I Have A Theory

Chapter Seven, From The Moment You Were Born

And all of a sudden, the narrative--your gaze--comes back to me. Not that I needed you, but it helps to know that I've got company out here.

There was no struggle, of course; there was no chemical fact, no separation which forced my lungs to shrivel as the methane rolled in. I've simply learned to breathe it, as I know Cassius would, if he were here.

Think of the ways he touched me.

So white and smooth and solid.

The flesh reminds me of his dark flesh, strange under my nails. How do I respond to his mixed messages? He never wants me there--never needs me when I come. Always closing his hands when mine are open, never accompanying me, never meeting me halfway.

Hurt.

I don't ever say that he's hurt me, but he has. Because of course he has. It hurts to have a thing shown to you, then stolen forever away. Cassius Crane is a genius, but a wicked one.

He showed me his world, where nothing matters at all, and all the depravity commingles with the goodness of everything.

And nothing works.

I've been walking for a while now.

I'm at the edge of all of the lights--all of the white brightness which has been established to guide everyone's sight in this never-ending dark. At the edge, lingering like a stain, unable to go.

Deep breaths and I vanish.

The dark is long, and deep as well. Cooler than a pool, rings like a silent bell, just to tell you it's hollow. I swallow, and a sickly hotness moves down my throat, like putrefied whiskey. I realize how risky all this is but it's too late. I no longer see the lights, and in my sight--all around me--darkness.

Fall to the flesh and grasp what I can, just to remind myself that I exist as an entity, living and breathing in a tactile world. My fingers sink an inch deep, into the muscle and smooth sinew, and I forget my name.

Kimbry Cren.

Key Car

...

And in this place of utter nothingness, only one thing can really be confirmed. The building heat of the thing below me. Body warmth, from the body below. I reach up to scratch my right bicep, but I miss. I can't even feel myself.

Head feels adrift, arms adrift, body moving and still all at once.

Fall onto my back.

My vision moves in long arcs through the blackness, as though I've thrown it from my eyeballs, and it gradually descends. Back into me.

Look into myself, and see that I've become changed and jumbled--more like a fungus than a human. I am of a uniform texture and consistency, and even my bones have vanished within me. My blood mingles with my muscles into one cakey fluid, and the whole of me trembles.

Visions fall onto me. Greene shooting himself, Jeong-Su standing in a roomful of corpses, taking coffee and talking with Robertson. Darius trembling in the dark, sickened and sad. Jeong-Su shooting Eva.

Yaren Unbrecht grinning as he hears the screams.

Another sight, this one more real.

Cassidy Vale descends down a fissure, crowned by a halo of light cast by Victor Gonzales' flashlight. She drops a small distance, then walks on shale for a bit, her feet grinding and hurting as she does.

Fifteen hundred years ago, a young Native American man does the same.

They walk for a time, brushing fingertips against rough edges and lips of the stony walls, crouching sometimes, and standing tall and edgewise at others, so that they can slip through the narrowest clefts.