Devil Take The Hindmost

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I was swimming.

Floating.

Tumbling end-over-end in a boundless sea of blue-black ink.

Here and there I caught the merest suggestion of shape or form careening past me in the void, just out of the reach of any of my senses, dull as they were.

I had no conception of space or time. I could not determine whether I were awake, asleep or in some deeper state of unconsciousness, save for the occasional spasm of pain or the vaguest sensation of motion.

Dotted among the living swirl of midnight colour I sensed glimpses of light, or snippets of sound that pierced and registered.

I felt calm. Relaxed. Happy, even.

Here was a form of rest so thorough I had no command of my physical body, even if I wanted to. I simply drifted, enveloped as if back in the womb, to the faint but comforting regular suggestion of a rhythmic metronomic heartbeat somewhere beyond my perception.

I retained no memory of how I had got here, or indeed where here even was, but something tugged at my mind like the frayed rope of a lifebuoy tossed into a foaming maelstrom.

I did not belong in this space. I did not think I wanted to be here. I was supposed to do something. Be somewhere. Somewhere real, and important. I must save something.

The feeling gnawed at me, burrowing into my aura of calm bliss like a maggot chewing through necrotic flesh, and I cried out once in my anger and frustration. The effort expended in this cry proved too much, and I was immediately spent.

Darkness swept up and around me, filling my mouth and flooding my lungs with silence.

*

I felt a scratch on my left side.

Just a little tearing of skin and a puncture as swift and surgical as a wasp sting. But as the offence receded, I became aware of something hot and vital flowing through my veins like venom.

Slowly at first, but then swiftly and with the sudden jarring sensation of being in free fall, my senses returned to my physical body.

There were voices in song; high and lilting with a synchronicity of tone and timbre born only from practice. I couldn't make out the words, nor recognize the tune, but it was at once beautiful and unsettling in sentiment and at a repetitive metre giving the impression of chanting or incantation.

I could not move my limbs, nor open my eyes, but I found I could tense my muscles and receive feedback from flesh and bone that gave me confidence I was, in fact, alive and inhabiting my corporeal form once again.

I felt the fluctuating warmth on my skin of occasional proximity to a naked flame and became increasingly aware of a sensation of scraping across my chest, arms and groin that disconcerted rather than hurt.

I tried to open my mouth and speak, but the nerve endings disobeyed, and I felt instead the warm flood of pent-up saliva run from my lips and down my cheek.

There were smells; thick, herbal, and musk-like engulfing me in waves, but I fixated on the voices singing words I could now hear clearly but not understand. They were haunting, lyrical, and seemed like a siren song drawing me inexorably somewhere, ship or shore, rocks and ruin.

At length, I stopped trying to focus on any of it and succumbed to the all-encompassing exhaustion lying across me like a weighted blanket. The soporific combination of sound and scent curled over me, and I slipped once more back into the dark as if it were the comforting embrace of a warm bath.