving letters are indecipherable.
Hastily, he offers to write his phone number, so he plunges his arm into the backpack at his feet and gropes around. Empty: nothing but air. She laughs knowingly, flashing teeth, but she leans over to help search.
Her hair brushes his left cheek. Her hand touches his left thigh. He leans back, and her hand wraps inward. He doesn't dare look. Her head sinks into his left shoulder. He doesn't dare move. The plane stops mid-air, hovering silent over the surface of the waters. They sit motionless, listening to their breaths mingle. Very warm, very light. The fuselage sinks below the surface and curious sea creatures glide over its wings like living air molecules.
She nuzzles and sighs, “I've missed you.”
Black memories stirring, he looks past her into the watery void and asks, “How long have we been apart?”
“Forever,” she answers. The lights flicker out.
A man and woman sit in a car next to him, interior dark and aquarium-cool except legs and arms illuminated golden by the afternoon sun.
Lips move. Teeth shine, exchanging sweet secrets.
Invisible, he hovers above: a lonely bus-riding cherub. Double-glass chasm between them.
He watches, hypnotized, as the cursor appears and disappears, in and out of existence just like that, lulling his mind into drowsy semi-consciousness. He's done with college, papers, everything. Six weeks in and already a fifth-year senior at heart. His head and stomach ache.
Something has happened: a surreal clarity, a tingling realness. Edges sharper, sounds more penetrating, and one thought hovering on the edge of his consciousness . . .
A sharp digital buzz wakes him from his stupor. He finds his phone in a pizza box and silences it. He stares at the beige wall and wonders if it's really leaning toward him. He has to escape.
He stands and trudges through dirty clothes and assorted trash that carpet his room. He glances down the hall at the empty dorm, and a lump fills his throat. But he gathers himself, gulps water, grabs keys, and stands staring into the cold central room devoid of anything except generic, pre-existing furniture. No TV, no focus. Floor and walls spotless. Kitchen area unused except sink piled high. He enters the hallway and never looks back.
The thick stench of burnt food invades his nostrils. He hears a demented symphony, sections crossfading as he passes doors: booming bass of a sports announcer, tenor of someone drunkenly yelling, alto dance music, rhythmic soprano cries of someone fucking.
He jogs down an empty stairwell. A fluorescent light flickers then dies as he passes. A large crack slithers across the concrete landing. It has widened since he moved in; it seems hungry.
The distant clock tower strikes eleven as he pushes open the double doors and sucks the bitter smell of autumn into his lungs. The immense harvest moon stares down at him and bathes the earth in its bloodshot glow, and the force of it breathes life into a legion of dead leaves that skitter across the brick concourse, searching for a resting place.
The concourse is still and silent except for the clomping of his boots, and for one melancholic second, he imagines everyone has vanished, and he's the only one left on earth. He walks downhill toward the edge of the map: a line of pines along the perimeter of the student parking lot, and beyond that: the unknown.
Along this borderland, a jacked-up truck screeches into a small annex lot. The passenger doors burst open, emitting drunken hollering, and something is shoved onto the concrete. Doors slam and tires squeal toward the frat houses. Taillights disappear, and he strolls to the bundle, still yards away when it moves.
He stops dead and watches the package roll on its side, moaning. It squirms into a pool of harsh lamplight, and he sees a baby-faced frat boy with mussed up hair, duct tape over his mouth, and a cocoon of cellophane wrapped around his body.
The kid, in his drunken terror, finally notices someone standing over him. He tries to communicate, and all that comes out is muffled nonsense, but his face is slick with sweat, and the tape curls off. The kid yells at him to help, but he turns and runs and doesn't stop until he reaches the safety of the concourse where his lungs seize and he falls into a coughing fit.
He backtracks, cresting the hill then descending toward campus. The breeze blows faster, driving his fists into the pockets of his black hoodie, which he pulls tightly around him.
Campus is different at night. In the dark, it becomes an ominous collection of deserted paths, alleyways, and staircases to nowhere that seem to manifest only when the sun isn't watching. Orange lamps color classroom buildings ancient, sinister, abandoned long ago.
He passes under the stadium-shadow. It hums in the dark like a sleeping beast, awakened only one day a week when thousands come to worship and it roars to life. He avoids it at all costs.
A scarecrow floats past on his left, white shirt ripped down the middle and strands hanging below the waist of its black running shorts, toward its sandals, like the remnants of some unholy attack. Its wild eyes stare ahead at the horizon with anticipation. He turns to look in that direction, but can see nothing.
He passes the brutal symmetry of the liberal arts building when it starts to drizzle. His boots squish and sink into the flooded lawn of the upper quad where the normally proud white plantation-style face of the old president's mansion looks pallid grey in the dark. Even the air thickens like mud.
Three girls stumble past carrying their heels. Their dresses sag haphazard over bony frames as they lean on each other and cackle at nothing. Night shadows make them old and withered, like crones returning from their black mass.
He looks the other way and steps onto the curb of Main Street, which is littered with students loitering outside bars and restaurants. He pushes past a group of noisy freshman, their laughter splitting the night air with its showy exuberance. Wrong direction; too much for him. He turns left into an alley.
His bootsteps echo off brick walls covered with forgotten graffiti and clusters of black mold. He stops halfway and leans against a damp wall, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket and lighting it expertly. This is not a night for self-restraint. He puffs, watches smoke rise and dissipate, and stares at the opposite wall for a long while. Then he flicks his cigarette and walks bravely out to the street. Have to keep moving.
A chill sends goosebumps crawling up his arms as he stalks down College Street. Floodlights cast an eerie glow up onto the blood-colored brick of the old clock tower pointing to the sky where he sees no stars, no black space, just a menacing orange firmament, impenetrable.
A light drizzle coats his head and shoulders and makes halos dance around the lamps. He stumbles under the harsh lights, his shadow stretching, shortening, doubling until he trips and his palms scrape across the sandpaper concrete.
He buries his face in the grass; no reason to rise. The clock tower hovers over like some stoic sentinel, unmoved. A passing car beeps and someone yells words indecipherable. They pass, and the night is empty.
He rises and staggers through tears and notices, across the street, that letters on the glowing sign for the Heart of Campus, a small trashy motel, have burnt out, making it read like the start of some neon prophecy: Hear, o' campus.
A laugh escapes his lips, and he flinches as the clock tower begins to toll, transmitting unsettling frequencies not meant for him. Headlights appear over the hill, approaching fast. The bells shake the earth as he watches the twin lights grow until they envelop his whole vision. They might save him. What else could?
The roar of the truck overpowers the bells and becomes maybe the most beautiful sound he's ever heard as he wipes his eyes, clears his throat, and steps into the road, and the lights merge into one powerful sun, and he turns away, unable to face it completely, and then he is falling up, up, where there is brightness all around him and a rhythmic tone like the bells but quicker and more synthetic, and there are shadowy faces hovering above him, speaking without sound. But then the faces recede as a kind of gravity pulls him back down, down, and the side of his face begins to sizzle, and he wakes with his cheek pressed against cold dirt.
He coughs dust, sits up, and rubs his eyes. His left leg is killing him. Golden sunlight glows through large dirty windows. He limps outside and observes a cluster of grey warehouses on the north edge of campus. No one ever comes up here. Most of these buildings are set to be razed.
The rising sun ignites the sheet metal siding and sets the old windows ablaze. Nauseous, he leans forward and tastes bile pushing up his throat and notices a Rorschach test of gore covering his shirt. He removes some dried flecks, flips his shirt inside out, and zips up his hoodie. Turning with a sigh, he limps toward campus.
The sun shines through a thick layer of clouds that trap moisture from the previous night's rain. Wet concrete steams and reflects heat up at him as he makes his way across the brick-paved desert through hundreds of flickering student-mirages floating across its glimmering surface.
It's shaping up to be one of those contradictory late-autumn days when a cold wind blows but the sun is blazing hot. He thinks this must be some kind of purgatory in which God is slowly purging his sins away, but he has to simmer here for a while before he can ascend.
On the way back to his dorm, he sees a white truck inching up the concourse with a hose the circumference of a basketball hoop that a groundskeeper holds while he works his way down a long pile of dead leaves blown against the curb. The hose devours the leaves by the thousands and snakes up to a white tank mounted on the truck. A growing cloud of brown leaf-dust billows out of the open top of the tank.
As he approaches, the grinding of hidden machinery grows louder and fills him with an immense dread. The acrid cloud embraces him, and the sun darkens. He tries to hold his breath and squint to keep the particles out, but he only lasts a few seconds before inhaling some of the putrid dust, which makes him sneeze, which makes him breathe more.
Maybe this purgatory feeling won't leave until he steps across that platform one blustery May day and grasps his diploma and shakes hands with the dean and walks into a new life. Or maybe he'll carry it with him for the rest of his days like some scar or venereal disease.
But, for now, all he can do is endure the mirage while it lasts, wake in the morning and sleep at night, watch the world appear and disappear, in and out of existence just like that.
Far above the moonlit sand, on a condo balcony, he floats next to a red-haired girl, listening to the waves. It's the last night of spring break. She lights a blunt; they pass it back and forth.
She blows smoke out of her gently upturned nose and leans back on her elbows, soaking the moonlight into her face and neck. She says how happy she is to be here right now. He agrees. Their words catalyze the THC in their blood.
Spores grow out of his palms just like sea anemones glowing greenish-white and quivering in the warm breeze. Hundreds of them in clumps. He feels them spreading.
Her long legs stretch toward him as she lounges in the deck chair, pale skin glowing lunar and bright. He asks if she can see the spores. She sits up and scoots close, sliding her fingers through her long hair, which kisses his left shoulder.
The neon spores remind him of poison ivy rashes he got as a child, except there is healing in their shimmering translucence. He notices them on her hand, too, rippling out, but she still can't see them.
She says, “I recognize you from somewhere else. Have we met before?”
He laughs absurd, euphoric, happy.
She says he seems much older than he looks but he denies it. She asks if she can kiss him. They're facing each other, opposite shoulders leaning against the glass railing saving them from plummeting deaths. She's cross-legged and serious like some long-forgotten goddess.
He says, “Of course, but it almost feels wrong: as if you're my sister.”
She says it's not like that.
Finally he gives up and they lean in, and she places both hands on his shoulders, and they kiss, and any doubt is blown to oblivion by the force of it, and the luminescent arms of the anemones pulse and lengthen, intertwining, tingling like new nerve endings before their faces merge and melt together. He sees her walking alone in the dark. He sees . . .
On night walks, her head glimmers with fluorescent thoughts in the warm shadows. And sometimes she follows distant human chattering to the source, peering through trees at strings of lights and people, but tonight she flees and floats a homeless ghost down dark sidewalks, past buzzing bulbs: pools of light in a black sea.
Some lamps flicker as she passes and pretends to control them while wild lightning bleaches orange clouds above, a passing storm.
She stares through windows, gazing at living room worlds she's never known or has forgotten. So warm, so permanent, but also fate-forbidden. Gentle mist falls through her, and a faint scent of burning wood permeates the cool breeze.
Further out, she hears nothing but her feet. She pauses in the peaceful road for a little eternity. No cars, relaxed, hopeful, the world washed clean by night.
She passes through a kudzu dream-tunnel teeming with fireflies: moving neon candles in the black. Emerging new, she rests in a swing, basking in glorious solitude, soul adjusting faster than pupils.
She slinks into the park, away from streetlights, and shelters under the pond gazebo, contemplating the triple-reflection of the hidden sun as it filters through moonlight, water, and eye. The frogs grow quiet when she approaches but worship again as the dark embraces her.
She circles the pond, weaving between bushy sentinels, an irrational urge rising to the surface. She resists, almost fleeing, then gives in, mounting the memorial stone, uncovering her auburn hair, shedding her rags and meeting the bounteous, blue-haloed moon as she truly is.
It bathes her with a healing glow, filling her, holding her, and for a moment, its gravity lifts, and her toes slip free from the rough rock . . . but the greedy earth pulls her back, and the Great Mother slips behind a veil of clouds.
Recharged, she turns, surveying the land. She renounces her throne, assumes again her mortal skin, and drifts out of the park. A startled raven flaps its wings across her vision and away, excited by her glowing visage. She will not look at the moon again tonight.
On the way home, the dark plays tricks with her eyes. She stops to investigate. At first, it is only blotchy patterns of color, but then they seem to coagulate into a familiar young man. She sees him sitting alone at a bar. She sees . . .
Blurry night, blurry faces, except for the girl in the purple dress singing karaoke. Her voice is soft and siren-like. She brushes dark bangs away from her eyes to enhance the spell she casts on him with her witchy gaze.
But some drunk bleached blonde falls into her mid-song, almost knocking her over, then two frat bastards start throwing punches. Cops haul them away.
Reflective melancholy sparks excessive consumption. He is alone in an alleyway with the singer. They fuck like desperate animals against the grimy brick wall. Downpour so lost and tangled and strangely final. Her vomit splashes on his shoe, and he stumbles across the street. His hand presses against the warm grill of a truck screeching to a halt.
Then the shock of his alien face in the morning mirror. Eyes hiding back in skull. Nose looking wrong. Jaw crooked. Greenish bruise on cheekbone. He skips a shower, sits on the couch eating a banana, and watches the blaring silence of the blank TV, floating in a stasis headache.
He thinks he needs a walk. The state park? As soon as he thinks it, he's there: on the trail. No one around. No idea where it's leading, but he can't stop the hypnotic steps. The further he walks, the more the trail melts the veneer off his accomplishments, exposing rotten, termite-infested reality.
Acquaintances, all of them. He's going through the motions, acting, following invisible scripts, living a manufactured life - manufactured, like the cogs he assembles at his part-time job. About to graduate with no direction or hope of a stable career. Suddenly, a repressed memory dislodges itself: he had sensed all of this years ago, when he had first arrived, and he had tried to end it, but death had refused to take him. At least that's how he remembered it now. Up ahead, there is a fork in the trail; he takes the left path.
Heart racing from the uphill climb, penny taste in mouth, he reaches a high ridge overlooking a forested valley. The trail widens. Old tire tracks in the dirt. Accelerating, overwhelming urge floods through him: he needs to throw something.
He picks up a rock and feels its cold weight, reels back and throws with all his strength. It strikes the side of a tree and bark chunks fly. Surprised, exhilarated, he throws another and another, not completely quenching the rising animal urge.
More instinct. He grabs a sword-shaped stick, swinging it at random branches. Soft whooshing slices air. Congested emotions burst forth. He slams the stick over his leg and tosses the pieces, hands trembling. He's never lost control like this.
Confused, he stops to stare at a stream. He has no idea for how long. There is silence except, above him in the trees, the scraping of doomed leaves refusing to fall. He's going over the edge of something. His cell phone rings, and he tosses it against the rocks. Shattered fragments of plastic and cheap metal reflect the sun then drift away.
At that moment, a lone crow descends onto a branch hanging over the stream, no more than six feet away from his face. They lock eyes. It wants to tell him something. It flaps its wings and takes off. Something inside him breaks. He must follow. He's committed, running, up.
He keeps his gaze locked on the bird until he skids to a stop at the edge of a sheer rock face overlooking a quarry. Dust floats down into the abyss, a hundred foot drop. If he hadn't looked down precisely then...
Another impulse seizes him: keys and wallet fly. Bills flutter out like injured butterflies far beyond the point of no return. The crow caws loudly behind him: three sharp, enthusiastic bursts that shock him so he nearly tilts over the cliff edge.
He turns and sees the bird sitting on the post of an old fence, watching him. He paces, seething, part of his mind screaming to stop. He's gone too far. He could find someone and get help. But these feelings building inside of him, these bursts of ecstatic release, are too powerful to ignore. He must do the unconscionable to silence conscience. He must break reality and become real.
Under the crow's perch, he spots a rusty barbed wire fragment lying in the dirt. He approaches cautiously. The bird doesn't move. It points its beak down, encouraging him. He nods, takes the wire, jabs it into the palm of his left hand, and yanks. A thick diagonal line fills with blood unreasonably dark. He drops the wire and stares, transfixed. He expects a jolt of pain to come any second, but instead, his senses are overwhelmed by a blinding wave of euphoria that brings him to his knees. The crow croaks and rattles approvingly. He feels excruciatingly alive.
He pulls off his shirt and wraps it around his hand, shouting joyful expletives at the clouds. He must have more. This is the way. He has found it. Better to lose an eye than for his whole body to rot in hell. This makes perfect sense here in the sticky region between. So he takes a deep breath and jams his index finger into his eye socket.
It's tight at first. Warm optical fluid trickles down his arm as he pushes further, hooks behind, pushes through a fleshy barrier, then pulls hard, fighting darkness. It protrudes, and he braces for the final rip then sees blood dripping onto his trembling hand, which holds the jelly-like eye. Before he can think, a black blur swoops in front of him. His hand is empty. With his left eye, he watches the bird carry his right eye over the quarry lake and drop it into the waters below, a tiny white globe bobbing in a sea of blue.
Loud exhale. Swaying. He knows now what the crow is trying to tell him. He knows it stronger than anything he's ever known: this is not his body. This is not his reality. He is something else. He is something more. That was the meaning of his experience years ago: he had briefly glimpsed his true Self. All the colors of the world around him bloom with vibrance in response to his realization. Adrenaline embraces him, and three words repeat in his head like a tribal drumbeat: I AM AWAKE. Echoing across the quarry. I AM AWAKE. There is power, volition and promise in this voice. His feathered savior circles back and hooks its claws into his shoulder, vocalizing to the rhythm: I AM AWAKE.
He sees a jagged incisor cliff jutting over the lake and staggers onto the stone tooth. The crow knows what he must do; she whispers it in his ear, and so he obeys. Weakened but not hurt, he leans forward and laughs as he plunges. And just before impact, the water transforms into rippling bedsheets.
She jolts upright, pupils flaring in the darkness. She recognizes this dim bedroom, but how? Blue ghost-light seeps through slack drapes, giving her the impression of being underwater. Something feels off. An extra gravity presses down on her like coming up from anesthesia. She rubs her aching eyes and sits hunched on the edge of the bed and on the edge of a lingering memory. Her hands: what about them?
She looks down at her upturned palms, and counts each skinny finger. Left hand: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Oh. Right hand: a second bulbous thumb emerges next to the pinky. Alien appendages protrude from fleshy webs between superimposed fingers on top of fingers. Rotting carrots curl into fists and they all bend like dying spider legs. She inhales sharply.
Dreaming! She crashes into herself. The room crystallizes into vivid focus, and the air around her feels smooth and tactile like liquid. Try to relax . . . it's just a dream . . . . dreaming . . . it's just a dream . . . why sit? Take advantage of this. She stands as the scene fades away as if someone is dimming the lights. I have to hold on, can't waste this, gotta think, gotta think.
She runs to the center of the bedroom dissolving around the edges, spins with arms swinging out, concentrates as the “air” rustles “hairs” on “arms” and runs between “fingers,” and “blood” flows to the tips. Not real blood, not real hands. She can't lose this control, can't become a mere slave to the unconscious.
The room takes on weight again. She stops spinning, not out of breath. This is a dream, this is a dream, this is- She must solidify the dream before it melts again.
She drops to the floor and slides her false palms over the thick beige carpet, feeling every individual carpet-blade. The room responds, growing brighter. She rises and taps knuckles against drywall. Solid. Every touch lends a bit more reality. Perfect. She wants just enough detail to stay anchored to the scene, but not enough to forget that she is not really here.
Next, she must look in the mirror. This is the scariest part because she knows from previous experience that dream-mirrors reflects perception, self-image. She flicks the bathroom light, shields her eyes from the blinding flash, then flinches backwards and almost runs, but curiosity wins and she leans forward timidly. Every pore, every individual follicle, is rendered in extra-high definition. Her hair is shaved close to the skull. Wild red tufts stick out here and there where a hasty blade missed its mark. There are deep eye sockets squeezed together, a thick jaw, and sunken cheeks.
Desert lips part to reveal teeth cracked and yellowed like a rusty saw blade. They are thin, brown, fungus-covered, and spongy to the touch. She pushes a front incisor, and it clatters onto the edge of the sink, balances stubbornly for a moment on its roots, then topples over, disappearing into the black drain. She tightens her jaw and covers her mouth, but every movement shakes another tooth free and rolls it onto her tongue. Open, don't swallow, spit. Half a dozen jagged pearls clink onto the porcelain. Okay, that's enough.
She exits the bedroom into the upstairs landing. Now she must assert her control over this environment. It is time to fly. She raises up onto the balls of her feet at the top of the stairs, clears her mind, lifts her arms, inhales, and her toes leave the carpet. Taut muscles maintain upward motion. She floats lazily over the foyer and watches the moonlit street outside the round bay window. But her mind rebels seeing empty air under her feet. She loses concentration and drops, flexes and floats higher. Her head bumps the ceiling.
Slowly, she exhales and sinks until her soles kiss cold hardwood. The cold travels up to her head where it seems to unlock an outside perception: suddenly she feels another body lying still on an unfamiliar bed, she feels the pressure of this body weighing down on the mattress, and she feels pulled toward it, into it. The house grows dimmer. She flees.
Hours pass as she runs around the seemingly infinite house groping in vain for a working light switch as her lucidity rises and falls like the tide. After an age, she is able to calm down and outlines rematerialize as light enters the windows again.
She finds the kitchen and searches the cupboards, her gut aching with hunger. She rips open packaging to find extra-large chocolates, white with bright-red sprinkles. She bites into one and sugary sweetness sends chills through her mouth.
But as she chews, a sinister aftertaste develops: a salty, metallic bitterness. She gags and spits a pool of red onto the glass table, which spreads and cascades over the edge, staining the cloth chair. This dream is bitter; she doesn't feel so well. The house rumbles, and the walls start caving in.
She stumbles out of the back door and onto a large wooden deck. Powdery snow speckled with red sprinkles coats the deck and backyard, but the air is perfectly warm. The snowfall intensifies. There is no sign of life in this silent landscape of the mind. She feels utterly alone. Steaming flakes melt into her scalp, dampening her hair and running down her face like tears.
She feels her control slipping, so she stares across the porch and concentrates on one spot. She must see the body that she felt; it will either confirm or dismiss her growing panic. A figure flickers like the flash of a camera, never solidifying: a gangly old man with wispy grey hair wearing a white gown. He looks startled at first, but when they lock eyes, there is a recognition in his.
She stares harder, but the scene rebels against the effort. Sky burns, houses crumble, woods vanish. Only the deck and his shuddering image remain.
Remember to find him.
The porch collapses piece by piece.
Have to.
There is nothing left but snow.
Remember.
The hot snow smothers everything, piling up around her, blotting out the sun. She is surrounded by red darkness and a burning heat that seems to extract all the moisture out of the surrounding snow. Pressure runs along the left side of her body.
He is awakened by the glowing red interior of his closed eyelids, his hair hot against his head. The young man opens his eyes and immediately shuts them again. The sun is shining directly on his face. He sits up, shades his face with his hand, and surveys the barren earth around him. Where has the crow taken him? He stands, brushing sand off his knees, and starts walking.
Hours pass with no discernible change in the landscape. All is flat except a sprinkling of dunes rolling along the unreachable horizon. The sun is at its zenith and, as time trudges on, it refuses to step down from its throne. This is the kingdom of the sun. He can see it all around him: the sun's hot will bleaches the rocks pure white, compelling every living thing to scurry frantically from shade to shade. Even the serpents of this desert bathe only in short bursts for fear of combustion.
The young man turns to look behind him and sees the wavering image of an approaching figure in a black turban holding a long wooden staff. The imposing wraith raises its head and reveals a familiar face with a white moustache. He doesn't consciously remember the face at first, but his whole body clenches in recognition. It whispers to him: this is not a good man. He freezes. He wants to run, but there is nowhere to hide in this endless expanse. The man stops about forty yards away.
“What are you doing here?" the young man yells, his voice quivering.
The man answers and his voice thunders effortlessly across the dunes as if the dry air longed to be filled by it. “This is my house. You're only passing through. What are you doing here, boy?" The man steps closer.
“I know you," the young man stutters, retreating a few steps. “You've hurt me."
“If I did, it was only because I love you. Someone has to prepare you."
The young man laughs hoarsely as more memories snap into place. “You didn't prepare me; you handicapped me. You brainwashed me. I'm a shell of what I could've been because of you."
Emboldened, the young man walks forward in a direction to the left of the man, but the man moves to block his way.
“Hold on there. I didn't say you could go. I have to show you something."
Feeling rebellious, the young man pivots and runs past the man, but the man lifts his staff and strikes the ground with its knotted end. Sparks of lightning flash out of the point of impact, and the whole desert shakes as a great wave ripples out in all directions, lifting the top layer of sand like a billowing bedsheet before gravity pulls it back down. The young man falls, and the shifting sands cover his legs. He struggles to unbury himself. The man waits calmly.
“Remember where you are," he says. “This is my realm. I make the rules here."
Reluctantly, the young man faces the elder, contemplating how quickly he could snatch the staff from his hands.
The man reaches into his turban and produces an ornate hand mirror with a golden frame and holds it out to him. “You cannot run away from what is. You must face it."
The young man cannot help but step forward until he sees a face in the mirror. It is his face but also not his face. The face seems stretched by gravity, the skin peppered with sun spots and wrinkles, the hair white and wispy. It is undeniably him, but it is also the man before him. He glares at the man. “What is this?"
“You know what it is. Don't play dumb. It is the present you deny."
The young man is overwhelmed by frustration and anger. He pushes the mirror away. It falls softly to the sand.
“More of your lessons. I'm sick of them! You're messing with my head again."
“Believe what you want," the man responds as he bends forward to retrieve the mirror and place it gingerly back inside his robe. “But you'll have to face it someday, whether you like it or not."
“You actually believe your own bullshit," the young man spits. “You want me to be like you, but I never will. That's what you don't get."
“You already are like me, you've just forgotten. And I always believed in what I was doing. I was compelled by a force greater than me. Ever since I first saw you, I saw the roots of my flaws in you just waiting to blossom, and I was terrified. I knew I had to do everything in my power to eradicate them, to kill the echo of..."
The man stops, his voice trembling into nothing. His eyes are shiny with tears. The young man is taken aback by this sudden vulnerability. He doesn't want to believe. In his distraction, he fails to notice the man moving closer. Suddenly the man's rough hand is on his head, gripping his skull, and a flood of images and emotions bombard his senses: lust, passion, blind release, the sting of regret, the horror of a reflection, a fortifying force overcoming the horror, scarred devotion, discipline, protection at all costs, vigilance, feverish nights of rumination and doubt, strategizing, anticipating, all for him, all for him – and this sequence crashes over and over, receding into the infinite past like the endless reflections of two mirrors facing one another.
With a burst of willpower, the young man pulls himself back into the present. The man. The turban. Within, the hilt of a knife barely visible. He reaches out. He grabs the leather handle. He plunges the curved blade into the man's chest. The man releases his grip, doubling over. The young man stabs and stabs and stabs, on top of the man now. Finally, he withdraws the blade and pauses. A drop of blood slips off the tip and evaporates before it can reach the man's robe.
The elder smiles up at the young man and coughs blood. “That's my boy." Then a great plume of vapor bursts out of every orifice of the robe. The young man jumps back in shock and covers his face. When he turns back, the robe is filled with sand. He stands, hands shaking, leaves everything, and walks away. After a few minutes, he looks back and sees nothing. The robe, the staff, the knife – all of it is swallowed up by the desert.
Finally, there is something in the distance: a dark shape daring to intrude upon the endless sand. He stumbles toward the wavering mansion-mirage and lifts his fist, half-expecting the door to dissolve on impact, but his blistered knuckles rap weakly on solid wood. It opens then closes abruptly. He knocks again, begs through parched lips, and the door opens wide.
A kind-eyed lady beckons him in and leads him down carpeted stairs to a cool basement room where two girls lounge on a huge couch. They stand to greet him. One is blonde with soft features, thick hair, and a curious gaze; the other, brunette with harder features, thin hair, and eyes of stone. Both are oddly similar, like two angles of the same object. When they first look at the stranger, he notices an instant, silent recognition in their eyes. They quickly glance at each other but say nothing. Have they met before? He searches his mind, but it is parched and unmoving. Besides, who would he know in this wilderness?
Their gruff father barges in to measure up the new arrival then slouches away, apparently satisfied. The wanderer says he's looking for a woman disappeared. They ask where he last saw her, and he describes disconnected images without meaning: the ocean, the moon, a forlorn shack. Even her face seems to have evaporated in the desert heat. They ask of his home, but he cannot remember. The blonde girl giggles as he tells his tale; the brunette furrows her brow. He never learns their names.
He is permitted to wander the house at will. The father shuts himself in his office until dinner. The mother paints bedroom walls and ceiling blue with white clouds for her daughters. They dine together: the stranger and this strange family.
At bedtime, the blonde daughter corners him in the hallway, grabbing his arm and excitedly describing their “neat” shower to him. She says it's amazing, and she wants to show it to him, but the stranger demurs, feeling the girl's mother watching him through the walls.
He's told to sleep in the girls' old room. The parents disappear, presumably to bed, and the three of them slide easily into a long, satisfying conversation in their old bedroom. The girls are homeschooled but bright. He is continually surprised at how much they have in common.
They talk about their aspirations. The blonde wants to work with children. She passionately sermonizes about how crucial childhood is. The brunette scoffs, “Children are boring, like unformed clay; it is only later when we become real." She wants to write therapeutic texts for the purpose of self-actualization. She claims she can read palms. She takes the stranger's left hand and counts his fingers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. She thinks he has much untapped potential.
The conversation flows on, and the stranger feels them growing closer. Physically, too. They sit side-by-side on the foot of their bed, and he sits in a chair facing them, close enough to touch feet with the blonde. After several hours, there is a natural pause in the conversation, and, without preamble, he leans forward and their faces merge.
He kisses both passionately, shamelessly, working his hands down their oddly familiar bodies. They melt into the bed. There are thrilling moments when he can no longer distinguish his body from theirs. His hands caress firm muscle, he opens his eyes, and he sees himself – only himself – all around him. He closes his eyes, and they are separate again, their soft hair brushing his face, their pillowy breasts pressing against him. When they are separate, the blonde tends to cling tightly, kissing him tenderly but greedily, as if each kiss claims ownership over that area of his body. The brunette strives to draw them apart, latching her lips onto his, forcing him into herself and rhythmically grinding against him. Somehow, a temporary synthesis is reached, and he closes his eyes, right on the edge of total unity and surrender when there is a loud banging.
The girls pull away and disappear. The stranger sits up and looks around in confusion. The cozy bedroom has expanded into a vast warehouse. He runs up a nearby tower of scaffolding to get his bearings and hears an engine approaching. A group of his friends in a Mustang screech to a stop at the base of the tower, gesturing for him to hurry down. He leaps into the car and urges them to move quickly before the girls' parents find him.
They drive to a little house within the warehouse. Inside, there is a stage with tables set and pamphlets and flags. A bulldog of a woman in an Army uniform shoves a pamphlet into the stranger's hands and directs his attention to a training video playing on a TV. He tells her he must find his friends.
He waits in a queue for food. He makes a hot dog, forgetting the wiener at first before his friend reminds him. He smothers it in ketchup and mustard that swirl together. Searching for a table, he spots the girls standing off in a dark corner. He wants to approach them, to make up with them, but the brunette shoots him a dirty look and pulls the blonde away, and they merge with the darkness.
The stranger wakes with a jolt. A striped kitten sits on his bedside table and talks to him without speaking. The kitten says there had been a fair-haired girl standing at the foot of his bed watching him sleep. The kitten tells him she seemed to have good intentions, but the stranger represses a shiver knowing that the dark girl will visit him also, and she is not one to forgive.
He wakes again, sweating. He thought he heard a voice, a female voice, cutting through his dark bedroom. It feels as if the door is open. There's someone in the room.
He sits up. A young woman leans against the far wall. She wears a loose black dress, her feet are bare, her black hair is pulled back in a slick ponytail, and she holds a handful of razor blades that gleam in the darkness. An earthy scent of revenge permeates the night air. She speaks, and her sharp voice cuts through the silent room.
“You are weak. You have weakened yourself through years of willful ignorance. You choose to ignore yourself. Now you must face the pain of self-knowledge."
He opens his mouth to respond, but she flies across the room, and he cowers back, tangled in bed sheets. Her stony scowl says she won't leave until he holds a razor, slashes face, slashes X into forehead, slashes both cheeks, whatever she says. Floating outside himself, his cuts sting and throb, but she compels him to continue deeper until strips of skin slide off onto the floor, until his face is nothing but exposed, red dermis. And when he cannot bear another cut, she vanishes. It's over. He collapses back into bed.
But she isn't done yet. Everything grows hellishly hot. “Oh, no . . .” Pain slithers up his body, and the sheets are lit with a fiery red glow. Her disembodied voice echoes through the room: “There is more work to be done here. There is more that must be stripped away."
He feels some part of his mind reaching out beyond the bedroom, searching for an escape. And some place begins to materialize, brick by brick; but, before it is fully manifest, he is swallowed by flames.
In the bowels of a massive high school, a substitute teacher leads a class. Joking with the funny students, he feels an affinity for them. They show him their projects: variations on a cog – some large, some small, some painted vivid colors. He admires them, but a sneaking melancholy grips him on the inside, something lost he'll never get back. He doesn't belong here anymore. He has overstayed his welcome.
School ends, and he searches for an exit, but the blue concrete block hallways seem to stretch as he walks. He has not been sleeping well. He rests for a moment, leaning on his knees, sweating, panting, and he feels the weight of the institution around him.
He also feels as if he's being watched. There is a cold presence stalking him down these empty halls. Frequently, he looks over his shoulder and sees long, dark hair fly behind a corner, hiding until he looks away. Finally, he limps out of the freezing hallway onto a balcony that looks down on the warm bustling main lobby.
At night, the school comes alive. Crowds explore a maze of galleries, stores, libraries, arcades, and cafes only open when the sun is down. He descends and merges with them, a new energy in his step.
A skeletal man sits hunched in a booth where visitors come to borrow books or toys or games. He meets eyes with the old man and is unnerved to see him crying. He lingers with hands in pockets in a play area for kids with games and puzzles built into colorful geometric walls. He forces himself to continue. An old woman coughs near his ear, and he grows suddenly paranoid and angry, wiping at his face.
He ascends a series of escalators where, to the sides, are vast inaccessible areas decorated like a jungle and lit with colorful stage lighting pointed in all directions. He sees apes walking upright down a trail on the side of a false mountain. He knows they must be animatronic, but they look alive, their movements seem random, not programmed. They move out of sight.
He looks up and sees a light booth near the ceiling and recognizes the blonde-haired girl working there and admires her ability to create so many shades of comfort. He wishes he could call to her, but she is too far away.
He wanders into an art gallery. An exhibit on death. He winds through a tall, narrow passageway and grows teary-eyed as he looks up the carpeted walls at all the paintings about the end.
One high on a wall catches his eye: a grey face with orange flames curling out of its eye sockets and gaping mouth. The edges of his vision smolder, and his chest aches. There is a bittersweet remembering and recentering within him.
It is suddenly too bright in there. He sees an exit and slips out into the dark.
It is a gorgeous, chilly night. A thin layer of clouds obscures the full moon, and in the holes between, scattered stars watch over him, much less than he would have expected. Where did all the stars go? he wonders.
Wait, where am I exactly? He turns around to see where he has come from. Behind, on the peak of a rolling hill, the glow of a dying campfire illuminates the outline of a large tent. Camping trip. Alone? He suddenly becomes aware of the burning campfire log he holds in his left hand to light his path. He was going somewhere for some reason. He turns back in the direction he was heading.
Something is pulling him across the heath. As he walks, another more disturbing question surfaces in him: Who am I? A seemingly simple question to ask, but any sort of answer escapes him. He searches his mind, and it is silent. To extinguish his growing disquiet, he reaches his right hand into both pockets to see if he has a wallet with some kind of identification, although just the thought of doing this makes him feel crazy. His pockets produce nothing except a single coin. He holds it up to the torchlight. It is large, heavy, golden, and decorated with a pentagram on both sides. The coin triggers a cascade of mental sensations both pleasurable and melancholic, similar to nostalgia but empty of any specific memories. Somehow the coin is enough to calm him again. He places it back in his pocket.
Continuing on, he crests a hill and sees a dark mass swallowing the stars like a misshapen black hole, and a chill runs across his scalp. Nostalgia of a darker flavor overcomes him. He's been here before, seen these ruins looming ahead in the darkness. But how? When? As he approaches, the torchlight illuminates rough stone walls, and buried memories dislodge themselves.
Yes, he's been here many times. First, when he was a toddler. He remembers floating across water toward a dark stone church, through two huge wooden doors that opened on their own and closed behind him. He had landed and seen, in the back-left corner, a stone glowing like the sun. He'd reached out to touch it, but had awakened and run crying to his parents' bedroom. He'd had this dream several times throughout childhood, and as he aged, the church crumbled but the stone never dimmed. How had he forgotten?
He enters the gaping entryway where doors once stood. He looks to the left. The protruding stone is there but it isn't glowing. He approaches, drops to his knees, and leans the dying torch against the wall. He grasps the stone, and it slides easily out of the wall. The veins in his forehead pulse as he turns it over and sees ancient carved glyphs he somehow understands:
“My son, if you read this, the ritual worked. Your body has perished, but your soul has been saved. We know not when you will return, but we have faith that Silvia will keep her word. She will lead you here and you will be-”
But a crack in the stone obscures the rest. He is contemplating these words when he hears a distant splashing. He stands and drops the stone. Time seems broken. He is outside, then he is inside thinking of being outside, then he is seeing movement down by the loch.
He floats toward the shoreline, although he thinks of returning to his tent. The placid water ripples lightly as something slithers toward the shore. The full moon bursts from behind a cloud and everything is consecrated in its holy light.
A nude female figure rises out of the water, slimy weeds tangled in her long, black hair. Her eyes shine golden like the stone of his dreams, revealing rectangular pupils that tether him to her. Hooves sink into the muddy shore where her feet should be, and a fat, oily serpent's tail snakes into the depths behind her. She opens her mouth and a soft alien voice emanates from it.
“You've come at last. I have allowed you to live many lives apart. Now we belong together.”
She spreads her arms and he falls into her wet embrace. A warmth floods his body with paralyzing comfort, all his muscles are perfectly relaxed, and he knows, without a doubt, that this is the moment his whole life has been leading to, the fulfillment of his deepest dreams and fantasies.
Then he is gone, and she is gone, and ripples spread, and a cloud of crimson mist drifts away in the wind.
Foggy transfiguration,
animal kingdom sensation,
swamp water stillness:
she is an illness.
Owls leering yellow envy,
slicing pupils peer through fog.
Bullfrog maws fill with awe:
the princess has arrived.
But with a liquid drop, she's gone.
Elusive Lucifer, loose her!
Caress fern dress,
bare feet on loose dirt.
Dark hair curls, tendrils.
Embers slow burn, her turn.
Lost in the churning world,
rotten logs, bogs and tree frogs
offer soggy applause.
Emerald ivy slippers step
past slithering lizards,
through birds that swoop and peck
pale, piercing shoulders.
Herds of fur heads
turn in her direction.
She is an infection.
He is floating through a dense forest of pine trees stretching up into the moonless dome of uninterrupted blackness except for a few stars along the horizon. The trees sway rhythmic, alive with the cool wind. His fingers brush past whispering pine needles as he moves by. He feels like he's just emerged from a long nap. The trees part and a tall, grassy ridge extends toward him on the left and right, but, straight ahead, recedes and converges. At the intersection, there is a cave the shape of a cat's pupil, a vertical slit in the center of the mountainside.
He passes through the smooth opening, and darkness surrounds him. Soon he can't tell if he's even moving anymore. He floats in the thick, fluid darkness so warm that the separation between his body and surroundings dissolves, as does time. He feels eternally secure; nothing can touch him. But there is a distant green glow that becomes a focal point he moves toward.
Stone materializes around him, water trickling down tunnel walls, which are covered in primitive paintings: human figures fighting monsters of all shapes and sizes, as many beasts as there are men. He rounds a corner and stops, dumbfounded. Amidst armies of towering stalagmites, floating in the middle of the cathedral-sized expanse and glowing like an emerald is a beautiful girl.
Larger than life, her piercing gaze draws him forward like the idol of some ancient goddess. Her face is familiar but alien. Her dark hair hovers in wild serpentine strands around her glowing head, which almost touches the roof of the cavern. Her green robe flows to the cavern floor. He collapses before her like a supplicant before a queen.
“It's you," he mutters fearfully, not knowing what he means.
“Who?" Her voice echoes and fills the cavern, creating a resonance that rattles his teeth and wipes clean the memory of his last utterance.
“I don't remember."
“You have seen me in many forms, in many places." Her lips make a slight movement as if she is going to say something else but changes her mind. “What is your name?"
As if by magic, the words unlock a series of vague impressions in his mind, the last echoes of dying memories. “You know my name. I told you once."
She remains silent, waiting.
“Weston."
“Ha!" she responds. “More like Easton. Your home is there; you long for it. What are you doing wandering this way, son of the East? Why are you here?"
He searches his mind but thoughts flee from his grasp. “I think I'm here to learn something – something about myself?"
She leans back her head, and her laughter splits the cavern air. He shoves his palms against his ears, his whole body quaking with fright.
“Haven't you done enough learning already?" she sneers.
“You mock me." He gathers his strength to look up at her gigantic face once again but is surprised to see the warm glow of compassion shining down on him.
“I do not intend to mock you. It is just that you cling so tightly to your past and linger in your memories. I am trying to dislodge you. You still have much to go through, but I will be with you, even when you are too distracted to see me, even when you forsake me as a lilith, even when you have forgotten me completely, which you will.
“But, wait," he interrupts. “I have to know: is there an end to all this? Will I ever reach the bottom of it? I don't think I can bear much more."
She furrows her brow and her voice grows stern. “There is no bottom, no boundary, no end, only your end. But you must be prepared."
“Prepared for what?"
“You will grasp that soon enough, but now you must go," she finishes hastily.
She closes her eyes, and there is a rumbling below him. The whole cave shakes, and several stalagmites crack and plummet to the floor where they explode into numberless fragments.
“Wait. Wait! I'm not ready. Where are you sending me?" He reaches out to grab her dress, but the ground underneath gives way, and he plummets into a screaming pit.
She awakens in a bed of sand. Her eyes flutter open. Is this the desert? Again?
She stands and spins around. There is no one in sight, only mountains of sand. But as her mind settles, a merciful sound becomes audible: the rhythmic pounding of waves.
She searches toward the sound, reaching out to it with her mind. But as it grows, so does her dread. She approaches the distant shoreline crashing beyond the obscuring dune and slides her fingers along the wet translucent plexiglass of the empty lifeguard tower. The flags wave red, like her hair, and she almost turns and runs when the churning waves burst into view, suddenly too close, devouring the beach far below.
Her toes dislodge chunks of sand that plummet and dissolve in the lapping surf. A plume of mist catches her eye, and she sees an oily serpent arch out of the sea, fanning glittering fins like a warning flag before descending. And nearer to shore, a rubbery megalodon leaps, man-sized mouth swallowing air then water again – vast water stretching beyond the limits of her imagination, depths unknown.
But, straight ahead, a few miles from shore, an emerald tower stands obstinate, triumphant in the greedy waves. It shines against them, deflecting the penetrating sun that warms the girl's skin and smooths her goosebumps. Its reassuring radiance gives her leave and courage to dive.
A mother rocks her infant to sleep singing cosmic lullabies as they float through a forgotten galaxy, and the dim glow of dying stars lights her kind face. But the melody sours, and her hair darkens and curls, and her skin wrinkles and greens, and her eyes grow white with gleeful anticipation as she fills space with merciless cackling and bares dripping fangs, and the child stares up in terror as six extra arms grow out of his mother's back and bend around to embrace him, and the last light in existence blinks out.
He flicks on the light in the nursery room and sees a bulging sac of eggs hanging from the ceiling and a bulbous mother the size of a large dog poised above, vigilantly protecting her unborn, staring down from her nest with a multiplicity of cold, bottomless eyes.
He backs away slowly into the hall, but there are spiders there, too. Fat black ones hang motionless from the ceiling. Furry brown ones scurry along the walls. These are her children; they bear an unmistakable resemblance. He dodges away from them, barefoot, careful where he steps.
Swerving through the nearest doorway, he discovers a party in full swing: people dancing and holding drinks and talking like nothing is wrong while the room seethes with spiders. A chunky beige one the size of a human infant tries to climb their legs like an excited puppy. It emits a high-pitched chittering as if trying to communicate, but they nudge it away without pausing their conversation. How do they not see the spiders?
He spots his brother on the other side of the room. His brother doesn't seem to notice him, but he clearly sees the spiders. The big beige one scurries toward him, but he lifts his foot and crushes its head with a satisfying crunch. Its legs scitter wildly for a moment then curl inward. The hum of the room falls into shocked silence. People glare at him, whispering to each other, but he doesn't care. His brother glances at him, and its as if a message or a long-forgotten memory is passed between them. He feels a surge of rebellious determination, then the great arachnid massacre begins.
They kill them with chairs, with forks, even their bare hands. The human crowd flees, unable to fathom such impropriety. Slimy spider guts squeeze between their fingers as the killing continues. It sickens him, but he can't stop until they're all eliminated. He works his way back through the hall to the nursery and the dangling sac full to bursting.
But when he enters, his brother is slumped against the corner, dead, with mother-spider's fangs buried deep into his pale face, sucking and slurping.
Furious, he grabs a baby rattle off the floor, jumps and swings at the sac. Direct hit. It splits open and green spider juices spill onto his upturned face. He strikes again, and it falls to the floor with a splat. The eggs are translucent and contain tiny embryos that look strangely human. He kneels and smashes every last one into oblivion.
Mother-spider attacks, latching her fangs into his forearm for one frightening moment, but he swings the rattle and she flies against the wall, bloodying the painted stork. He approaches and sees that her legs are trembling and her globular eyes convey something akin to fear. But he raises his arm and finishes her until her legs curl in defeat.
He wipes his face and stands, shaking, thrilled and ashamed at what he's done. Most of all, he feels a deep calm spread through his entire body that simultaneously fills him with a crazy, childlike energy. Anything is possible now. He could do anything! There are no limits; no restrictions. Lost in these thoughts, he is only dimly aware of a commotion behind him,and, before he can turn, rough hands seize him, pinning him against the wall. He glances back at the corpse and sees, to his horror, not the spider but his own mother slumped against the corner, dead.
Nude, shackled, and led by a towering royal guardess across cold marble, the prisoner passes under the archway into the cavernous throne room. The shadowy rafters reverberate with the low chants and moans of an unseen choir, and the prisoner represses a shiver.
He sees the Queen sitting dead ahead on her obsidian throne flanked by Amazonian guardesses dressed in bejeweled lingerie and wielding bone-tipped spears and diamond shields that glimmer like moonlight in a disturbed pond.
He had been summoned from his holding cell without preparation, the memory of his crime already a tattered impression, unrecognizable. He had killed a spider, or was it his mother, or was it both?
He is forced to kneel before the Queen’s alabaster legs, and the ancient gong is struck, and he does what he must do, and the shrieking voices of the holy chorus ascend to space begging the stars to return, and the queen leans back, cold veins pulsing, and the guardesses beat the floor with their spear tips, and the whole planet seems to veer off course.
And when his mind starts to bend, too, some kind of fingers clutch at his hair, lifting his gaze to meet the Queen’s black eyes. She licks her lips and pronounces the sentence: “Guilty!”
He is jostled awake by a bump in the road. He would wipe the drool from his mouth if his hands, which he can no longer feel, were not restrained behind his back. He is still half-blind from the Queen's bottomless gaze, but his eyes are recovering. The sun's orange beams pierce the dirty bus windows one last time before they are eclipsed by uncaring mountaintops.
The inside of the bus grows dim, and even the guard looks mournful for a moment when she thinks no one is watching. She reminds him of Mom. In her eyes, he can tell she sees the wrong of all this, the pointlessness of it, but she still goes along with it because it is routine, or maybe because she is a victim herself.
The bus stops in the middle of a muddy field, and she shoves him out. He trips and falls into the thick mud. He thinks she will push him down further into the mud, but she yanks him up onto his feet: a small show of mercy. He is wearing a heavy plexiglass helmet to restrict his view, but he tilts it off as he stands in a final act of defiance. She doesn't pick it up.
Instead, she leads him toward a group of men standing in a circle laughing. The apparent leader of the men turns, and the prisoner recognizes him immediately. He is older and frailer than he remembers, but his narrow, white moustache is unmistakable; and, for a split second, beneath the bushy eyebrows, beneath the wrinkles and crow's feet and drooping eyelashes, there is a sadness, a familiarity, in his eyes.
Balding men in heavy wool uniforms surround the prisoner, spitting gibberish. Each of their uniforms bears a badge on the right shoulder depicting a large black spider in the middle of her web. The man with the white moustache produces a miniature revolver and points it at the prisoner. The prisoner thinks of running, but they will shoot and tear flesh with bullets before successful escape. Then they may force humiliating acts and even more pain.
He thinks not once of god or afterlife, only annihilation. At this point, he almost longs for it. Almost. Time rushes even though he tries to inhale every intoxicating moment. He starts laughing and coughing because absurdity constricts his ribs and waters his eyes like tear gas. The fact that they're in charge, that they're about to exterminate him completely.
But there is a shout from behind. The man hesitates then lowers his gun. All the men fall silent. The prisoner dares to look over his shoulder.
Behind him is a red-haired girl holding a rifle. A forgotten memory stirs in him: a moonlit balcony.
“You?" he sighs, feeling suddenly disconnected from himself. “What are you doing here?"
She raises her rifle and closes one eye, pressing her tear-stained cheek against the cool wooden stock. “I'm sorry," she says softly, "it has to be me."
Hysteria seizes. Everything so fiery real. Losing control. Hold onto this. He cannot end. Not like this. And just like that-
She holds the emerald tower in her mind's eye as gravity grabs and twists her fragile body down. She slices through, into cold shock that starts to warm as she sinks and slowly uncurls, her hair searching like tree roots, her limbs stretching, spreading her fingers and toes farther than ever, allowing sediment through her pores, deeper into the core, into the aching lungs and ears and heart, into the benevolent dark.
Mother-ocean pulls out her impurities, baptizing her before spitting her out reborn. So light, floating up, she opens her eyes and swears she sees the stars. She reaches out, but she cannot stay. She's falling through clouds, down, down, condensing back into herself.
She is awake, alone, high on a summit surrounded by an ocean of rolling trees, emerging from her dreams, dizzy and numb, fiery hair damp and swaying in a misty breeze that slams the door shut on the godforsaken shack behind her that she once called home, and on her past which drips from her fingertips and stains the dew-soaked grass red. Her wails carry for miles but the steadfast trees absorb them.
And far below on a steep plowed field, her tear lights on a woman's brow as she searches, screaming: “Where is my daughter? Have you seen her? She was right here! Sophia! Sophia, where are you?"
Her two sons watch her, glance at each other, and know what they must do. They turn their backs on the setting sun and run eastward, the younger leading the older, until their mother's cries are only echoes in their heads.
A lithe man sprints through an endless field scarred with a maze of deep trenches. He leaps into a ditch, jogging, older brother at his back like a shadow.
He runs ahead, skidding around a dark corner, but a hand reaches out and grabs his ankle, pulling him down to the ground. A bloodied, white-haired corpse raises itself out of the mud, brandishing an antique flintlock. The captive struggles to break free, but the elder bludgeons him with the wooden butt of his gun, then collapses, releasing his last breath. The younger man is dead, also.
His brother sprints into the earthen corridor and finds his other half lying in a widening crimson puddle. No longer split, he mourns beside the pool as a young woman floats from behind a gloomy wall.
Alien, she bathes in the blood of the slain man. The black dome of her scalp emerges from the bottomless pond as she stares at the living sibling, cold moonlight in her eyes. The living man glares back at her, unafraid, ready to die again.
The young woman transmits to him a memory: in a nearby warehouse, a girl restrained, held above a long, bare wooden table carved from an ancient tree and standing in the center of a cavernous room. Blue strobe lights slice her nakedness into thin strips: blonde hair draped over small breasts, dripping, trembling. Behind her, unseen, a machine rumbles.
The dark woman and the last brother stand in the shadows and watch as the machine contorts the helpless girl with sudden, jerky movements that suggest a set of programmed steps but also, in some moments, willful malice.
The young man trembles, unable to move. “We have to stop it. We have to. Please, please, I'm begging you. Please stop it. Please." His face drips with sweat and tears. He gathers all of his courage and readies himself to run at the machine.
But the young woman grabs his arm with her blood-soaked hand and warns him harshly, “If you do so, all of her pain will be for nothing. You have to trust me." She releases his arm and turns her eyes back to the table. “Not every beautiful thing can be saved. Her innocence is no longer needed."
A black appendage with concave tip slithers, serpentine, out of the dark and slides between the girl's legs. The tentacle, segmented like a scorpion, attaches to her, extracting her sweetness. She tilts back her head in ecstasy or pain as the beast squeezes her ribs like an anaconda. She is trapped. Another ebony member hovers over her, the end like a slick helmet that fits tightly over her skull and transmits unspeakable visions straight from the depths at the exact moment of orgasm.
Inside her skull, there is vast darkness then an explosion and an expansion. The empty void is filled with a network of undulating webs. But as she moves closer to it, she sees that the fibers are made of symbols. They vibrate like strings on a musical instrument, and a cacophony of voices fills the space. It is as if the webs themselves are speaking, their stories overlapping each other: “In the beginning...once upon a time...in a land far, far away...in a time long ago...in the name of god, the gracious, the merciful...tell me, o muse..." The voices multiply until no distinct words can be heard, only babble overwhelming everything.
As she moves closer, shapes become visible moving along the strands. Word struggle to describe these creatures; only comparison will do. The creatures have human-like heads from which twisting appendages like those of an octopus radiate outward. From their mouths, they eject a stringy, inky fluid made of symbols that they weave into the existing tapestry. Some of the heads weep, others laugh, and others simply scream. The entire spectrum of emotion is present in all its vivid colors. The desperate creatures scurry together into quivering clumps to weave new structures or reinforce existing ones. They have not a moment of rest. They are driven by fear, lust, loneliness, boredom, and these emotions are the very substrate of their webs.
Her focus shifts to one of these creatures who has become isolated from the others. Suddenly, as if by invisible hands, it is torn inside out, revealing bright bone and blood and raw flesh and throbbing nerves and sex organs and cells dividing, multiplying, decaying. This must be the bottom, she thinks.
But, no. Further in, the organic chaos is revealed to be a fiery one: a swarm of restless particles, colliding, fusing, repelling. Deeper still, what she sees is almost indescribable: pulsing waves of energy, fields of probability, pure math, forces that are seemingly random but apparently ordered, like the workings of a complex machine. At the bottom of it all, a machine.
Her mind struggles to hold itself together as the force of the vision threatens to tear it apart at the edges. This must be a lie. There must be another reality if she could just find it. With the last ounce of her will and concentration, she searches the void until, to her surprise, she discovers a mansion.
The enormous mansion teems with hundreds of raving humans. Its roof is partially missing, and the sharp crescent moon lights the never-ending chaos below.
All are armed with jagged weapons, eyes shining with murderous glee. Alliances form and dissipate, and victims tumble through endless cycles of attack, fear, false escape, hopeful hiding, sudden death. No shadow is safe, and unlimited tension mounts as waves of violence break again and again.
But the inhabitants of the great house are abducted by beings from above and taken up into a white, oval ship in the sky. They materialize in a round, empty room where smooth, ivory-colored extraterrestrials greet them with soothing, synthetic tones. One of these beings floats toward the huddled humans and motions their attention to the center of the room. The lights dim and, for a second, the only protection from total darkness are the few stars shining through the round skylight in the ceiling.
Then, a three-dimensional image appears before them: a bright yellow planet, its entire surface covered in churning waters. The aliens attempt to translate their message into the language of their captives. The planet is called Tiamat, and there is a terrible monster lurking in its fathomless ocean. The projection zooms into a black speck that, at first, looks like a worm, but that quickly grows into a whale-like serpent. This leviathan, they are told, has grown out of control and is wreaking havoc on the planet's entire ecosystem. The aliens have chosen their captives, because of their obvious and extensive fluency in violence, to slay this monster and restore balance to Tiamat.
One of the Earthlings seems to understand more than the others. The planet is not a surprise to him. The moment the yellow globe appears before him, he is struck by a wave of deja vu. He has been there before, but how? In a previous life? In a dream? As the projection fades and the bright lights of the ship are revived, his face is streaked with tears. This is what he must do, what he was born to do.
The aliens ask for volunteers, and he immediately steps forward. The aliens seem pleased but not surprised by his enthusiasm. They lead him away from his companions and into a room where a small feast is laid out for him on a low table. The food is made to look like Earth food, but the textures and flavors are not quite right. Luckily, the volunteer is starving and eats the entire meal ravenously. When the last plate is empty, they pour him a cup of strange liquid that smells like alcohol or vinegar but that shares the same yellowish-green color of the planet they are now hurtling towards. He drinks and feels a cool vigor sweep through his body. Every fiber of his being is ready for combat.
They lead him to a small pod attached to the ship. Outside its single round window, all he can see are yellow waves. He is directed to stand still while a robot assembles a suit around his body and fits a clear, airtight helmet over his head, locking it shut. A variety of sharp weapons line the walls of his pod, some unlike anything he has ever seen. His eye is drawn to a curved harpoon a few feet taller than him. He grabs it just as the pod door seals shut behind him and a warning voice urges him to strap himself in his seat. The pod detaches with a lurch and falls through the thick atmosphere until it strikes the surface of that singular ocean.
Now underwater, the volunteer warrior unstraps himself and steps toward the large window that takes up almost half of the pod. But all he can see is vast opaque yellow in all directions. The color is so alien to his human eyes that distances are impossible to calculate. There is no reference point, no living thing as far as he can see. He strains his eyes for any movement, but to no avail. Some time passes, and his mind grows tired from the anticipation. He sits and wonders if there is something he should be doing or if this was all a trick or experiment of some kind. He suddenly feels pathetic in this silly suit, holding this strange weapon. Then, a horrifying thought clouds his mind: what if his captors lied to him; what if he isn't here to kill the beast but to bait it?
But, suddenly, the vessel lurches forward, and he is thrown out of his doubts and out of his chair. Red warning lights flash, and water spews through a crack in the back wall. Before he can even lift himself, the capsule door bursts open, and the ocean reaches in and pulls him out into itself. He floats freely in the swirling water, watching the flooded pod, his only real protection, sink into the bottomless yellow haze below his feet.
And then, up from the deep, a dark mass emerges like a mountain out of fog. It is so long that its head and tail are lost somewhere in the haze. All he can see is some middle part stretching across the horizon of visibility. Its dark skin is a planet unto itself, encrusted with algae and structures of coral, carrying its own ecosystem.
The helpless warrior turns to his left and is met with an even more shocking sight: an eye the size of a city block staring back at him. The eye is open but covered by a milky second lid that slowly slides away like a curtain, revealing a dark jagged vertical pupil. In the coloring of the surrounding sclera, there are a network of capillaries that look to the man like wires.
And, with that, the horrible truth strikes him: this creature, she is machine, a living weapon. He can see it in the shadows of her dead pupil: the click and whir of watertight machinery unimaginably complex, designed millennia ago by some forgotten civilization and still operating to this moment. He is destined to be swallowed. Were her creators, in their hubris, swallowed by her, too? His weapon is meaningless. He is nothing in her massive shadow. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
The water around him shifts as the creature turns to face him. Even square-on, its head is so massive that its width stretches far beyond the man's peripheral vision. He can only stare ahead at the intersection of chaotic teeth, each tooth a skyscraper resolving to a point as razor-sharp and precise as a sword. Its mouth begins to open, creating a current that pulls him even closer to the edge of that dark abyss. Its throat is a purple cavern leading to a black pit, the scale of which is unimaginable.
Forgetting himself, the volunteer relaxes his hand, and his spear sinks into the deep until it is no longer visible. He closes his eyes and accepts his fate. There is nothing he can do. He waits for death. A great roar emanates from the creature's throat, shaking his fragile human bones, ruffling his suit, and pushing him backwards in the water. But he is not perturbed; his eyes remain shut.
There is another powerful roar, but this time with a hint of pain in it. Curious, he opens his eyes and sees that the creature has turned its open jaws away from him. Inside the great eye are sparks like lightning. The creature's body pulses and jerks wildly, as if malfunctioning. Its jaw opens wider than it should and releases one final terrible shriek, then it is still and silent as it sinks. The man watches it disappear, wondering at all he has just witnessed and pondering it in his heart.
After a few moments that seem like ages, a white beam of light pierces the ocean, and the man feels himself being pulled up to the surface, then through air, where, at some point, everything goes black.
The humans are dropped once again into their dark abode, and there is chaos and confusion until a bearded prophet in a tattered robe ascends a pile of rubble, preaching that peace is difficult but possible if they are willing to calmly face the beast within themselves. Then they will be able to help each other learn to control their impulses before it's too late.
“I have seen," he preaches, “that this world is but one node in a vast web of realities that stretches to infinity in all directions. We must be humble and let that humility stay our restless hands."
Most ignore the prophet, others cannot hear him over their own chaos, but a few hear his teachings and stop to listen. One day, in the midst of a sermon, a screaming attacker rushes forward with knife raised, but the preacher easily disarms him and embraces him. The crowd gasps and applauds, and a general relief spreads over the manor.
They melt their blades in a bubbling cauldron, and mold a totem the shape of a human – eyes closed, palms open – sitting on the twisted corpse of a dead serpent, an elliptical ship hovering above. They mount it in the center of the manor, and in its radiant surface is reflected the first rays of a new sun rising.
And in this shining era of peace, the retired prophet discovers a crawl space in the basement of the mansion. He wriggles forward on hands and knees downhill into a narrowing canal of clay red and smooth that squeezes around him, distant radiance drawing him forward. An opening!
He peers in amazement at a cozy chapel carved into this cave, colored light piercing the impossible stained-glass windows, bathing an old priest who blesses hymnal-holding congregants scattered amongst wooden pews. The prophet watches on his belly then squeezes up and out and stands awkwardly near the back. He wants to feel at home here, but he does not belong. No one seems to notice him, and the priest babbles in a strange tongue.
The prophet exits through the north deacon door behind the pulpit, which leads to a cramped staircase spiraling to a lower level: red-carpeted, empty foyers with golden lamps on the walls. He peeks through two heavy doors and spies a dark expanse with rows of seats, an empty stage, and vast burgundy curtains, which begin to close, eerily silent, billowing, engulfing the stage. No applause. The prophet moves on.
A central stairwell beckons him deeper, where he explores a neon arcade, maze-like, connecting to a movie theater hallway lined with posters of films unknown that widens into a glass-domed mall he strolls through, not believing this is all under his mansion. There are others there but they are sparse. This place feels private, insulated. He could get lost here in the colored lights and enticing smells and endless entertainment, but there is something desperate about them, a stomach-dropping emptiness and he knows there must be more. He finds a service elevator with no buttons except up and down. He makes his choice.
The box descends, the doors open, and he inhales the dusty air of an ancient library. Endless aisles with grids of metal walkways and ladders dissipating into darkness. Great tomes with intricately carved wooden covers fill the shelves. Tears fill his eyes looking at these books. Who created them all? Who will ever read them? He is compelled to pass on.
He pauses when, next, the elevator opens to thick darkness. He submerges himself in the black, disoriented. He detects a distant light around a corner and follows, squinting, until he sees several miniature stages where vignettes of animatronic figurines go about their business in idyllic domestic scenes, and their cheery glow casts long over the loop carpet of the too-large room. He feels frightened but privileged to discover them. It must have been decades, maybe longer, since anyone has witnessed their infinite show. But they perform regardless. Behind him, he spies a red exit sign glowing in the distance. He turns toward it but stops when he hears a voice.
“Weston." He turns back to the stage. One of the figures steps down onto the carpet.
“Sophia?" Her cherubic face, thick blonde hair and petite frame are unmistakable even in this gloom. But the longer he looks at her, the more his head begins to ache and his vision blurs and he is forced to look away. He is overwhelmed by an irrational panic, and a feeling of being outside of his body watching himself, and a conviction that seeing her shouldn't be possible. "Am I inside your mind or are you inside mine?" he wonders aloud.
“It doesn't matter," she answers calmly. “All that matters is that we're here . . . together."
He isn't sure about that. He takes one cautious step backwards.
“You don't have to leave yet," she urges, stepping hesitantly toward him with her fingers intertwined in a gesture of supplication. “We can stay and watch. There's no rush."
Her soft voice and soothing presence tug at him. Is this really her? Is this some kind of trick? I thought she was-
“I'm very much alive," she says as she kneels and pats her hand on the carpet next to her. “Sit."
“I can't, Sophie. I'm sorry."
“But why?" she asks, a note of child-like desperation rising in her voice. “You have all the time in the world." She notices him glancing behind him toward the exit sign. “There's nothing down there for you except pain. We have everything we need right here. You can finally rest."
“Ugh," he groans, feeling as if the carpet has turned to quicksand.
“No more searching. No more struggle."
“Sophia, please!"
“Look," she says, pointing to the right of the stage. The prophet is shocked into silence. Where there was once pure darkness, there is now a large tree standing alone, its branches adorned with shining globes of fruit, lit from above by an unseen source. The unmistakable hole at the base of this tree sends a torrent of nostalgia flooding through forgotten, parched channels in his mind. “It will be like you never left home."
He wants to believe. Maybe she is right. Maybe he is being overly stubborn. But something about the musty odor of this room gives him pause. The tree he remembers was not in a place like this; it was in woods far away, and it was guarded.
“Sophia, I love you, but I can't stop now. I would rot here. I have to keep going. I can't go backwards. We can't go backwards. I-"
But he stops, seeing that Sophia has slumped forward, sobbing, curling in on herself. The sobbing, at first heart-rending, gradually becomes more rhythmic, mechanical, synthesized. Suddenly, her head detaches from her body and rolls away. One arm falls, then another. Then her torso slumps to one side as the stage lights dim, and the last thing he sees is a pitiful shower of sparks fly from the exposed wires sticking out of her neck. Of course, he thinks, the machine consumed her, too.
He lingers for a minute, wondering if maybe the tree is still there in the blackness, but he shakes off the thought and stumbles toward the red exit sign where he finds a door that opens to a concrete stairwell.
One level below, he watches through a narrow window but doesn't enter because a ghostly secretary sits at a reception desk, and a sign in the corridor says, 'Closed to the Public', the corridor curving out of sight. He is not welcome here, he knows from experience. He will never be buttoned up or wear a voluntary noose.
Deeper still, he is lost for hours in tangled industrial tunnels – the hollow bones of the human world – neglected, forgotten, but somehow beautiful in their decay. When had the last set of eyes witnessed these tunnels? Do they have an end, or have they continued growing on their own, stretching into infinity? He turns and retraces his route only a moment before his mind would have forgotten the way out.
The staircase decays into stone that winds onto a rocky mesa surrounded by black sky empty of moon or stars, yet the surface is bright. Others wander the desolate expanse, and he sees his old adversary, Nick, preparing to descend a long rope hanging from a nail over a cliff edge, but something snaps and Nick is shattered on the toothy rocks below.
The prophet climbs down many layers of cliffs until he reaches the bottom. The tenth layer. Nothing beneath except nonexistence. And he gapes at throngs of bare-skinned humans crossing a churning green river, swimming or using precarious rafts. The acid water burns their skin, but they cross, desperate, ravenous to reach the far shore where shallow caves are carved into impenetrable rock. The scorched survivors roll aside round boulders blocking the mouths of these caves and disappear into smoke and screams and silence.
And the prophet knows in his marrow that this journey was not worth it, that it only led him to suffering and annihilation. So he turns back toward the cliffs. But, to his amazement, he spots his dead brother sitting cross-legged on the ground, drawing something in the dust with his finger. His brother looks up, as if sensing he is being watched, and a melancholic smile spreads across his dirty face. The prophet approaches, his brother stands, and they embrace.
But as they embrace, doubts creep into his mind. Is this truly his brother or is it another imposter? But he looks down and sees what was drawn in the dirt – a stick figure surrounded by flames – and all his doubts disintegrate.
“I've been waiting for you," his brother says.
“How long have you been waiting here?"
“It's hard to tell. Thousands have passed by me," he answers, gazing dreamily at the tumultuous river.
“Why didn't you cross?" asks the prophet.
“I don't know. Partly out of fear. Party because I was hoping to see you coming down those cliffs so that we could decide what to do together."
In that moment, the prophet realizes that the resistance he felt a moment ago was not clarity but cowardice and arrogance: a slow poison masquerading as a vaccine. If he returns now, he might find his way to some imitation of home, and he might feel clever and superior and safe, but how long would that last before he became aware of the pathetic truth? With a renewed strength, he turns back to his brother.
“Come, let's cross."
So they approach the overwhelming river, although the prophet feels the gravity of the upper nine levels pulling at his back. Acid scars their skin as waves lap at their little raft, but they crawl onto the other shore victorious. They breathe deep and roll aside the heavy stone and surrender to the hellish, cleansing mists within.
The room glows expectantly as a foot crosses its threshold and meets the thick astral-colored carpet spotted with fluorescent stars.
It swallows the visitor's disorderly human sounds like the vacuum of space as he floats to the center, equidistant from two black doorways. A light from behind the wall washes it deep blue like a horizon, settling his spirit.
His gaze rises to the top corner of the tall room where a little bed – neatly made and painted red, with red plaid blanket and soft white sheets and a nebular pillow – waits suspended, bathed in the artificial light of a smiling crescent moon surrounded by three smiling, five-pointed stars.
The only stars left are false, artifacts of copied memories, childhood remnants dislodged, floating away. The floor is sinking slowly, and the visitor remembers what he forgot, what is now unreachable, as he stares at the receding bed and absorbs the lesson and releases a tear that falls up toward the moon.
Up, up, the patient rises from her slumber as soft, rhythmic tones gently coax her from her sleep. Her eyes open and focus on a large Monstera deliciosa in the corner of the room. This room has three walls; the largest of which is curved frosted glass. A green light filters through it onto the dark blue carpet.
The patient stretches in her expansive bed. This feels like home to her, but it's clearly some kind of hospital. The glass door slides open, and an oval automaton floats in, scans the room, makes a cheerful noise, and exits, leaving a pleasant aroma of lavender with a hint of cinnamon. If the patient listens closely, she can hear a dull pulsing coming from deep within the building. There is healing in this sound.
It feels as if the whole world is asleep. There must be others here, she thinks, but there is no sign of them. The entire wing belongs to her, and she is free to wander.
She steps quietly out of her room, and the door slides closed behind her. The green light, she discovers, is coming through huge windows that line the curving hallway, and outside: a boreal forest with moss-covered floor. She walks barefoot across the omnipresent carpet, exploring a corridor of nondescript rooms sparsely furnished and dimly lit with soft, glowing lamps.
There is an aquarium between two walls, and she is momentarily transfixed by the colorful sea creatures within. She presses her hand against the glass, and a tiny octopus spreads its tentacles over her fingers. She smiles.
She finds a mirror and is shocked to see her hair colored green. She wouldn't expect it but it fits her perfectly. A shower with rainfall shower head beckons her, and she loses herself in the rejuvenating steam before walking back to her bedroom nude. No reason to conceal herself here.
She notices a peculiar absence of agitation in her mind. The ordinary drive to entertain herself is gone. It's as if the air is filled with waves of natural contentment. She has no thoughts of outside this place, nor future, nor past. Just here, now, settled, healing.
She finds a door open to the outside, revealing a soft dirt path that meanders into the lush woods beckoning her. She stands on the threshold, imagining the potential adventures awaiting her out there: the endless variations upon variations of joy, sorrow, pain, and pleasure stretching to infinity in all directions. She grabs the knob and quietly shuts the door and makes her way back to her bed.
She leans back into her perfectly soft pillow that seems uniquely sculpted for her head and lets the weight of the warm sheets settle around her body as she falls into the deepest sleep she has ever known.
Breathing breathing in the ritual.
Living dying out the ritual.
Stale life flowing out: the edge now.
New life flowing in: the incense.
Death drum circle flying
under clouds rotors chopping,
steady chopping notes, thoughts,
voices slashed into pieces.
Droning liquid ripples pulsing,
friendly like children: mother?
Grandmother cavern voices,
layers unknown deep descending
up, this is required.
Chopping, self must be chopped
into something new, unfaded.
Voices of the ego warning,
voices jumbled swaying over
cliffs, ocean safe for now,
for the time being out of
body: vaporous, monstrous, natural.
Last fibres snap away
from the fleshy bedrock soul
escaping up, up, pulsing
green means done: healing.
Throbbing green deep pressure.
Happy green, not red
all 'round seeping out.
It was incubated in the blurry pixels, the chunky geometry, the comfort of repeating patterns. It was immersed in a feast of candy colors: clouds painted on solid, not-solid walls and on the dome of the surrounding skybox, the distant/not-distant firmament, which shifts from starry black to fiery red to calming blue with a blonde sun. Eternal life is here somewhere in the polygons.
It explores the labyrinthine castle until it has memorized it. A happy holy spirit always hovers behind him, just above its head, watching it. There are several mirrors hanging from the walls of the castle, but when it stands in front of them, instead of a face, it sees something like steam evaporating in slow-motion. Others roam these halls: others, but not people, only pixelated faces. An old man with a white moustache walks with a little blonde girl, holding hands. The girl smiles up as they pass.
Outside on the lawn, a cubist lamb rests its head in a lion's bosom. In a grove of trees, an old woman sits peacefully on a stone throne gazing down at a large yellow coin decorated with a pentagram. She holds it lovingly like an infant.
It tries to find the boundary of this place. It spots a dark-haired girl standing on a hill watching, a crow perched on her shoulder and a black dog sitting by her side. Their eyes meet. She looks satisfied. She turns away, disappearing over the edge. It tries to follow but can't make it up the too-tall hill it slides back down. Sometimes it slips over the infinite chasm, falling, only to be reborn. It chases coins; passing time. It learns the rules: avoid the edge, avoid the water, admire the limitations of the creator.
Maybe it is the elect; it cannot die, trapped inside this eternal recurrence. No height will do it. No lava, water, nothing. It just respawns. Ghosts don't die; they clip through walls, and beyond: nothing. It shrinks and grows and ascends endless staircases.
There is a constant burning in its mind: a burning and a scraping away. Every second, it is shedding something. Where is it exactly? Was it something else before? Will it ever escape this liminal existence? Who is it? Who . . . is . . . it? Who is . . ? Who? Hu? 23 8 15? 01110111 01101000 01101111 00111111
Again to the source: a warm, comfortable living room with thick beige carpet. Its threads grow up and weave around, forming a soft weightless cocoon that suspends a fragile soul in the perfect center of the room.
Within, a slow explosion of matter: dry bones coming together, bone to bone, and sinews connecting, and wet flesh filling around them, and skin encapsulating it all. A new mind is built from an old one, ancient thoughts tucked into every fold. Pure breath fills the lungs.
Piercing fingers of light shoot out of the luminous capsule and, humming wildly, the exuberant light pulses and expands until it blots out everything except the quiet beating of a heart renewed. Another chance. Another chance. Another-