A bottle of whiskey lay half-open on a counter somewhere, the counter in a void of gray mist. In the next room, a body swollen with gas, three days dead. Bruises kissed its waist. More bottles lay nearby.
Further into the void, a hole in the Earth, endless, covered with rotting wood boards. One false step …
A garbage bag filled with chemicals. Pine needles on fire. A kick in the night followed by tears. A groped breast in the back of an old car. A night in a basement filled with vomit.
All of these things were true. He shook his head, willed the void away, willed the truth away, but the room and the stool and the Other remained, its eyes still pooled with blood.
“You will wake soon,” the Other said. “You will wake, and you will shave, and you will go about your day as if it is any other. You must not listen to her. You must not believe her. She will feed you lies.”
He did not understand.
“But you do understand.” The Other’s eyes glistened with deep ruby. “Here, in this place, is the only realm in which you can. She feeds you. She nourishes you. She poisons you.”
“What is she?” he asked.
“Death.”
“But I don’t–”
“You do.”
“None of this makes sense! Tell me what is happening to me. I don’t understand!”
“You do.” The walls began to fade. The Other’s eyes bled even as it faded, too. Everything faded. Nothing lasted. Everything died. “You do.”
Fog enveloped all. His eyes blurred like the blindness of morning, then came the murmur of water and the soft kiss of the sun.
He stood at the edge of a gentle brook, a decaying wood dam to his left, a pile of small stones to his right. Each stone was painted with a symbol. He did not recognize the characters. On the crest of a rise overlooking the brook stood a line of boys, maybe twelve. They held sticks as if they were rifles. The sun lit them from behind. He could not see their faces. One pointed to him and spoke.
“Run.”
end part 6 – part 7
