Tucked behind some of the forest brush I keep a close eye on him. He crouches between his bike and backpack, without any fire and only a curtain of moon’s light showering over him. He eats like this— something long and limber and gangly, not near as big as the meal I saw his wife serve him last night. When he’s done he gathers some sticks and leaves from around him, strikes a fire, and then disappears into the forest. A while goes by, so I decide to approach his camp. I should have followed him, but I didn’t know he’d be gone for so long. In approaching his camp I figure I could see what he packed himself to eat and round-out his nutrition itinerary, or see what sleeping-bag he uses to maximize his body’s rehab. When I get before his things, his bike is exactly as mine is, no difference, but then his bag only contained a thermos, the same thermos I saw his wife leave outside his door last night, and a pocket knife. But no meals prepped, no sleeping bag, no second riding suit, none of that, just the thermos and the knife. Next to the fire there’s what’s left of his meal, sparse crops of bloody flesh along two long conjoined bones and a riding-glove at the end. I crouch to see what brand riding-glove someone must have been using, then his riding boot stamps right by the hand. I stumble back, embarrassed at being caught here, but he doesn’t react to me at all. He strides over to his bike and drops some objects he’s returned with. Then he grabs a stone and starts carving into the dirt around the fire. He works mindlessly, like a fiend, I get up carefully and reestablished myself back in the brush, for my own comfort. First he carves a circle, and then two triangles antipode to one another inside the circle, with the fire at the center. The fire winking off the glossy blacks of his eyes drew my attention to the fact that, not only had he not taken his riding shades off, but the flesh on his face seemed to scar around them, or like the shades grew from out of his face like eyes of something inhuman. He grabs a couple of the objects he’d just come back with, red stained ivory-white pieces, no regular shape, and places them at two corners of a triangle around the fire. He grabs another piece with the same make up and texture, but discernibly round and skull-like, and places it on the other corner. He walks to his bag and pulls out the thermos. He opens it, drops the lid, and places it at a corner of a triangle. Then he strips naked. His lean sweaty body glows like amber from the fire’s light. His hands and feet seem enlarged, different. He draws a knife from his bag. He reaches at his member, and like through a stick of butter, he lops a chunk off the end, his body tenses and a low growl crawls under the ceaseless chirping and croaking of the night. He drops the knife, peels off the fleshy outer layer off the chunk like a candy wrapper and places it at another corner of the triangle, then lays the tender bloody chunk of flesh at the last remaining corner of the triangles. With blood dripping down the bronze glow of his legs, and an object surrounding the fire evenly on six sides, he steps into the flames, sits down cross-legged, and disappears into a curtain of flames. I step out into his camp from where I remained hidden and approach the fire crawling over his figure watching the flames reach higher into the night, his flesh reeking, putrid, and through the spiky feathers of fire barring him inside, I could see the black waxy bulbs of his eyes, like two big round marbles embedded in ash.
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I fade to. I’m on the ground. There’s nothing, no trees, no forest, no moonlight. Theres a figure approaching. Limping. I try to cling to consciousness but it slips thru and I fade out again.
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Do you know where you are?
I’m… on The Tour.
Mhm, sure. What brought you here?
Who are you?
Who am I? Who are you, you came to me.
