- XX -

* * * * *
         "You should probably talk about it."
         "It won't make anything easier."
         "Or erase any of it, I know that. But it's a step in the right direction, which is one step more than you've taken so far."
         "I . . . what would you want me to do, I mean, I . . ."
         "Just talk. Reduce it to words."
         "No, not in here, I can't . . ."
         "Nobody will hear you, they'll think we're discussing the latest sports results . . ."
         "What . . . how?"
         "Would you really like to know?"
         "I, no . . . ah, . . . okay. Okay."
         "Oh, well, you see, it requires intercepting the signals that strike the auditory nerves and-"
         "No! No, that's not what . . . I meant I'll talk. About it. I'll do it."
         "Very well, then. After you."
         "Okay. Okay."

* * * * *
         For Tristian, walking up the interior stairwell is like stumbling through a cave toward a distant waterfall. The roaring at first comes to you as a submerged native chant, a vibrating you can feel more than hear. Then, as you get closer, the vibrations rise in pitch underneath your feet even as the sound jackknives toward something deeper. And by the time you reach the top of the stairs, it's infiltrated not only but the floors and the walls but your bones as well, until it's almost a part of you. For Tristian it reminds me of the times he's been on a spaceship, the intrinsic rumblings under your feet, staring at the stars through an outside window, touching the glass and feeling the utter lack of heat seeping through and knowing that you're rocketing along faster than anything you could ever imagine even as the view outside drifts along with an infinite slowness. The feelings of motion without moving. That's how it was outside, you watch the sky and nothing moves at all and yet you have the internal realization that you and everyone else are strapped to the same giant water soaked rock, ripping its way through the void.
         For an absurd moment Tristian wonders why nobody ever gets whiplash from being flung around on a planet and the image of the entire population wandering around with neck braces leaks into his mind. Chuckling a little to himself, he shakes his head. Getting tired, he's stayed up for days in the past but in those times there was always adrenaline keeping him going, a razor bladed danger hovering just behind them, the unspoken fear that if you went to sleep, there'd be no reason to ever wake back up again.
         Still he's tired but not weary. There's an energy coursing through him that he can't explain. A separate energy from the party itself, standing outside the door now, his hand on the doorknob, he can almost sense everyone dipping into the same pool. He could too, if he wanted to. But he doesn't. It's not for him, let his friends have their fun and have their nights, they don't need him slipping dirty fingers into the lake and tainting it, fouling it at the source. There are other things that can invigorate him, and even if they can't remake him anew or chase the thoughts that haunt his battered head, sometimes all you need is to be refreshed. That's all you need. Just a reason to look at things in a different way.
         Not that Tristian's sure he's seeing anything right. Or the same way. Or in different lights. It all feels the same and yet, he's not sure what's changed, only that something has. Unraveling the unquantifiable was what drove him once, but now he thinks if he tried to pluck out the knot that's winding into the center of his life, he'd find out more than he wants to know. Let the mysteries keep their mysteries, if that's the way it has to be. Better to fall into pretense than pierce the mechanisms involved and find they it wasn't what you thought they were. He'll take this shimmering ignorance any day, and be happy with it.
         It had to be a dream, what happened out there. But Tristian's dreams have always made a strange sort of sense, he might not be able to explain them fully but at least he knew where they were coming from. If he picked apart all the components of this recent fevered dream, it'd be little more than a mirage, wavering just out of his grasp, dancing back a shadowed step every time he lunges forward. That's how it should have been. How it always was. In his head. And yet there's too solid memory backing it up, branded and ingrained. The events are sharply defined, an angular and seemingly inevitable progression, start to finish. With the beginning lost in the haze of a conversation he can barely recall, words emitted from his throat like a television with lost reception, vomiting static, squinting to catch the details behind the electric snow. And the end of it, well he can't be sure if there was ever really an end. Because it didn't feel final. He wishes he was sure, and yet the uncertainty lends a briskly obtuse excitement to the whole affair. For once, not being prepared for every contingency won't get him killed.
         He wonders if she's said anything to anyone. He wonders why he just doesn't go inside, instead of standing out here in front of the door like he can't make a decision to save his life. When the opposite is more than true, every decision he's made lately has been to save his life. He's not used to thinking in terms of enjoyment and happiness, those aren't words he deals with out there. Because he chooses not to? Or because that's just the way it is? Tonight, though, tonight he feels he's made some kind of choice, reconnected to some part of himself that he wasn't sure existed anymore. But it did exist, all Tristian did was submerge it kicking and screaming underneath the surface of the stagnant pool that was his mind. Holding it down and leaning back in the most casual fashion possible, whistling to passerbys, wishing them all a good day. It was hidden and he told himself nothing was wrong. There were feelings stirring in his gut and he ignored them, told himself that he didn't feel such emotions anymore. For him, it was impossible. There was no talk of whether it was fair or not, it just was.
         And so when all his near buried feelings surged back to the surface like whales riding the crest of a tidal wave, all he could do was stand there, mouth agape, while the shadow covered him, bearing down on him with irresistible force. Because he really had forgotten those feelings had existed. And he couldn't stop smiling. Because deep down inside he knew they had been there the entire time and he had just been looking for a reason again. A reason where he could admit such things to himself, without fear, without the need to pull back at the touch of someone else's hand. At the thought of reaching out to someone. Trepidation didn't crawl over him anymore and weigh him down, there was a new lightness sparking in his head.
         He had almost left his sword in the car. For the first time that night, he was going to leave it behind and not carry it. It still hang there now, as placid looking as ever. A flashlight they had thought it was. Back in the beginning. They wondered why he carried a flashlight around on his belt. Now it's almost funny to him, how people try to take what they don't know and convert it into terms that they can understand. And so one of the most potent weapons in the Universe becomes a glorified torch. That's just how it goes.
         In the end he decided to keep it where it was, on his belt. Tristian really isn't sure why, part of him is just used to the weight there, finds it somewhat reassuring and that paranoid angle in his head always wants protection. Cries out for it even when he's never been safer. So he keeps carrying it. Because it's what he is and Tristian wants to try and find some pride in what he is. In the fact that he's utterly unique in the Universe and that the number of beings who have touched the same perceptions he has could be lost within the strictest margin of error. Take the smallest division and divide it as small as you can and it's still not enough. Seven billion years of evolution and fighting and growing and striving and here he is. If anything it's a rather humbling thought to consider. Still, he's tired of denying to himself what he is and wearing the sword proudly might be a start. Like a uniform. Something ceremonial. That image isn't all that unappealing to Tristian. It's definitely something to think about.
         Still standing by the door, he is. With the party reeling and crashing into the walls beyond the door, from outside it just makes one lopsided sound, like someone beating their head against something solid. The sound of someone's head actually being beaten in, wet and pulpy, like someone smashing a pumpkin in with a mallet comes to him across a distance not far enough away and he shakes his head, suppressing it with an effort. Memory won't always stay a servant, it seems. Occasionally it likes to get uppity. The world might just go drown it out though, shout it down, if he goes back inside.
         The hell with it. He decides and nearly rips the door off the wall in his newfound haste to get back in. Sound assaults him, bruising him around the ears even as he staggers in against what seems to be a warped wall of heat. After the relative chill of the outside, it's almost like walking into a rain forest, you keep expecting moisture to simultaneously to condense and fall out of the air from sheer heaviness. Somewhere behind him in a distant country, he can hear the door clicking shut, sealing him in again. His eyes takes a second to adjust to the patchwork darkness, light and the void seem to be chasing around the room in cat and dog games, never staying in one place for very long.
         The apartment seems much bigger than it actually is. The people. All the people. That's what it got to be. Pressed cheek to jowl, a mass of them shift in time to something he can barely sense and he can only make out heads and bodies, there's no faces, Tristian might well have just walked into a convention for the blank faced and spastic. People are all he can see, and the more he surveys the more details pepper his mind, a crop duster trying to cover the entire planet before it runs out of gas and rides the curve of gravity down to the end.
         ". . . I've been in a daze for days . . ."
         There are people dancing manically, as if caught in the last spasms of ecstasy, trying to squeeze the last drops before the well runs dry and they're left with nothing but graying memory. Glazed eyes suck in the light, drink in the surroundings without perceiving a facet of it. There's so much beauty crammed into the angles and the sideways corners, and they see none of it. Even Tristian can see it but at the same time maybe he's seen too much. The obvious is something he has to relearn. It's about time he started.
         People are slumped onto the wall next to him in what he thinks is some sort of prelude to sex. Not that he would know. One of them might be looking at him and he returns the gaze with a cordial nod. There's no acknowledgment and Tristian realizes that they're rendered themselves into a nearly standing unconscious state. Falling asleep on your feet. Across the crowded room someone is sleeping on the couch, head thrown back and chest rising and falling in regular rhythms, which Tristian is mildly pleased to see. A party like this, you could die and never notice. For everything these slurred people see, there are a hundred goingons that never register in their minds. Someone could rob them and take all their money and it'd be days before they finally started to realize that something was missing. Tristian can't ever let him get like that, he's spent almost the last year trying to be as alert as humanly possible, maybe even more than that, and to take all of that and throw a cover over it and sacrifice it all for the sake of a few hours of blissed out pleasure just isn't appealing to him. Not that he's adverse to pleasure, really. It's just that he's of a more natural bent when going out and retrieving it. To each his own.
         The bar is crammed like it's the last awning with space during a torrential downpour. Not too many people seem to be drinking actually, most are just lazily occupying their seats because they don't have the energy to move anywhere else. Those that are drinking are of two types, the ones who have been nursing the same small glass for a hour or so now, or those who seem to be intent on trying every liquor combination in the world before their liver comes to realize what's happening and curls up to die. Giving up the ghost. Knocking it all back like it's going out of style. A tiny part of Tristian regrets not trying any alcohol at all tonight, there were some drinks that he used to enjoy and he's sure Brown could have made them just as he remembered them. Ah well there's no reason why he couldn't just go out and buy them and enjoy it in the privacy of his own home. Maybe he could even invite company over and chat and . . .
         ". . . ain't no big thing, to wait for the bell to ring, ain't no big thing, the toll of the bell . . ."
         Hands in pockets, Tristian is looking at the room, telling him that he's doing it because he likes to watch parties, because people scampering around in their attempts to convince themselves that this somehow has more meaning than the rest of their life endlessly fascinates him, because after months of immersing yourself in the best and worst that the galaxy has to offer, sometimes you have no choice but to sink into a cross section of humanity. And this is it. All its warts and all its fractured beauty, it's all here.
         But that's not why Tristian is looking around the room so intently. And his mood is so light in this moment that he even goes so far to admit that fact to himself. And even give the real reason. It's a night of miracles, for him, apparently. Still all his mental kidding around really can't obscure what he's doing.
         He's looking for Lena.
         Eyes that have seen ebony spacecraft against the star punched satin backdrop of the universe squint to no avail.
         Tristian's looking for Lena.
         And he doesn't see her.

* * * * *
         ". . . and sometimes you just don't know, I mean, I should have known, because . . ."
         "Because it's so staggeringly obvious? Don't kid yourself. That's just hindsight speaking to you. It's a seductive beast. Trust me, I know."
         "But the pieces were there. They were all there and all I had to do was put them together and I would have had it, the whole puzzle. Right in front of me."
         "You would have had a handful of unsubstantiated theories which in the long run are worth nothing. You did everything you could."
         "How would you know? You weren't there."
         "No, I wasn't. But I know you."

* * * * *
         He doesn't see her.
         Of course there are a lot of people in the room, even Tristian has to grant himself that. There's a lot of people in this dark and densely crowded room, and as much as he'd like to claim that Lena looks utterly distinctive and special to his eyes, she could be anywhere in here. So that's not a problem. He'll just have to mingle a bit, that's all, there aren't that many places for a person to be, if she's not dancing then she'll be at the bar and if she's not at the bar then she'll be sitting down and either chatting or resting her legs. Or something. What would she do after coming back inside? Especially after what had happened between them out there, it was something neither of them expected. Certainly Tristian had not even bothered to entertain the idea, even in passing. Yet, his entire body feels like he's taken a metal implement and rammed it into the nearest electrical socket, that tense and excited tingling feeling, the circulating numbness that makes him want to touch his own arm to ascertain how real everything is. Because it doesn't feel real. It's a kind of unreality he can deal with though. Still, he also feels emotionally drained, moreso than he's ever been. The first night he came back from the stars, he had sat in his living room and watched the sun come up from the window, watching the stars ducking behind the veil of dawn one by one, a cast of characters giving a curtain call after their final performance of the night. There had been a tiredness creeping into his limbs, screaming for him to sleep for days if possible, but sleep had been out of the question. Seeing that sunrise, it had been like witnessing it for the first time. All over again.
         That's how Tristian feels now, too tired to be excited and yet too excited to be tired. And so he's both. A strange conglomeration that swells him almost to bursting, it rises to his chest and grabs hold tightly, leaving him nearly gasping for breath. It's been quite the night, it has. And still nothing he could have predicted. That's what gets him the most, the feeling that threatens to pulls his lips back in a irreversible grin every single time. So much time he wastes preparing for every possibility and this came right out of nowhere. That's the beauty of life, he figures, realizing he's beginning to turn into an armchair philosopher. But there's no much running through his head that he can barely keep track of it all, together they all make up something coherent but he can only snatch out bits and pieces, streamers falling down gently from rockets gliding gracefully overhead, silent and capable of a simple, wispy beauty.
         All this nonsense he's letting filter through his head is giving him the chance to visually explore the room a bit more. Stepping closer, he tries to make out faces, decipher postures. None of them appear to be Lena, he's watched her dance enough tonight that he thinks he can determine which one is her even from splattered silhouette. Or even the profile of her face cast into checkered light and shadow. It should be easy. If she was there. But she's not.
         Would she come back into the party and immediately start dancing again? Tristian's not sure and he realizes he's been judging her actions through his own tinted lens of perception. He would spend many a moment pondering the implications of such an event, wandering around much like he's doing now, throwing out handfuls of darts against the foam wall of his brain and seeing what sticks. Would Lena do that though, or would she save the thinking for later, when maybe it was more appropriate. Just file it away and get back into the party spirit? It reminds Tristian of how little he knows about her, the basic, broad brush strokes he can see, the same as everyone else, but the entwined details within the linework, you have to look closely for those kinds of patterns and you have to be allowed to get that close. Tristian would very much like to see as much detail as he can, and tonight he thinks that she let him get a step closer. Just a step. The same step he allowed her to take.
         No. Lena would have thought about it a little, he knows that. He saw her eyes before she went back inside, she faced him for just that one second before she opened the door and let herself get sucked back into the party. That act might have ended there, but Lena wasn't going to stop thinking about that. That's what he saw reflected in her face. It was too much for her to just disregard and carry on lightly, a skip and a jump into a night where thinking's been discouraged. Tristian stares around him and sees only empty heads, people that he knows as bright, capable, intelligent people. Acting like idiots. Checking your brains right at the door. No, sir, you won't be needing that here, not at all. And Tristian understands the need sometimes to just stop thinking and let the world carry around without your great, big and important thoughts for just one night, but it's not something he can indulge in. Especially not now.
         ". . . sometimes it never rains it can't rain all the time, and if I seem to make no sense I make no sense sometimes . . ."
         And as for Lena? He begins to edge his way toward the bar, already scanning faces and trying to find people he knows. Jina, definitely. If Lena was going to talk about it with anybody, it would most certainly be Jina. But what if you come upon them while they're discussing it, Tristian? Wouldn't it be a bit rude, just to stumble into their conversation like that, a half starved man emerging from a tangled forest? Especially when they're no doubt talking about you? Tristian had to admit that the truth of that. Perhaps he should just not try and find her, wait until after the party, maybe call her or something in a day or so. Because he'd hate to make it seem like he's some weird nosy bastard or a persistent stalker, the electric flow of the moment has all his senses enhanced and wired and probably he needs to take a step back and let it all settle. Just for a bit. Just so he can get his head screwed back on straight and not threatening to fire off into the stratosphere like it's doing now. That's probably a good idea, then. Let it rest for a day. If she sees her during the party, he'll just use her as a gauge and follow whatever lead she happens to throw out. He's had to improvise enough times that he can play off of just about anybody in any situation. If she decides to bring it up, then he'll follow suit, but if not, well, it's not like he can't talk to her later. In more private settings, where every noise isn't drowned out by the rush and crash of music and forcing out even the simplest of phrases won't leave your voice stripped and raw the next day.
         In any event, there's no one at the bar that he knows anyway. The one bartender he can see is serving a bunch of people from what seems to be a rapidly diminishing stock, while chatting up with them at the same time. Nice work if you can get it, Tristian reflects. The bizarre array of liquors and their fanciful names hold no meaning for him at all, many times he's tasted a drink with some odd title and had no idea what the hell he was even drinking. The worst part is that a lot of the stronger drinks are nearly tasteless, a simple glass of orange juice or Coke could have enough wallop socked away to drop a horse. Tristian's nearly been fooled by that a few times, the worst of which left him with a headache that felt like the local marching band had decided to use his brain for a practice field. And they were wearing cleats. The sharp kind. So he's got no reason to hang around the bar for very long. One more quick perusal of the faces crowding it and he has all the information he needs. He thinks he sees Will there and maybe Jack and definitely Brian but nobody that he really has any interest in talking to. At least not while they're drunk. He wishes he had gotten a little more time to talk with Will when he got here, the man had been nice enough to invite him here tonight, even if Tristian isn't so sure his motives were the purest. It was a good gesture anyway. But he's not talking to him now, that's for sure. Will is laughing uproariously at what Tristian hopes is a joke, his entire face beet red like he's about to have an asthma attack, slapping his knee over and over, spanking an invisible child. Jack is leaning on his shoulder, looking like he's gasping for breath, and the two of them appear to be about to break out into song. Or pass out right there. The jury in Tristian's head deadlocks and that's about all the thinking Tristian wants to do on that subject.
         Wandering the curve around the outer rim of the dancers, Tristian marvels at how after a few minutes immersed neck deep in this mess, the noise and the smell and the heat seem to just fade into nothing. Like his nerves are too worn out to bother sending signals to his brain anymore. Time for him moves the same as always but the motion and sound are grossly warped. People shift past him as through pantomime, the ambiance of the party downgrading itself to a point where if Tristian closed his eyes again, he might mistake himself as being outside. But then some girl squeezes past him, her breasts nudging uncomfortably against his chest and it takes all his effort to keep a straight face against what the loaded question sees in her glazed and tilted vision. It reminds him that there are some differences after all. Very distinct differences. Shaking his head in disbelief, he continues to slip around the bend, not really sure where he's going. He's not really in a mingling mood, he's met all the people that he's wanted to meet tonight, frankly. But yet he doesn't want to sit around and just watch everyone until the end of the night either, which could be hours from now depending on how long the collective stamina of the room lasts. These people seem to support each other, pooling strength together into a common purpose. Conceivable, this could go on forever. Tristian sincerely hopes not, he's enjoying himself at the moment but that's partially the lack of any pressure and the glow of an event that falls somewhere between recent past and crystallized memory. That won't last much longer.
         He's going to wind up sitting down, he knows that. He's going to wind up sitting down and some drunk is going to start chatting to him in that babble language that all drunk people use and that only they can understand apparently. It's like regression, drink a little and people devolve back to babies, numbing quasi-syllables dripping from them in streams. Even worse is when they just fall asleep on you, if someone winds up nodding off on Tristian it's going to take all of his patience to not fling them off of him and onto the floor. And yet he's going to be sitting soon. God help him, he was better off outside. At least out there he only had to deal with one person at a time, which turned out to be a good thing in retrospect. He can imagine them piling on him in clusters, yelling hey, a sober guy, let's get 'em! Like that's something special. Though here it might be, examining just the expressions on the people around him, Tristian might be the only sober man left in this global party. A dubious honor here, like being the bearded lady with the thickest, fullest beard when you think about it. But he knows it's not a true fact though, Brown is most definitely sober even if he made it his sole goal in life to spend the next few hours pouring alcohol down his throat, or just saying the hell with it and hooking up the intravenous. And Lena seemed fairly sober, sure, she was relaxed from a few drinks but not what he would call drunk. At a party like this, it's quite the feat and he can't help admiring her a little for that. There are times tonight when she probably really wanted one.
         With a start he realizes he's been unconsciously looking for her again. Peering out intently into the crowd. The mother seal metaphor. Barking for your young. He has to stop doing that, this searching for her. She's going to think he's obsessed, when all he wants to do is get her impressions of a moment that neither of them expected. But there's plenty of time for that later, if she's willing. And the pessimistic part of Tristian is telling him in that dry, toneless voice that reminds him of something that he'd rather not think about, it's telling him not to bother, she had her fun for that night and that's it. Be happy with the little luck you had and leave it at that. Don't wish for anything more.
         And yet he remembers her eyes before she went back in. And the guardedly optimistic part of his mind is fairly sure she'll be very much willing indeed.
         ". . . and there won't be an atom left that you can call your own . . ."
         A body crashes into him suddenly and Tristian's automatic reflexes kick in, pivoting him on his heel even as he diverts the person slamming into him right past, sliding them away from him like he's coated himself in grease and tossing them facedown onto the couch in a gesture that might be interpreted as somewhere between attempting to bounce their head off the floor, and gently laying down a sleeping child. It all takes two seconds. Tristian blinks and looks at his hands, flexing them and feeling the already fading tingling from redirecting the person but realizing that if he had stopped to think about it, he would never have been able to do it. That's the funny part about all of it, his days feel like such weighted loads, his motions strained reactions against the inevitable and then every once in a while he does something that quite simply amazes him. He's just lucky he didn't cut the person in half. Wryly, he realizes he's only half kidding when he thinks that.
         He hears laughter, bright and sharp, and looks down to see that cutting the person in half would have made no difference whatsoever.
         "God damn, Tristian," Brown says, hands clumsily working at his mussed hair, unsuccessfully trying to reshape it. He's landed on his stomach, his neck draped over the backing of the couch. In a movement that appears to utilize every muscle in his body, he flops onto his back, crossing one leg over the other in a whipsmart motion, lacing his hands behind his head. His smile is impishly serene. "Remind to be on your team if we ever play football with the boys." His voice is rounded and loping, the same casual banter that he's come to expect from his friend. "I mean, hell, you laid me out like a rank amateur and here I am supposed to be the perfect soldier, right? Right?" Still, to Tristian's ears, there's a blurred edge to that same familiar voice that he can't place. Probably drank too much too quickly and his body is still trying to catch up to it, Tristian will probably be able to watch him sober up as they stand here.
         "Lucky I fell into you," Brown continues, still grinning like an overexcited child, "anyone else we probably . . . probably would have both gone right over. Right?" Sloppily, he heaves himself back onto the couch, sitting up in the process. He looks at Tristian in a cockeyed fashion, a cat trying to fixate on a very small mouse. His mouth twitches. "They would have gotten hurt, too. Land like that, you can easily get hurt."
         "Well the couch is fairly soft, I don't think-" Tristian goes to say, not sure where this is all taking them. Brown's voice feels too loud for the room, too loud for his face, but everything is too loud right now, whispers are roars and the roars are jetliners buzzing right over your house. He attributes that to his extended stay outside. Too quiet. Too cold and too quiet, he's come back into a sauna where the walls drip a rattling clamor.
         "They'd be hurt," Brown repeats, shaking his head slowly back and forth. "They'd be hurt, but not me." He flashes a grin again. "Oh, I mean, I'd get hurt but I wouldn't stay hurt. You know what I mean?"
         "I know," Tristian says quickly, glancing from side to side. Nobody seems to be listening and even if they did, he doesn't think they'd be able to make anything of it. But it still makes him nervous. He slides his hands into his pockets and tries to blend into the air as much as possible. Distantly he starts trying to think of ways to change the subject. None are coming to mind. Figures, he sighs mentally, his meager conversational skills always fail him in times like this. Still, he has to try something. "Whatever happened to the girls-"
         "You know," Brown mutters, shaking a finger at Tristian and lifting himself off the couch a little before bouncing back down, "you know the first time you cut me with that . . . that thing . . ." and he's pointing to the object clipped to Tristian's belt. Unconsciously taking a step back, Tristian feels like Brown's finger is a blazing neon sign, and all eyes can't help staring at him. Like he's naked. Naked and what they see is damn funny. ". . . I swear I thought I was going to stay dead, I mean, really . . . like, me! Dead! After, you know, I got better, I sat back and thought about it and you know, it was pretty damn funny . . ."
         "I'm glad you've kept a sense of humor about it-"
         ". . . because lots of stuff has, you know, tried to kill me and, I got better each time," Brown laughs a little at that, as if realizing somewhere deep down the absurdity of his own words. If Tristian could he'd pull the sword out and run Brown through with it right now, just to quiet him down. In this party, nobody would notice. The way things have been going. He's hoping that widespread ignorance will continue until he can slide out of this conversation gracefully.
         "But here I am . . . meeting someone I actually know, which is rare, really rare and next thing I know he's cutting me in half . . ." Brown explodes into snickers at this, his head flopping back and nearly cracking his skull open on the wall behind him. Tristian has to hold himself back from rushing forward and stopping that imminent collision. Barely he succeeds. He notices the person next to Brown on the couch has tilted his head toward them and appears to be listening with glassily curious eyes. Hopefully only every other word is escaping the gravity of their conversation. But Brown seems to just keep speaking louder and to Tristian it feels like everyone else has gone deathly silent and it's just Brown talking, telling everyone, spilling it all out to the world. To close this dam up he'd have to cram his entire head into the hole and then what good would that do?
         "It was an accident," Tristian murmurs, trying not to make eye contact, betting on the theory that if you can see them, they can't see you. To this date it hasn't worked. As if calling it an accident would somehow explain everything and make it all right again. Tristian's life has been nothing but accidents, a long string that he can see clear back into the horizon. The sun rises and the sun sets on his accidents and each day he seems to add another link into the chain.
         "Cut me in half, you believe that?" Brown says, his voice nearly rising in pitch. Tristian feels his chest clench with a cold feeling as Brown turns to the staring person next to him and points at Tristian's belt. "Right in half, I tell you. With that thing right there." The person's eyes don't respond but this is definitely one conversation Tristian doesn't want this person remembering. "And even better, even better . . ." Brown chuckles at this, shaking his head, his eyes not seeming to focus on anything. His voice drops to a relative whisper as he leans closer to what Tristian prays is someone utterly oblivious to the world, "there's a word. Carved into my chest . . ."
         It's amazing how a single sentence, a barely adequate phrase can change the polarities of your entire night. Tristian's blood has been running hot and swift thus far, pumping with the energy of the events outside, but now it freezes right in his veins and his entire body suddenly seems paralyzed. Like he was trying to cross the highway and tripped and now there's a semi heading right for him, the blaring horn narrowing his sight and becoming his entire world. Indecision and action war bitterly in his head, fighting for the upper hand. In the end, he does a little more than something and less than nothing. Unable to react, not able to render himself still, Tristian tries for a third option. None seem forthcoming.
         "It didn't heal," Brown frowns, looking briefly angry at this. The other person gives no response at all. Maybe they find this sort of thing commonplace. The great thing about life is its unending array of surprises that it can whip out for your experiencing pleasure. Just fifteen minutes ago, Tristian was silently praising that. He's not so sure now, but turnabout appears to be fair play. "It's still there and I don't know why," and Brown's finger is idly tracing a broken path along his chest, even as his voice probes at something lost and sad. Tristian knows the path, knows the lines. He put them there.
         "And it spells a certain word," Brown says, nodding to the still silent person, hissing out the last syllable. Air escaping from a blunted tire. "You want know to what the word is?" The second and third letters are becoming faint indentations from the pressure of his fingertips. Tristian is surprised by the tone he's catching in Brown's voice. He's not sure if it's due to his mental state at the moment or something that he carries with him all the time. They never discussed it after it happened. Just pretended that it had never transpired. But apparently it's not that easy for Brown. Not that easy at all. He has to do something. Soon.
         "Where's Jina?" and Tristian is nearly dropping onto the couch facedown, somehow twisting himself at the last second so that he's between Brown and the other fellow, who this all will hopefully become a hangover induced haze fairly soon. He's facing Brown and at his back he senses the faintest vibration of someone snoring. He relaxes a little. Oh good. He might salvage this yet. Brown's staring at him like he can't figure out where the hell Tristian just came from. The Amazing Pop-up Tristian. Such the hit at parties. His eyes seem to be taking turns focusing on him, his hand limply still caught in the throes of following the marks under his skin.
         "You did this . . . to me . . ." Brown says quite distinctly and quite slowly and for a second Tristian wonders just how drunk he is. His face curls into frenzied anger briefly before clearing up and reassembling into something ultimately sad. "Why?" is all he asks.
         "So what happened to Jina?" Tristian asks casually, letting the question fly over his head entirely. The gaze he fixes Brown with, he manages to maintain only with the strictest willpower. He makes a stern mental note to continue this conversation another day. But if there was a time and a place not to have it, that time is right now and that place is right here.
         "Jina?" Brown asks, shifting away from Tristian almost instinctively. Tristian's trying to figure out what's going on, he swears that Brown has gotten more drunk since they started talking, his words are creeping, torn things fluttering on broken wings into the air.
         "Yeah, what happened to her? You two have been inseparable all night." Tristian doesn't care if he's prying, against the pliable cushion under his hand, he can feel his palm trembling. Brown's managed to scare the hell out of him, reaching into the graveyard in Tristian's head where he's buried all the unwanted memories and taking big clods of dirt in each hand and exhuming it all right in front of him, heedless of the cost.
         "Jina?" Brown asks again, but the second time appears to be the charm. "Out dancing . . . or something . . ." and he waves a hand lazily toward the dense packed mass of dancers. Tristian glances over quickly and thinks he catches sight of Jina's hair bouncing and hopping along in the crowd. Brown's gaze is lingering out there, a vague aura of longing suffusing his face.
         ". . . I spent a lifetime thinking about it, I need the strength to go and get what I want . . ."
         But his hand is still tracing his chest in a looping, grim fashion and his face is bent in concentration, like he's trying to remember something very important. When he head starts to turn back toward Tristian, there's a statement reflected in his marble eyes. A hollow panic slams into Tristian and he rips into his mind for something else to say. Anything. Just say something.
         "You know-" Brown begins.
         "What about Lena?" Tristian asks, figuring that throwing away his dignity and breaking his own promise to himself is worth discussing this topic anymore than necessary. It's like not being able to escape your own life, it just nips at your heels like the dog you forgot to give treats to when you passed it on the way home. Running isn't good enough and you don't have enough strength to face it. So you stab out into grim stalemate, the last kings on the chess board facing each other head on, the most powerful players around but ultimately powerless in the end. You need others, that's the trick. If you want to win you won't be able to do it alone. But Tristian isn't even sure what he's fighting against anymore, he thought he had conquered one enemy, and now he comes back in to find another has taken its place. That's just the way, apparently.
         "Lena? Nice girl," Brown murmurs softly, propping his head up with his hand, resting his elbow on the back board of the couch. His other hand falls back into his lap and Tristian breaths an inward sigh of relief. Maybe that's the end of that. "She's a really nice girl, you know."
         "Yeah, I think so too," Tristian replies quietly, smiling a little, not really caring if Brown hears him or not.
         "Real nice girl," Brown says again, nodding to himself as if whatever committee debating the issue in his head finally decided to agree. "Say," Brown adds suddenly, a finger breaking free of the curled hand bracing his head to point at Tristian, "she's the . . . she's the girl you had a thing for, eh?" Brown closes his eyes and gives a snickering sort of laugh. "It's her, I know it's her." He shakes with near silent laughter again and when his eyes open they seem almost totally clear. "You could do worse you know," Brown states simply and Tristian again wonders how drunk he actually is.
         "I sure could," Tristian replies, letting the matter go at that. Brown is looking out toward the dancers again, and his body appears poised, like he's about to leap into the air at them, a tiger flinging himself off the rocks into the water down below, the leap of faith not justified at all but not stopping him from trying anyway. Tristian senses that this conversation is about to be over, and honestly won't feel too sorry to see it go. Stick it on a boat and send it away, he can stand on the shore and wave until it's out of sight. Just as long as he doesn't have to go with it.
         "You should tell her," Brown cuts in suddenly. He's not facing Tristian, he's turned his body to the dancers, and his feet are resting flat on the floor, the heel lifting up every so often. He's getting ready to go back in again. Had his meal and waited hour before venturing back into the pool.
         "I should, you're right," Tristian agrees, figuring this isn't the time to go into details. He doesn't need Brown shouting it all out to everyone in the room, or giving him some sort of manly hug as a way of congratulations. Lena would sure appreciate that, he's sure. Especially if Brown ran around to find her as well. That would definitely take all the goodwill he's accumulated tonight and knock him back to square zero. He'd rather not have that happen if at all possible.
         "Really, you should," Brown tells him, nodding his head in time to his sage advice. Tristian turns his head a little to hide a smile but he doesn't think that Brown is paying much attention anyway. Let him think he's being useful. "Don't wait. Just don't do it," Brown's words are swift, darting things, giggling children circling Tristian's head faster than he can keep track of them. "You'll be sorry."
         "I know, I know," Tristian says in his best patronizing tone, taking some pleasure in the fact that it doesn't even seem to be registering with Brown. Tristian can't believe that the man has been drunk for this long, apparently even regeneration has its limits. Maybe you actually have to die before something like that kicks in. Chances are, Brown didn't test it that thoroughly. No sane man would bother to do that. One of those things you just sort of take on faith.
         Brown's about to get up, his rear is already separating itself from the couch when Tristian gives a mental the hell with it and asks the question that's been nagging him since he got back. "Do you know where she is?" He's decided that idle curiosity isn't a crime.
         The separation pauses. His ascent halts briefly as Brown turns back to him, somehow managing to balance in that position without falling. "Who?"
         Tristian keeps a straight face only with the an extreme effort. "Lena," he answers patiently, trying not to sound like he's explaining a very simple concept to a small child. For the sake of completeness, he adds, "Do you know where she went? I haven't seen her."
         "Oh . . . I . . ." Brown's face scrunches up with the apparent effort of recollection, "she was right there . . ." and he gestures to spot on the couch where Tristian is sitting. "Right there she was. Just a few . . . minutes ago, I think."
         "Really?" Tristian raises an eyebrow. He makes a show of looking around, even though he's done it a hundred times since he first sat down to talk to Brown. Even so, he glances around one more time. Nothing. The result he's been expecting and for some reason there's a tiny bell ringing in his head. Filing it under paranoia, he faces Brown. "Because I don't see her down here."
         "Maybe she went outside," Brown shrugs, slapping his hands on his knees and forcing himself to a standing position. His postures wavers and sways, boneless and flexible. "You know, for a cigarette or something."
         "I don't think so," Tristian replies, shaking his head a little. He takes the opportunity to stand up as well, his eyes lingering on all the faces. If she's here, she's well hidden. He can't help but wonder about that but then he hasn't seen Jina really since he got here. People can easily hide at this party, it's all too simple to just immerse yourself in the jungle and never come out. They'll find you when they clear away the debris the next morning, passed out in a bottle, caught in the arms of a stranger who they don't recognize.
         "Then she went to take a piss or something," Brown nearly snarls quickly and rather irritably. Then, like someone is monkeying with switches in his head, he snaps his fingers and adds, "Yeah, that's it. She went upstairs. I think." His voice is bundled confusion, his eyes nearly turning inward to find the answers he thinks he has. "Or maybe she came back down. I thought . . . I thought it was a while . . . oh hell, I don't know," he nearly growls, throwing his hands up into the air and letting them settle back down like a dense mist. Someone's filled the room with molasses. "You go find her if it bothers you that much." And without another word he gives a whooping sort of laugh and barrels into the dancers, integrating himself into the group with a shout, reshaping himself to fit in. Like he never left. Almost immediately Tristian loses sight of him.
         "Maybe I will," Tristian notes softly to himself, though he's not sure if he really needs or wants to do so. Part of him wants to just settle this internal debate and settle it soon, while the other part is just telling him to just let it go. Let it go and don't worry about it. Nothing's wrong. Nothing is wrong at all.
         And yet something isn't settling properly in Tristian's stomach. It's a feeling he can't easily describe but nor can he just wantonly ignore it either. The party spreads before him like a prairie vista, dense from far away but when you get closer that when you start seeing the innumerable small gaps and spaces. Places to hide. Lena might be in one of those, she might just be. But Tristian doesn't think so. He thinks she's upstairs for some reason. Still. And he can't figure out why. It's eating away at him, one of those old films of a solar eclipse, the darkness nibbling at the sun until there's only a sliver left. The sliver is his resolve. Tristian is running out of excuses, when you come down to it.
         The contrary actions bounce back and forth in his as Tristian considers his options. To go. Or not to go. And every time he puts his foot out to take a step, a counterforce in his body yanks it right back again. Looks like some new dance, there, Tristian. He can imagine the voices talking about him. Look at Tristian trying to figure out how to dance. Just go look at him. Swirling around like migrating butterflies, airy and thick, each one carrying a miniature hurricane in its wings. Every little action has the largest potential. He's learned that and thus far it hasn't served him well at all. Tristian can't stop looking at the big picture, as much as he tries not to do so.
         His bladder finally makes the decision for him. The quaint but nagging pressure starts pressing against his back and hips and he remembers suddenly that it's been quite a while since he's partaken of the facilities. It's not a thought he's used to giving much consideration to, but it supplies him with the excuse he needs. There's a certain absurdity to this, he realizes with some wide eyed revelation. Something is wrong when he needs to let nature dictate his actions.
         No time to change it now, though, there are things to take care of. Tristian resists smiling at that thought, thinking of how many more heroic contexts a sentence like that could have been used. Gently guiding his way through the crowd, he makes his way to the landing of the stairs. Nobody seems to notice his passage, as the night wears further on, less and less people are staring at him. Getting used to him, he guesses. Or maybe they really weren't staring in the first place. Maybe, Tristian, it was all in your goddamn head. In your head the entire time. Because you felt that was the way it had to be and manufactured reality to conform to your own mad standards. And now that you know they all don't hate you, now that you've got definite proof, what leg do you have to stand on? How you can stare at yourself in the mirror and further justify this self-flagellation with anything resembling a clean conscience? Is it even possible?
         The stairs are moldy with stagnant darkness, like it's all fled here from the party, hiding out on this stairwell until everyone is gone and it's safe to come out again. All the fears and hatreds and petty differences that they've thrust away from them for just this one night. It has to go somewhere, you realize. You just can't excise it from yourself, all actions have an equal and opposite reaction. That applies to everything, no matter how big or small. The dust he's stirring as he moves his hand along the railing, the gritty dryness under his palms, that follows the laws. The galaxy that they're sharing with a billion billion billion others, it does too, running on the largest ellipse you can dream of, and even that's only an atomic insignificance compared to the widest curve of all. Of space itself.
         And Tristian stares up into that darkness, gingerly places his foot on the first step, and realizes that if the metaphor were true, he'd be heading right into it. But metaphors aren't true, he muses, mostly to get his mind off just about everything else. The one thing the human race is good at is avoiding thinking about the matters that we're supposed to be thinking about, we waste all of our time trying to find side routes and detours when the direct path is just as fine. But it's too easy. Tristian climbs the stairs, raising himself over the party, staring down through the trapezoidal gap between railing and ceiling and marveling at how small it all looks. All those people, jammed so close together. He's been here for hours and he still finds it hard to believe. So small, they dance and bend and shift and waver under his gaze, as if daring him to try and be like them. But his body won't move like that. The muscles are old, atrophied, forgotten in the rush of life. Some blood is finding its way back to the fibers, but the return is long and he's just getting started.
         ". . . but it's not my conscience that hates to be untrue . . ."
         The party is receding, falling out of his vision, sliding right off the ends of the earth. Or maybe he's doing that. The darkness is closing around him, embracing him like a lost friend. But that's not the case, there isn't anything up here that's any friend of his. And there's a device at his belt that might slice all the darkness of the world away if he dared to use it for that. But he can't. That's not his job, to save the world from itself. Not even one person at a time. The rounded clatter of his staccato footsteps dueling with the bubbling music below reminds him of that fact. His friends don't want a savior or a warrior or even a hero. They just want their friend Tristian. But he's not sure he can give them that man and the closest substitute might not be good enough. A perfect copy is still not the original. There's still that one dimensional quality you can never fully rid yourself of, the sharpest images and the finest precision still won't give all of it.
         It's all so far away now. The party, a distant memory of colliding forces somehow managing to combine into something greater. One day in class they spent the entire two hours trying to define synergy. And they couldn't. Because more than one definition isn't a definition, it's just scattered shooting, firing in the dark and turning the lights on to see if you hit anything. Images define so much finer than words, the contrasts and colors write the world in a language we could study for a million years and never understand even a tenth. Tristian has no words to describe the feelings within him. Trepidation. And he's not sure why. He knows Lena's either in the bathroom or sitting up there waiting for somebody to finish and leave. Or she's talking to someone in one of the rooms. People use it for such things, you know. They don't just hide in it like he does, when the world stops being to his liking so instead of facing it on his own terms, he covers his eyes and curls back into his makeshift womb and pouts until the world agrees to play along. But the world is only humoring him, telling him it's okay to come out, that everything is better now when it's all a lie.
         But some things are better. He knows that. Tristian just can't break his thoughts out of the same old patterns, he's worn ruts into his head, the grooves marked in his brain, the little impulses travelling along the same ones, glittering as they go. He knows things are different not, that if he can change one aspect of himself, of his life, then others can follow suit, chain linked prisoners tumbling off the cliff because the first guy just had to see if he could fly. For better or for worse, if we go down we're all going down together. And yet he's going up, metaphorically and literally. The top is just in sight for him. Someone scattered the fog and the summit turns out not to be so far away after all. Just take shallow breaths, conserve that oxygen. Because the going gets exponentially harder as you clamber to the peak. But he can't stop and he can't slow down.
         The top of his head is starting to clear the barriers to his vision and he can see the contours of the ceiling, some of the shapes of the doors. His footsteps are caveman counterpoints to the tantalizingly complex beats pounding against the floor, trying to get at his ankles. Any second now he'll run into Lena and already he's thinking of excuses. I'm not following you, he'll claim. I just, you know, had to use the restroom. It's a natural human thing.
         Or.
         I had no idea you were even up here. Gosh isn't that a coincidence. We really have to stop meeting like this.
         Or.
         So should we pick up where we left off?
         That last one coaxes a smile from his face. Any second now. His hand is flat on the top of the broad railing, like he's going to pull himself up with just that arm. He takes each step calmly and steadily. One. At. A. Time. Tristian tries to imagine her face, the surprise that he found her up here. He thinks now he'd be able to read that expression on her face, no matter how hard she tries to cloak it. Her body language is less a mystery to him now than ever before. Ballet that tells a story. The only sounds are his even footsteps and the monotone artillery thuds, the party attempting to shell him, stop him, even from this distance. And maybe his breathing. He thinks he hears that. For some reason his heart won't stop threatening to race, one time he remembers waiting in the corner of a corridor, holding the sword close enough to his face that all he could see was the world stained red and listening for any sound. Tired of running and he decided he would make his stand right there. But the waiting was the worst part. It always is. He wishes he could vault up the stairs now. Just to get it over with. Just so he can embarrass himself in front of Lena and they'll have a laugh about it and get on with their lives. For now.
         Words are forming on his lips even as the darkness seems to try and converge on him. He's at the top of the stairs. And it's just as he remembers it, dusted shadows, a bathroom right down the hall. The door's ajar and the light appears to be off. Outside the bathroom on the left wall is a sink, with a mirror affixed to the wall right above it. Water drips silently from a faucet, not deeming its voice important enough to be heard. There are two bedroom doors on the right side of the wall, both doors shut, as they've been all night. The only light is from one fixture in the center of the ceiling, valiantly battling the darkness. Except more light only makes more shadows. And the only way to win is to give in completely, let it all go dark. In the end, it's a loser's game. The only way it can be.
         All this is up here. And Tristian. And that's it. The words miscarry in his throat, aborting before he even got a chance to know them that well. His eyes skim the rippled darkness, seeing nothing more that struck him since his first impression.
         There's nobody up here. But him. That's all there is.
         His heart starts to race faster.

* * * * *
         ". . . like being caught in a dream, that's what it was like. That feeling, you know, just that feeling that time is just, it's slowing around you . . ."
         "Hm, I imagine it was quite the shock for you. Going up there and not at all finding what you expected."
         "It wasn't just that. Everything felt . . . distorted, unreal. Like it was happening to someone else. But that someone else was me and I was standing right there. Does that make any sense?"
         "You were tired."
         "No. No, that wasn't it. That wasn't it at all."
         "Then you know what it was?"
         "It was fear. I was scared."
         "Why? Of what?"
         "I don't . . . because . . . because I knew something bad was happening. Or was about to happen. And I didn't know what it was. Or if there was anything I could do about it."
         "Even with the sword? It does cut through anything you know. In most situations, that's really all you need."
         "It wouldn't have made any difference, there are . . . some times that having the sword won't make a damn bit of difference. When it just won't help."
         "Then you are starting to see."
         "What?"
         "Nothing. Continue."
         "But what did you mean-"
         "Continue."

* * * * *
         Nobody around. For what must be the third time he stares around but there aren't any secret alcoves to poke into, no tented shadows to push aside, this hallway doesn't have any mysteries that he can unravel. Plain honesty already painted onto the surface he's not used to, he takes it at face value even as he can't help feeling a tad uneasy about doing so. Tristian takes a few more steps up into the hallway, crossing around the bannister and moving nearer to the bathroom. His steps aren't making any sound, but he can feel the party through the soles of his sneakers. Like they exist and he doesn't. He's caught in a sort of null time, ripped away from the world, passing through the membrane and right through to the other side. Tristian's finally stepped into the ghost plane that he's always thought he lived in. And yet he's here now and it's not like he expected. There's nothing real up here. That's just how he feels. Like he can't find anything real and solid. And it's not because he's running headfirst into the unexpected, something else is at work here. There's a difference festering in the corners. A difference he can't quite contain. Or understand.
         His heart won't stop thudding and trying to escape from his chest cavity. Without thinking he puts his hand there, feeling his skin rise and fall with each galloping pulse, and he presses down, as if willing it to stop. Oh, but that's not up to him, is it now? There are some things he doesn't get a choice in, not anymore. But that's not the problem right now, is it? If there even is a problem. Tristian can't say for sure. His head is racing with tangled thought and he tries to keep his quiet walk down the hall casual, keeping his internal state hidden. Like someone might be watching him and grading his behavior. Stance all wrong. Demerit. Eyes flickering around too much. Another demerit. Clenching and unclenching fists in slow imitation of a flower, the petal fingers masking an impotent center. Yet another. The list goes on.
         And on. The bedrooms are dark as he passes them, the doors both shut to the point where he could barely stick his hand through the gap between door and doorframe. The way they've been all night. One time he thinks Will used one of the rooms for folks who had to have a cigarette, when it was too cold to head outside, but that hasn't seemed to have been the case tonight. Urges of all kinds are getting satisfied downstairs. Downstairs and outside. Things he had only previously seen in bad remakes of the Arabian Nights. People he had suspected to have been meek and unassuming had been transformed into something else by the promise of alcohol and the feather light touch of someone who might just for one night turn out to be a friend. There's a whole room full of thoughts like that. Packed in tightly, creasing the seams of the room, threatening to spill out into the night. Or maybe it already has. Because it's touched him too, he has no choice but to include himself in the metaphor. Raked ice fingers right across his face and even as the blood sizzled against his cheek, boiling into the night, all his demons were ejected, curling and dancing into steam, torn by crosswinds blown by a world that has no use for such things. Self pity. Doubt. Fear. Lack of trust. Still cursing him even as their offal stains his face. Some things won't die easily. Or at all.
         Tristian leans his hands across the sink, feeling the residual moisture of old water seeping into his palms. Bracing himself, he bends his head down and stares up into the mirror, until his hair waves tickling hands down his forehead. That's him. His face. The dusky light of the hallway scribbles a texture across his face that he's not familiar with, but he can't say he dislikes all the same. His features aren't so hideous, when you come down to it, Tristian allows himself a moment of sheer ego and fancies himself able to ascertain just what might catch someone's attention. The firm yet soft line of the mouth, with a ghosted beard shading the contours. The eyes, seeming to alternate between sparkling and simmering, with just the hint of the blaze that once dwelled there before a gust nearly snuffed it out. A blaze that might get a chance to erupt again. If given time and the proper kindling.
         But in the end his face holds no more answers for him than anything else in the hallway. The vanity remains nothing more than that, an overly simple game to get his mind off the matter at hand. If such a matter even exists. He hasn't been able to decide that just yet. Just because he can't find Lena doesn't mean she isn't around. He wasn't assigned to protect her or anything, curiosity isn't any excuse for the way this keeps tearing through his head. She must be somewhere else in the party, the rational part of him states quite plainly. There are a million ships sliding past each other down in the soaked darkness, faces blend and voices meld. He could have brushed right past her, and her right by him, and neither might have noticed the near chance encounter. Tristian knows that. It's a fact he can't dispute. And yet.
         And yet. Brown's slurred and slippery words keep coming back to him. A man caught out of focus, twisted by a forced and skewed perspective. He claimed to have seen her go up here. And never come back down. And for some reason the bells in Tristian's head won't stop ringing. Sounding out a warning. That something's wrong. But how can something be wrong? This isn't some strange planet rife with danger lurking behind every foreign shadow, every innocent clump of foliage, where the air itself might threaten to split his lungs wide open. This is a party, these are his friends. It's not the living world he had gotten sent to one time by accident. That world had tried to kill him, acid had rained from the sky, hissing into rocks all around him, while thunder cracked in an attempt to bleed his ears right out of his skull. And through all of it, he had never understood why. Story of his life thus far, open to page one and there it is right there. Prologue. My lack of comprehension of the world around me.
         Tristian isn't sure what to do. Every sense that he's ever learned to trust in the last year is screaming for him to leap into action like invisible assassins are creeping up right behind him, to lunge at them waving his sword like a bloody baton, confident that as long as you can slice the danger in half, everything will be right with the world. But there's nothing around to hit, no puzzles to ponder, he's caught in a featureless white room with no doors. Exits he can't see. He keeps wanting to swat at the air around him, like something is swarming there but there isn't anything to meet his hand. Just air. The air is empty. Of everything. That's easy enough to tell, all he has to do is look in the mirror and-
         Oh.
         His eyes narrow suddenly, staring deeper into the reversed panorama, like it might tell him something his poor flat world can't reveal. There's no depth to this mirror world, and yet it appeals to him all the same, so sterile and quiet. A pane of polished glass away and yet he can never reach it. His pulse tightens in his neck as his eyes try to focus. The door behind him and to his left. The one closest to the stairs. Tristian's looking into the mirror and his backwards face is looking back at him. But the eyes aren't meeting. They're looking at doors. In the walls. And the gaps between the doors. And the darkness beyond them.
         It must be his eyes. Playing tricks on him. It must be. But he keeps staring at it and it won't go away, nagging and taunting him.
         Something is moving in that room, he can see the dark reflections in the gaps, the moonlight cruising in must be bouncing off of something. And it's flickering, in a regular fashion, something torn into fractured cycles. But that can't be. It can't possibly be.
         With a speed he keeps forgetting he has, Tristian whirls around, expecting the apparent figment of his vision to be a good figment and just vanish. Like all good figments should do. Squinting at the darkened gap again, he does his best to not see it.
         It refuses to play along. Like a man in a dream, he finds himself taking thick leaden steps toward that door. Time really has stopped now, the bottom of the party has dropped out completely and he's the only man left in the world. Him and the door and the room. The room he's heading for. There's a soft noise caressing his ears now, so low that he can see how he missed it before. It's a repetitive sound, whisper thin, and yet it's rife with a quality that sends him trembling. He's almost at the door now, and he's got this mad idea that maybe he's walking in on something that he should best leave alone. That he has no right to intrude upon.
         His hand is on the door. Carved wood that once served as shade now only stands to impede his progress. His touch is so light and yet only the gentlest of taps will swing it open.
         There's one last second where he knows he doesn't have to do this. Nothing is forcing him, the actions he's taking are fully of his own free will. Why is everyone so quiet. Who stole away the sound?
         The noise grows softer and sharper, until words almost start to become distinct. A moan. It's like a moan. A plea, maybe. A flush is spreading down his back, an ice cube trying to find someplace to burrow. He shouldn't be doing this. It's not right.
         Just the smallest pressure it would take.
         He can always apologize later.
         His second of choice comes and goes, and Tristian doesn't even notice. Still moving forward, he puts his weight behind the door and
         I'm sorry, but I have to know
         feels it swing inside
         into a darkness that isn't empty at all.

* * * * *
         ". . . saw them burning babies. Right in the village square they were doing it. A big fire and they were throwing them all in. One by one. The smoke almost seemed alive, it was so thick, and . . . and the smell, oh God, God, the smell, it . . . human fat and flesh and acrid and all the evil in the world and . . . I couldn't vomit. I couldn't, all I . . . I choked it down and kept running. It was all I could do.
         "And he was standing there right next to the fire, the flames . . . they, the flames were licking at his cape and they weren't burning him, he was so close and he wasn't getting burned . . . and the air, the air kept screaming, splintered wails and panicked . . . oh God, I still hear that sound some nights, I still do . . . it . . .
         ". . . I think he was speaking. To me. I don't know, the world was chaos and shrieks but I'm sure he was talking to me. Just laughing. Laughing and talking, like we were at some goddamn dinner party. His voice was coated in fire. And, oh God, his voice, it was . . . it was flesh peeling from charring bones and skin melting like some obscene butter and . . . and all the hopes and dreams of the world spat out like it was all so much garbage, just, oh . . . oh damn, oh God damn, I haven't thought about that, in . . . in months but I . . . I . . ."
         "And that's what you were thinking, then? When you walked into the room?"
         "No. No, I was thinking, that . . . there's evil in the world that you . . . that you can grasp and see, because, because it's so monstrous that you can't ignore it, there's just no turning your head from it."
         "Yes but-"
         "No . . . let me finish, there's, that and there's the . . . the evil that, just doesn't make sense, that you never, never see coming in a million years because it just . . . you just don't see it."
         "And that's the kind that scares you the most?"
         "It's the kind that stops my goddamn heart."

* * * * *
         The opening door reveals her first. Slowly it creaks across the room, sweeping the barriers from his vision in an arc defined by a straight line no matter how try to break the curve. Tristian is standing in the doorway, time tumbling in tatters around his feet. His eyes are slowly adjusting to the darkness but his brain already knows what he is seeing. And the shivers streaking down his spine are threatening to rattle him apart in their intimate violence.
         Images come to him in pieces, like it won't let him handle the entire picture. Her arm, dangling off the side of the bed, limp. That's one piece. Her chest, barely moving, like all the weight of the world is pressing down there trying to prevent her from breathing. That's another. She's on her back, face peering into the sky. Tristian sees everything in strobe photographs, a trip through the page of a picture album torn out of hell itself. His vision feels warped, his head feels compressed, the room is squeezing him in a vice. He wishes he knew if this was real or not.
         The door is still opening. He hasn't even taken a step, time is twirling so calmly, but that's just a ruse. Inside, it's staggering, reeling. It's all being revealed even as he stands there, whether he wants it to be or not. Tristian can't stop staring. Can't stop staring at her face. Absurd betrayal tries to stab its way into his head but is turned back by a tide of other emotions, too many to even handle properly. It's overload. Someone has gone and broken the rotor of the world. The engine stutters along, cracked, shattering in slow motion. The pieces never stop falling. Even as we scream for a respite, the pieces dance through gravity on the wings of our pain.
         Somewhere he hears the doorknob connect with the wall, a hollow meeting of metal and plaster. But Tristian's past caring about that. About any of that. He's just staring, taking it all in, trying to process it even as his head tries to shovel it all out as fast as it can. To protect him. It claims. But there's no protection here, it's all laid bare.
         Lena's not alone in the room. She's on her back and she's not moving. There's someone else here. Tristian lets his eyes follow her body, unconsciously miming the arc of the door, remembering the way the muscles jumped in her calves when she went to stand up. In the end. Memories are crosscutting each other, conflicting. None of it is making any sense. Why won't his heart stop racing? Why can't he get his heart to stop racing? There's a third person in the room and Tristian finally stares at him, finally gathers the will to find his gaze.
         And the man stares back. He appears to have been straddling her, but Tristian can't really tell, is trying not to think about it. Even as theories and ideas filter into his mind, passive activism succeeding where blunt force couldn't. The man shifts his straddling stance into something not unlike that of an animal crouching over fallen prey, one hand behind her, bracing himself into a tripod, his weight pressing down a little into the bed. Sinking. It's all trying to submerge. The moonlight scars a band over the top of his face. There's light splashing Lena as well, illuminating her but Tristian isn't looking at her anymore. He's looking at the other man. At his face.
         "What are you doing here?" Carl asks, his voice a rippled whisper.
         Tristian takes a step forward.

* * * * *
         ". . . I doing? If you must know, I was on the outer edge of the Universe . . . there's no heat out there, really, except for a few stars, even the molecules are frozen, atomic ice drifting. The heat from the creation faded here a long time ago.
         "And there's a race out there, they thrive on heat, it runs their biological processes. They're mindless, you see, and attracted to heat. And they're the only warm things out there and so they find each other. And clump together. Because all they can think about is finding heat. And eventually you have these planet sized masses floating around out there because they're generating more and more heat and attracting others.
         "But that's not why I go there."

* * * * *
         Carl's eyes narrow, as if annoyed. "Hey, now, I think we're entitled to a little privacy, aren't we now?" Almost obscenely he pats Lena's leg, smiling as if enjoying some private joke between the two of them. Lena doesn't move, she hasn't even twitched the entire time. She's so still.
         When Tristian finds his voice, it's a terrible raspy shadow of a thing. "What . . ." he finds his throat raw, as if he's been screaming the last ten minutes, and swallows heavily, licking too dry lips, "what the hell did you do? What did you do to her." Tristian can't stop looking at Lena, at her face. So still. Her eyes are half closed, and her mouth is slightly open. There are people Tristian has seen like that before. It's never been good. Something is rising in his chest. He finds his hand clenching almost painfully and it takes all his efforts to keep it steady at his side.
         Too slowly, in a wavery nightmare, Carl glances down at Lena and smiles again, shrugging a little. "Yeah, I know, she's pretty relaxed, isn't she?" In the half light he seems to wink at Tristian. "But I think you might have loosened her up a bit for me, eh?"
         The gears of the world mesh and grind, metal snarled against metal, straining to move another inch. That last inch. The one they can't take away from you. Tristian can feel it sliding away from him. Suddenly he feels so goddamn heavy, like the world is rising and he can't manage the strength to go with it. Calm. Stay calm. Calm the hell down. But he can't. He just can't.
         Carl doesn't notice any of this. He's staring at Lena again, and rubbing his hands together, like he's greasing them. Tristian wants to stop feeling so sick but nothing is working. This is all too real, he can't dissociate himself from anything because he's so enmeshed that he's tangled and bent. Torn.
         Taking a deep breath, Carl glances sideways at Tristian, starting to shift his position again. Back to the way it was before. No. No, he can't do that. It's all so chopped up, an imperfect blending, Tristian's alternating between rapid flashes of nameless color and a slow, almost lazy, panic. He doesn't know what to do. There's only one thing he can do.
         "Now how about you just leave us to-"
         Words leap into his throat. "Get the hell away from her," he hears someone say in his voice, even as the muscles in his throat snap tight with whiplike precision.
         Carl's gaze shoots back over to him. It's a swift motion but it's all happening so slow to Tristian. So goddamn slow. "Listen, you don't have to get-" but Tristian's already moving.
         "I said get the hell away from you son of a-" but he's moving faster than his words will allow, crossing the distance between the door and the bed like it's no distance at all, it's like someone sliced any memories of the intervening space, he's here and then there and then he's grabbing Carl, his hand encircling the other man's forearm like a claw. Lena recedes from his peripheral vision and all he can see is Carl. Surprise blossoms over his face so pathetically slow, there are fireworks flaring in Tristian's head now and everything feels so stifling and warm, like the world is trying to contain him.
         In a motion he can't remember consciously deciding to do, his entire arm stiffens and becomes a rod of implied force. A second of eternity later, and Carl is toppling backwards over the bed. Falling so slow. Tristian is moving at the same time, all the shackles have been removed now and he's liquid slithering through too solid air, watching with detached horror and amazement as Carl's head hits the floor, as the other man winces and rolls to his feet, getting down on one knee, his face laced with shock. He doesn't know. He honestly doesn't know what's going to happen to him.
         Carl might be saying something but Tristian doesn't care. Just like that he's stopped caring. It's that simple. Lena's laying so still and the man who did it is slowly getting to his feet, and Tristian feels purged and empty inside.
         Facing each other, the only sound is the dueling snarl of their labored breaths.

* * * * *
         ". . . and don't get me wrong, I'm oversimplying by a lot. It takes a long time. It does, we're talking a million or so years. And they clump together and generate heat. And it does something to them, to their brains, it . . . speeds them up. All that heat starts to accelerate their thinking. They get smarter the more of them that stick together like that. Along their bodies you can see the nerve impulses flaring, racing along quicker and quicker. Even from a good distance, it's bright, a million hyperactive snakes chasing each other. That's how I find them. That's how I know it's time.
         "You see, after another million or so years of this, the same idea occurs to them every time. Because by this time they're smart enough to realize that it's the heat speeding their thought processes up. And not long after they generally float close enough to a star that they can sense it. Feel it. The heat, radiating to them as pure energy.
         "And I can almost recognize the flickering patterns every time. When it occurs to them. That the star might be their ticket to transcendence, so to speak. And their thoughts race along faster and faster, brighter and brighter until as they debate back and forth it's so brilliant, like lightning trapped behind glass. Until finally they come to a decision. And it's been the same decision every time. Every time.
         "So one by one, I watch them break off from the group and start to fall, with fledgling grace, right into the star."

* * * * *
         Carl's standing now, his hands palm out, bridging the distance between him and Tristian. The expression in his eyes is assured, with alarm just starting to tickle the edges. Tristian can't feel any expression creasing his face at all. And he wishes he could. There's an emotion he doesn't have a name for churning in his body and it's forcing him forward.
         "Listen, hey, listen," Carl is saying, his eyes flickering to the prone Lena and then quickly back to Tristian, as if afraid that the man might call upon that demon burst of speed again and slice his world away. And Tristian just might, when you come down to it. He's sorely tempted to level it all out.
         "You, we were almost done you know, I'm sure she'd be more than willing to, you know, with-" Carl's voice is a stammered defense painted into the air, trying to shield himself with a concept that Tristian could punch right through in a second.
         "Shut up!" Tristian nearly screams, taking two giant steps forward and grabbing Carl by the front of the shirt. The fabric is oddly rough in his hand, bunching up even as Carl's eyes go wide. Tristian thinks he's lifting the man into the air but he's not exactly sure. It's not important. Nothing seems important right now. He's remembering Lena. Lena and her voice and her laughter and her smile and all the things that she isn't doing right now.
         Hands batter at his arms, the pressure meaningless to him. "Whoa, hey, listen, she wanted this, pal, don't be getting mad at just me, just because, how was I to know-"
         "I said shut up!" Tristian does scream this time but the world stamps down his shouts, stomping it flat into the ground. Before he knows what he's done, he's released Carl from his grasp, watching the man fall as if dropping him from a great height, flinging him at the ground and wanting to see if his head will bounce. It doesn't. Carl lands painfully, and scrambles in a crab like fashion backwards. Backwards and sideways, trying to get around Tristian and to the door, moving in the half circle that ties him to the world, he's strung out from Tristian, unable to break the distance, not willing to get any closer.
         Tristian can't seem to stop shouting. He's never liked raising his voice and yet he can't stop shouting. There's a part of him marveling at that even as the world pinches and refocuses. "You bastard, what the hell did you think you were doing, did you . . ." but Carl is still scrambling for the door, panic flaring behind his eyes like the remission of a sickness long thought dead. "Do you even know what you've done," Tristian follows him, his steps crossing the distance like it's not there, bearing down on Carl like the tidal wave of guilt that he doesn't seem to possess. "Do you know . . . listen to me, dammit!" and he's reaching down and nearly scooping the man up, throwing him back onto his feet. Carl makes a noise that Tristian can't decipher and lashes out at him, but to Tristian it's all slow motion, he can read every move in his stance like he's tattooed it all over himself. Blocking the flailing arm is just inevitable, and his counterstrike, a blow that leaves his hand tingling and numb and Carl slamming into the wall behind him, seems to represent something more than justice.
         There's blood pooling on Carl's lip but Tristian couldn't care if he broke every bone in the man's face. "Is that how you want to play it?" he hears himself sneer, as if listening to a radio station from an alternate universe. "Does that turn you on, too? Does it?" Carl is attempting to melt into the wall when Tristian cracks him across the face again, his hand a slashed blur ripping the air in two. Clutching his head, he staggers nearly to the floor, somehow managing to keep his feet, if only barely. "I asked you a question, you bastard!" and Carl might be shouting something back at him but there's a roaring in Tristian's ears that is blocking out all sound. Even his own words are filtered through his head and changed, snared and transformed.
         Carl tries to kick out at him, a desperate, lunging maneuver. Tristian deftly sidesteps it like he saw it coming a hundred years away. His foot lashes out, and in the next moment the man is staggering back, bent over and gasping.
         "Do you know what I can do to you?" Tristian asks, his voice warbling and warped, coming from some underwater kingdom, some place where things like this don't happen ever. Even as he can't quite understand what he's doing. Or why. "Do you?" Another kick, and Carl has his back against the wall, his eyes two white ghosts shining in the half darkness, blood running down his chin like a representation of the river Tristian always felt he was born in and his chest is heaving with the exertion of trying to stay alive.
         Tristian stares at him for a stretched out second and something pulls at his belt. "Bastard," he spits again and white anger finally explodes behind his eyes, screaming at the promise of release. His hand is clutching the thing at his belt, a lifeline back into a life he's spent the whole night forgetting, drowning with other memories. One of those memories is lying on the bed. This can't be. Something has to be done.
         "I have this sword," Tristian is saying, his voice strangely thick, and it seems very hard to speak suddenly. If his emotions weren't so barren he thinks he might just be crying now. But his anger has burned that all away, what his guilt and inner torment didn't already take care of. Why is the time shuddering along so slowly. It keeps clicking along without any variation in tempo. But Tristian very much wants speed, he wants something final and short and sharp to come down on him now. And end this. And end it all. Right here.
         "I have this sword," he says again and he can't believe he's sensing a smile slitting his face, even as he feels the all too familiar weight in his hand, lifting it right up into his vision.          His finger caresses the button.

* * * * *
         "It's a beautiful thing to see, they fall in a line, one after the other, their thoughts lighting the silent darkness, lightning without thunder, so silent and slow, gracefully twisting in a dance that has meaning only to them.
         "Every time they fall. Straight into the heart of the star. Where they get immolated, flaring into embers before they can even comprehend their newfound state. One time I got right next to one as he burned, his thoughts flared in a pattern that I've never before and never seen since. Maybe in that one second he understood it all. One second is really all you need, in the end."

* * * * *
         Carl's mouth works without words as the sword hilt dangles before him. And in a motion Tristian can't even counter, he leaps forward, leaps past Tristian, shoving him to the side and out of the way, a splintered shriek trailing in his wake even as he's gone and out the door before Tristian can even pivot.
         His face set, Tristian takes three purposeful steps after him, arm held out stiffly at his side, knowing that he can easily catch up with him, knowing what he's going to say when they resume this conversation in a few minutes.
         Then he hears a small noise.
         Slowly, caught in a nightmare that won't end, caught in layers of nightmares that he keeps shifting between, piercing the veils, he turns and sees Lena. She's made the noise but her face hasn't changed. Sprawled like that, Lena's so small to Tristian. Almost helpless.
         "Oh, Lena, my God . . ." Tristian whispers, taking a step away from the door, back toward her. Halfway through the step, he stops. There's a weight in his hand. In numbed disbelief, he brings his hand up in front of his face. And sees the sword sitting there like it's the only place it's ever wanted to be.
         And Tristian remembers. Remembers what he had been about to do. What until a moment ago was fully ready to do. The realization strikes him in the chest like a girder and the physical heaviness staggers him.
         "Lena . . ." he dares to murmur, reaching out and touching her arm. She doesn't even stir. So still. Dear Lord. Her skin is too warm to the touch, he barely brushes his hand against her skin as if afraid that someone has rendered her into fragile ceramic and just that brush might crack her right in two. When it's him that's breaking.
         In the distance he can hear Carl's footsteps, a herd rampaging down the hallways, down the stairs, fading and falling even as Tristian is nearly torn in two by the desire to go after him. To stop him. Because that's what he does, right? That's what he has to do, right?
         But Lena's right here and her eyes are closed and she's barely breathing, her chest is hardly moving. He didn't realize. He didn't see. How bad she was. How far this had all gone. And it all crashes into him with insidious suddenness, life breaks a pole across his legs and he sways.
         "Oh my . . . what do I . . ." he turns toward the door, sword still in hand, determination and sheer horror streaking across his face is equal measure, then back toward Lena, seeming to try and move in two directions at once, "I . . . I don't know what to do . . . oh my God . . ." and he feels his eyes widen as he finally seems to see her for the first time since he came into the room, the first goddamn time and this is bad. It's bad.
         "My God . . ." he croaks out, the world finally getting a good grip on his shoulders, the heaviness pulling him down. Yanking him with fierce possessiveness. You belong down here, it says. With everything else. You belong down here.
         In slow, tortuous motion, Tristian falls.

* * * * *
         ". . . and millennia after millennia, I really don't know why they do it, personally it makes no sense to me at all. Which just goes to show you. But it's generally worth the trip, if you ask me. Just to see it. Just to remind myself that there are some things I will never understand completely . . ."

* * * * *
         Her hand is dangling in front of his face. Tristian's on his knees and Lena's above him and he thinks she just made another noise, like she's crying for help. His help. Anyone's help. But God he doesn't know what to do. It's all too much. For him. For the world. Breaking him down and he's given it all he has and now he's got nothing left. Nothing to help anyone.
         "Help," he whispers, hands pressing at his eyes, trying to block out the world, her face, her hand, the screaming that he keeps hearing in his head, incessant. "Anyone," he whimpers, sinking deeper into his knees, knotted and tightly bent over himself. "Please. Help. Please. Just help."
         And it's not his voice.
         It's not his voice.
         It's not his
         It's not
         "Somebody help her-"

* * * * *
         "And that's where I was. Out on the borders of everything. And I heard you scream. All the way out there and it cut through me like a buzzsaw. Some things I'm not able to ignore."
         "But I didn't . . . I didn't scream . . ."
         "No, you didn't. Not outloud. But I heard you anyway."

* * * * *
         The stillness alerts him first. With his eyes tightly shut and the world crammed into some other corner of his mind, he can still sense it. He wants to tense, he wants to relax, he wants to feel something but there's nothing left in him anymore, all the drops left inside of him have been poured out and burned away. There's nothing left.
         And there's a glistening ringing in his ears and a presence in the room older than time itself. Standing behind him. He can feel it. It's here. Even with his eyes closed he can tell. Intimately they know him, he's the spirit they let out of the bottle to roam around and pretend he's human. How fitting. It's all so goddamn fitting.
         "Oh God . . ." Tristian murmurs again, shaking his head back and forth, trying to shake free the clinging beads of reality and nightmare coating his body.
         "I can take care of it," the voice says simply, cutting through his dense terror. In the tense quivering ambiance of the room, it seems to be the only sound left in the world. It's his voice. And it's not his voice. It's all the wishes in the world, good and bad and evil and nice, all rolled together. His hair seems to be standing on end and he can't catch his breath properly.
         Tristian takes a deep, shuddering breath, opening his eyes, staring out over the bed, past Lena, into the night itself, where the moonlight trickles in, pure and unsullied. He tries to draw some solace from that. But God help him, he can't.
         He closes his eyes briefly again, letting that same breath out slowly. His eyes snap open a second later and even without the mirror, he knows. For the first time tonight they're perfectly clear. Unobstructed. And it scares him. And maybe that's a good thing.
         "Do it." The words slip through his tightly drawn lips like ghosts finally breaking free of his head. So faint he barely hears them. Just two words. That's all it takes. He can't even remember saying them. Just two goddamn words.
         Like a fever dream, the world is suddenly awash in a burst of golden motes, it's raining dying butterflies, settling and fading around his clenched body like they're too beautiful for a world cut too harshly to sustain them.
         Then the presence is gone. Like it was never there.
         A moment passes, and the girl on the bed seems to spasm in the faded darkness and a wail without energy is heard briefly.          
         After which, it's gone.
         And there is no other sound.

* * * * *
         The world is a roaring monster pummelling his eardrums, a constant stammering shout to justgetthehellout. He remembers being near a waterfall one time, when he was younger and going on a boat near it and standing there all bundled up in a raincoat that smelled of old vinyl and mold, standing there and seeing nothing but water. A wall of water. And everywhere, that rushing, endless noise. It filled his head until his whole body seemed to be quivering with the power. Not a good feeling. And he had wanted to cover his ears and scream with the pain but his pitiful shout would have been nothing more than an ant kicking at your foot. The sound was the world. The world was sound. His world.
         Carl's running.
         Not sure of his destination other than the overwhelming need to get out, that's all he cares about. Nearly throwing himself down the stairs, his feet aren't moving in time with each other, racing ahead of his body, he has to keep pulling them back. Going to break his goddamn neck, on these goddamn stairs. His footsteps are frantic, breathless things. He had to keep shoving down the desire to run with his head wrenched back over his shoulder. Might be following. Might be following him. But he can't look back, he can't look back.
         Memories and images flash into his head like a montage from an ancient movie, cracked film playing over and over through the broken projector of his head, the light bulb flickering, the gears whining with the strain. There's a face strewn across his mind like so much splattered garbage, and it's making him sick. Sick just thinking about it. He wants to think about better things, better times, he does. But he can't. A voice grinds through his head in time with the pulsing of blood from his pulped lip, a sound he can't eject. Waterfalls driving him deeper under the surface.
         He almost-
         Carl suppresses a cry of fear just barely.
         Do you know
         Almost near the landing
         what I can do to you
         It was only some fun, that's all. It didn't even work out the way he had planned, but he did the best he could. Because that's what you have to do in the end, roll with the punches and make the best of what you have. And when matters don't work out your way you don't sit there and whine about it, you do your best to make the situation more suitable to you, bend the pliable fibers of the moment into a pleasing weave. That's all. That's what you have to do. It's how Carl lives his life, simple and functional. Keeping your philosophies simple leave less to quibble over in the end.
         But Tristian-
         oh no
         And then Tristian-
         I have this
         Carl nearly smacks into the wall of the landing in his haste, his feet treading empty air, a cartoon where the character can't quite seem to escape the large rock heading for his head. The round shadow, growing larger by the second. Carl would sit in front of the television and scream for the character to run, run faster, for his slippery feet to find some meek purchase on the desert soil and somehow avoid being flattened. Each time he held his breath and prayed for a different outcome. It never came. There's a lesson in that somewhere, he reflects almost giddily, twisting his body nearly ninety degrees and launching himself into the party. He risks a look behind him and thinks he sees shadows throbbing on the stairs. His hearts tries to hide somewhere in his stomach and he rams his way through the crowd, pushing bodies that aren't alert enough to resist anymore. Any one of them. Any one he could have had. It's a shame, a damn shame to waste the night like this.
         Do you know what I can do
         to you
         I have this
         sword
         I have
         do you know
         what
         sword
         I
         have
         Carl doesn't want to think about that. Just get out. So simple. Just. Get. Out. Just the way he likes his life. Three words reducing complexity to monotone. The world isn't black and white, it's either or. Black. Or white. No combinations. Tristian's face is hovering in front of him and he wants to wave his arms to get it out of the way.
         what I can do
         this sword
         It wasn't a sword. It wasn't a sword. It wasn't a sword. Carl desperately wants to believe that statement, stories are just stories and Tristian was just trying to scare him, put the confrontation back into his side of the arena. It had to be it. That's all it was. But yet he's running. Because his lip is hurting in that numbed, aching fashion and his body feels stretched and spit upon, battered and bruised. Pushing his body to get to the door. Have to get to the door. The crowd parts for him reluctantly, interlocking hands strangling his freedom but the door is just in sight.
         The door is just in sight.
         The door
         Something makes a noise behind him like a razor being sharpened, drawn across leather.
         this sword
         I've got
         His hands grabs the doorknob so tightly that it turns bone white and he's nearly wrenching his arm out of his socket whipping the door open, the path to freedom, to escape just beckoning, avenues of endless promise revealing themselves. That's what it's supposed to be like. You pick and choose what you want, because you're smarter and more ambitious, because in the end you're willing to go that extra mile that no one is able to furnish. You took her and you showed her the pleasures that life can bring and if she wasn't too willing in the beginning, well you brought her around to your way of thinking in time, right? A matter of time and she'd have been begging. They all would be begging. On their knees. Happy smiles all around. Tell us a story, Carl. For your voice is the music of the spheres. When the angels dance on the heads of pins, you are the one holding the pin. Sticking in your palm, your blood lubricating the dancefloor, linked chains spinning off into fractals of bounded infinity. Mimes beat on prisons of their own devising but your walls are falling down.
         Footsteps clatter on hollow stairs. He barely notices how quiet it's gotten. The door seals him away. Carl doesn't care, he's gone, out of here, ready to breath in nothing but fresh outside air, letting it sink into his lungs like knives, he'll take the blood. For freedom, he'd take the blood anyday. It's the only way it goes.
         Tell us a story.
         what I can do
         I have
         to you
         There was this guy called Tristian
         and he didn't like me
         so he tried to hurt me
         and I didn't back down
         he beat me
         and I didn't back down
         The lights seem so much dimmer in here, the lamps are pulsing and it's giving him a headache, he expected so much more light in here.
         do you know what
         what I can
         do
         so in the end he had to try and really hurt me
         and he has this
         and he pulled out
         and he pulled out
         His footsteps take on a galloping quality, a drum roll upon the helpless stairs, the door is so much closer now and he can see the outside, he can see the sky
         but he can't see the stars
         and everything is just one step away, once he's outside the entire world is open to him, he can step sideways and vanish, right into the night and into the next day and the next and the next
         where a sword can't find him
         Tristian can't prove anything
         Carl can't help but smile even in his heightened, warped anxiety
         He's at the door now and his hand is on the doorknob again, turning it, pulling at it, ready to rush out into the opening and into the night, already feeling the coolness of the burning day filtering into his face
         maybe he'll sit and watch the dawn for once, just to calm himself down
         that'd be nice
         and the door seems to be stuck
         so he pulls harder
         and it's stuck
         The lights are beating a rhythm into his brain that's almost painful, the hallway shadows are playing tag with the brightness
         and the door won't open
         and they don't lock from the inside.
         I've got this
         "It's not going to open."
         says a voice, strange and familiar, clipped and foreign
         Carl turns only to feel what has to be a heart attack erupting in his chest and his eyes must be the entire size of his head and so white and so white and his head feels light
         Tristian is standing up there, hands clasped behind his back
         how did he get there?
         how did he
         And Carl is standing there utterly frozen, caught in headlights that even he can't ignore, his hand still welded to the doorknob, his arm still pulling on the door, frantically, futilely, not able to take his eyes off the man on the stairs
         who smiles
         he smiles
         and to Carl, who's no stranger to the gamut of human emotion, finds it to the coldest, most alien smile he's ever seen in all his life
         "I want to tell you a story"
         Tristian says, taking a step
         and another step
         and another step
         into air
         he
         just
         walks
         into
         air
         And Carl feels his world bottom out because a man, a goddamn man is floating down the goddamn stairs, down the stairs and he's coming right for Carl and his voice is glue and wood chips and oil poured down your throat and he's still talking but Carl can't see him anymore because Carl in his infinite dignity and boundless quest for elusive freedom is beating on the door and trying desperately not to wet himself like he's two years old again
         "Someone asked me, long ago and far away from here, how I knew what evil was, how could I fight it if I couldn't define it"
         the voice is gnawing at his head, his hands are making tribal thuds against the metal door, his hands are bleeding, he wants to wake up from this dream and every time he glances behind him
         or in the reflection of the crosswired glass
         there's a man floating down the stairs
         and his hands are at his sides
         "and I told her I knew exactly what evil was"
         if beating his head against the steel door would wake him up would get him out of here would enlist him into blissful darkness and he wouldn't have to deal with any of this anymore he would, Carl would in a second because this isn't fair, he was only having fun and there's no reason to torment him like this he wants to explain because he knows if he explains it'll all be okay and they'll understand he knows they
         "evil is the misuse of power, of gaining power over others and using it solely to better yourself, without thought, without care for anyone or the consequences, knowing the entire time what you're doing and not giving a damn"
         Tristian goddamn you Tristian this is all because of you, Carl wants to run past the floating man getting closer now there's a voice breathing down his neck and fog wrapping around his head, the lights keep flickering like someone had plugged into the power system and playing it like a classical symphony gone horribly wrong
         and the door won't open
         and the man's hands
         he can see the hands
         the hands are glowing
         oh dear God
         the hands are
         "I told her, it doesn't have to be in the most vile, the most openly violent of acts, true evil exists everywhere we're not looking"
         Carl flings his body against the door but nothing is working nothing is working at all and it's suddenly very warm in here and every time he looks back the man is closer so much closer and the light from his from his hands is hurting his head his eyes scrabbling claws stabbing his face and Carl thinks he can feel something wet against his face he's crying
         growing closer
         getting brighter
         his hands
         brighter
         "And that I'll always oppose it."
         the voice is the waterfall the waterfall is the voice he's not even sure he can hear himself anymore, it's so warm in here who turned up the heat because it's getting so goddamn warm, a sunny day at the beach stretched all wrong, it's all going so wrong
         "Because that's what I do, what I always fight, what I always will fight until I cannot"
         and Carl instantly realizes he doesn't want to die, not this way, not cowering and wetting himself in this sterile hallway reeking of alcohol and vomit and bad music and the lights are just flickering out of the control he wishes they would stop
         and he doesn't want to die
         and the man is so close he looks so much like Tristian but he's floating
         and it's Tristian
         and he's floating
         and he's holding two suns in his hands
         with a throat ripped raw, Carl thinks he's screaming but he's not sure anymore, not sure of anything but it won't matter because he's going to die and they'll never know they'll never know why he died
         "Die? Oh, I'm not going to kill you"
         laughter devoid of anything he can grasp scrapes the inside of his head even as the world grows impossibly bright because someone pulled down the sun and he's got his eyes closed before he even knows what's happening
         "but I'm afraid this is going to hurt very much."
         and the light is increasing, he's got his eyes closed and it keeps getting brighter, it's so warm, like that day on the beach with that girl and the two of them in the surf and the sand and he stared at the sun until all he saw was redness but this is worse much worse and he whimpers because the pressure is so great they've got his head in a vice and the world is nothing but colors he can't explain and he gurgles incoherently
         and screams
         and the light
         the light is
         the light is piercing
         his brain
         and taking
         taking him to
         pieces
         thelightistakinghimtopieces
         ah-