Thoughts

There is a monster that stretches and grows

During each moment that's spent alone

It's shadowy and can be quite difficult to see

And by the time it's noticed, it's too late to flee...

Hold your breath; Keep it in; Swallow your fear

Curl up tight; Hug your knees; The monster is near

Shut your eyes; Do not scream; Darkness so unkind

It's all just a dream; It's all in your mind...

Rhythmic footsteps fill the emptiness that's left

Where butterflies once fluttered inside of your chest

No hope remains for denial or sleep

Once the monster has awakened and stirs in the deep...

Creative Juices

The weather report didn't matter.  The temperature, humidity, and sunlight (or lack-there-of) was always the same in the Marans' basement.  The wood paneled walls were hidden in darkness except for the occasional splash of light from an unshaded lamp.  Even those bits were soiled with the stark shadows of whatever knick-knacks and half-filled soda bottles were strewn across the desks which lined much of the room.  

In a corner sat Brian, hunched over a drawing pad which lay flat on his desk.  The page before him was blank, but he stared at it, muttering to himself, reading under his breath.  In frustration, he threw down his pen and rubbed at his eyes as if he had been sitting in that uncomfortable, hot chair for hours.  Days, even.  In reality, he had only just sat down for a few minutes.

He turned sideways in his old chair, the wooden arm of it digging into his side.  His unkempt hair matched the shadows on the wall both in color and shape.  His glasses were equally dark and abnormal.  He stared through them across the large cave of a room to another desk.  Upon it sat several jars, bottles, beakers, and other clear containers.  Each was connected to the next with a straw or tube of some sort and liquid pooled in differing colors; blue, green, yellow, black, clear.  The liquids sat unmoving, unbubbling, unchanging.  

Brian pushed himself from his chair as if the effort itself drained him and he trudged across the room.  He slapped his hand on the desk and drug a lighter over the rough wood, only then curling his thumb to pick it up as it teetered on the edge.  In one quick movement, almost uncharacteristic of him, he snapped the cover off and flicked the lighter on.  The tiny flame danced from his fist and he reached out and held it under a mason jar of blue liquid.

Forever he stood there, the flame licking the glass, the shadows dancing on the wall, the light taunting his eyes, and the jar began to sweat but its contents had no reaction.  Brian lifted the lighter closer till the flame had no room to burn between its fuel and its foe, but still, nothing.  He stared into the flame until the spots overcame his sight and he could see it no more.  His eyes relaxed and snapped back, trying to focus on what had blinded him, but Brian didn't move.

Florescent light ruined the effect and a woman's voice came from far away.

"Brian?!  You better not be smoking down there!"

He answered her in his head, "I'm not, Mom!" but his lips didn't move and no sound came from him.

"Brian!"

Blinking, he threw down the lighter in anger.

"What?!  What Mom??"

By this time, she had come halfway down the stairs and was looking at him as if he had just pulled a gun on her.  

"What are you doing?"

Brian didn't turn from his desk.

"I'm writing!  Leave me alone!  Please!"

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry.  What do you want for lunch?"

"Nothing, Mom, I'm fine.  I'm not hungry.  Just.  Please, leave me alone for now."

"Well, let me know soon.  It'll take time to make it.  Don't wait till you're starving to come upstairs."

Her steps were soft and reverberating and the click the lightswitch made when she shut it off replayed in Brian's head over and over and over.  He felt as if he had been standing all day and decided to go sit back down in his chair.  Once there, he stared at the blank page of paper again.  Hours later, he let out a sigh.  

At some point, a plate had appeared on the desk next to him.  It had three halves of ham sandwiches on toast with a full slice of cheese on each.  He barely recalled eating it, but the roughness the toast left on the roof of his mouth and the crumbs on the plate gave away its history.  Brian turned to look at the liquid across the room.  Still as ever.

The light flicked back on again and the familiar footsteps came close.

"We're all ready to go.  Are you coming?"

Brian sighed again.  He lost count of the number of sighs which now hung in the still air around him, but he was certain it totaled more than the years that would last his life.  He pushed himself and his chair away from his desk with a harsh scrape against the concrete floor and stood.  Turning without looking at the juices, he climbed up the stair after his mother.

The light clicked off, but no one was there to hear its sound repeat over and over in their mind.  Heavy footsteps came from above as they walked and shuffled across the house.  Then a heavy door opened... and shut.  The slam of it made tiny ripples in the liquid.  A hundred circles grew within each other till they could grow no more, and then reversed and came back on each other.  Even after the vibration of the door had passed, the ripples kept on, growing bigger with each wave until the liquid began to bubble.  The bubbles grew larger, and more fierce until it pushed up into a straw and into the next soda bottle of green, turning it into a beautiful teal.  

The teal concoction began to bubble next.  It churned and danced and bounced and grew.  It grew so great that it flowed into the yellow liquid and the black.  They bubbled up and rose out of the jars and popped on the wall, leaving round ink stains which dripped and bled downwards leaving new symbols and signs and words and pictures.

The bubbles eventually filled the room in black and teal and purple and orange and every shade of blue and green until barely any liquid was left at all in the bottles and jars.  When Brian stepped down the color-wheel stairs what seemed like mere moments later, he scooped up his pen and drawing pad, sat cross-legged on the floor, and began to write.

The Apex

Epilogue

The trees were so tall and the snow fell so thickly, Jezzabel could not see their top branches.  Her muscles no longer ached, but the stiffness in her legs drained what little energy she had left.  She pulled her bearskin cloak tightly around her, crossing her thin arms across her ribs.  Her limbs felt oddly thick and she could not feel her joints when she dropped to her knees in a drift too heavy to climb. 

Upwards she peered again.  The cold breeze on her face seemed to go through her cheeks and behind her eyes.  She let out a quivering breath and would have cried had her tears not frozen to her eyelashes.  She had tried to climb alone, the results would have been better had she done it alone.  Now, though, the choice was only to accept assistance or die.

Death.  It was only a fortnight ago she had found herself so quick to consider it and she would have ended the world then and there but for a whisper in her head of another way.  No, she would climb and she would do so alone.  The tiniest glimmer of hope that the Apex could maybe give her what she sought kept her alive if only for a short while.  But, as she climbed, her hope grew stronger.  What began as a half starved hope of a determined girl became the determined hope of a girl half starved. 

A shadow approached from beyond the snow, its steps slow, rhythmic, and with purpose.  Jezzabel realized she was laying on her back.  She blinked up at the creature, her stiff eyelids failing to wet her frozen corneas.  Her lips twisted, though she wasn't sure if she was smiling at her fortune or grimacing at her defeat.  Meekly, she reached upwards and the head of the beast lowered down.  Her fingers curled around its antlers, hard, thin, velvety, and warm and was lifted into the air as if she weighed no more than a fallen leaf.  Grabbing hold of the thick blue-gray fur of the beast's shoulder with one hand, she was able to pull herself onto its back.  She let her cloak fall open and pressed her chest and cheek into its fur.  So warm, it was, that she felt the stiffness in her melt away and she suddenly felt foolish for accepting the beast's help.  Now, with just that moment of warmth, she felt she could complete her quest alone.  But it was too late, she had climbed onto the beast's back and would ride it for the remainder of her journey.

The gentle rocking of the beast's shoulders soon sent Jezzabel into a deep sleep.  She dreamed of a crow laughing as it flew about pecking at the head of an ogre as he clumsily swatted at it.  She was the crow and the ogre both.  When she awoke, she lifted herself up to peer between the beast's antlers  The snow had stopped, but the wind whipped the freshly fallen into a thick white mist about them.  There was a darkness a short distance ahead and it would seem they had come to a cave.  The beast took her into the darkness and, once past the snow which had blown inside the wide mouth, laid down. 

Jezzabel slid off the beast, pulling her cloak about her once more with one hand, still grasping its fur with the other, and looked into the darkness.  The beast shook its mighty head, which the girl took to mean she would have to let him go.  The moment she did, she felt the white coldness from behind rush back into her and she shivered, hurrying to tighten her cloak about her tiny body.  Disappointed and relieved, on the verge of tears, she sighed shakily and stepped forward into the dark warmth of the cave. 

The Apex was ahead of her.

Life of a Floridian

Episode 1

I went out to read in my hammock today 'cause it was 80 degrees... but it was too cold... so I came inside.

Episode 2

Driving up to the Walmart parking lot in Clermont to get a 360degree fireworks show for New Years Eve.

Episode 3

Went food shopping. Saw people in short shorts and winter coats. Thought nothing of it.

Episode 4

Saw a facebook status about someone up north eating White Castle. Wept softly.

Episode 5

Fuimos de compras. No se puede entender nada de nada a nadie más en la tienda estaba diciendo.

Episode 6

Going out for a walk in January.  Sun tan lotion, bug spray, and a coat.

Episode 7

It's snowing!!  Oh wait... that's pollen...

Episode 8

Sunny and beautiful out.  Dark and pouring rain.  Sunny and beautiful out.  15 minutes have passed.

Episode 9

Seasonal allergies 365 days a year.

Episode 10

Watch a man get into the passenger side of his car and look confounded at the empty space where the steering wheel should be. 

Episode 11

Want to own a home?  You'll either be paying into an HOA every month to cover the cost of a gate that doesn't work and for people to tell you what you can and cannot do with your property... or you're in the ghetto.  If you're not in the ghetto, you will be soon.

Episode 12

Raining in the backyard, sunny in the front.

Episode 13

Native Floridians - people born and raised here - are the minority.

Episode 14

Having The Walt Disney Co. on your resume is not all that impressive considering the majority of the people living here can say, "I used to work for Disney."

Episode 15

Want to make a left out of this parking lot?  NOPE!  Right turn only, U-turn 50 yards ahead.

Episode 16

Speed limit 50.  Traffic light every half mile.

Last night I met Bill Murray again.

Last night I met Bill Murray again.  It was the second time in the past few months.  This time, we were at an outdoor wrap party.  

I made my way over to him as he was walking down the city street which had been closed off and slipped my arm into his.  He greeted another fellow next to him and turned to greet me, but paused a short moment.  I couldn't tell if it was excitement or surprise in his voice when he said 'Well, hello to you!', but it meant all I needed to know.  

'Do you remember me?' I hid my giddiness well.  

'I do!' he confirmed.

I smiled wide.  The last time we had met was during an awards show.  I found myself seated in the same aisle, but several seats down.  Whispering to each person in turn that I could not see for the large head in my way and asking politely if they would switch seats with me, being this was my first awards ceremony.  Graciously and miraculously, they all obliged until I had found myself seated next to Bill Murray.  We shared some jokes, some smiles, and we seemed to silently agree that the several hours we sat next to one another would have seemed like several more had I kept my original seat.  After the ceremony, we were ushered out and I was too embarrassed to cling to him longer.  I left him behind without sharing my name or why I was there.

We walked through the streets, arms entangled, greeting others and laughing.  Then the music lowered.  A man in a tuxedo stood on the balcony three or four floors up on a skyscraper in the center of the street.  He greeted everyone, to which Mr. Murray had a rude reply.  The crowd chortled in unison.

The man spoke in length, but the echo of his voice reverberated on the speakers so that his words were difficult to understand.  Men on the ground level began shouting numbers up at him.  I realized I was standing in the middle of an auction.  

Bill turned to me and placed his hand on mine as he carefully slid his arm away.  "Excuse me miss." He pointed at me and smiled.  "Don't go anywhere."

I smiled politely and nodded as he took three large steps to another suited man and spoke softly in his ear.  The man nodded with a look of concern, or was it anger.  I could not tell.  Bill moved on to shake hands with a very lovely lady behind him then and the next time I looked, the man he had whispered to was gone.  I suddenly felt very insecure.  That woman he was speaking with was much prettier than me and Bill was among people who understood and knew this event.  The embarrassment which had overcome me at the rewards ceremony a few months back had returned and I looked around to find an escape.

An arm slipped in mine, startling me.  I turned, and it was Bill with his most charming smile.  He leaned in to whisper in my ear.  

"I need to leave.  Would you come with me?  Or would you rather run off again?"

He was unhappy about my departure last time... I blushed and agreed to go with him.  We walked a slightly quickened pace to the edge of the closed road and he helped me into a limousine.  I began to try to explain what had happened the last time, how I got to be sitting next to him and why I had left the way I did, but my mind was betraying me.  The thoughts kept jumping to the tuxedo on the balcony and the suit Bill had whispered to, and I had to keep pausing my story and restarting.  He listened politely, or didn't listen at all.  I was too embarrassed to meet his eyes and find out.

Before I was able to finish, we had arrived.  He held out his hand for mine and I gave it to him with an empty feeling in my stomach and, what I could only imagine, a sad look in my eyes.  He lead me down a half flight of stairs where he unlocked an orange-red door with one hand.  It opened to a beautiful apartment.  The decor was contemporary with grey and black designer rugs, an orange-red sofa, and orange-red lamps hanging low from the ceiling.  Bill lead me towards a couch and began hurrying through his rooms.  Unsure of what to do or say for fear of annoying him, I sat quietly on the edge of the couch and watched him.

I heard the turn of the lock then.  "Bill?"  I called out and his head emerged from the doorway to the room he was in.  He cursed under his breath, hurriedly but gently grabbed my wrist, pulled me around the couch, and into the room.  He shut and locked the door, turned, and in a moment I was in his arms.  He held me against him, breathing as quietly as possible, and we listened to someone fumbling through the room outside.  Then they came to the door which hid us.  I looked up at Bill, his eyes shut in painful realization.  The doorknob jiggled, a voice cursed, and a frustrated punch sounded on the door.

"Bill!"  The voice was eerily familiar and a chill ran down my spine.  'What is he doing here?' I thought.  In a moment of panic, I moved to break Bills grasp on me and get us out of there, but he kept me there.  I turned my eyes back to his and showed him the most pleading, rushed look I could muster... but he only kissed me.  It wasn't a lovers' kiss fraught with passion, but a loving kiss.  The kind that says 'I need you here right now'.  But it was broken when the door burst open.  Bill hugged me tight, keeping his back towards the door, but I could see the man enter over his shoulder.

There he stood.  Thick, black leather boots, cargo pants, wife beater, tactical vest, short hair, and an arm... an arm made of metal with a long spike on the end of it.  The butterflies in my stomach, whirling from the sudden kiss, had dropped dead and piled as high as my throat.  My eyes burned and I shut them.  As long as I'm in these arms, I'm safe.

"Merle?"  Bill said softly, "I don't have anything you want."

"Oh but you do!" His boots fell heavy on the floor as he circled around us.  "You've had it all along."  His last footfall came short as he reached our side. He had only just noticed me.  'As long as I'm in these arms, I'm safe.'  "Who's your little girlfriend?"

Bill didn't answer him.  I opened my eyes and turned just enough to see him standing there, leaning on his back foot, his elbow braced against his side with the rest of his metal arm raised, and a grin, that shit eating grin as if he had just caught an animal he had been hunting for days.  'As long as I'm in these arms, I'm safe.'

"Come on in fellas!" he called, "I've got him here... and he's got a surprise for us too."

Four, six, too many footsteps to count.  The arms around me were wrenched away behind Bill's back.  The same to mine.  He looked at me with sadness, or anger, or defeat in his eyes, I couldn't tell.  He said nothing.  Merle continued to instruct the men to take him out.  Bill kept his eyes on me till they walked him backwards out of the room and he disappeared around the doorway.  Merle replaced my view then and spit sideways onto the floor.  He leaned down a bit until his nose was mere inches from mine.  He was blurry through my tears.  "Hey there C".  In an instant he stood, I could see the shadow of his metal arm raise on the floor and come back down.  I heard a clang as it smashed into my head and all was blackness and silence.

I awoke laying on a cot.  There were no sheets on it and I had been changed from my evening dress to a small grey T-shirt and sweatpants, but my underwear was the same.  I was in a tent.  Only the cot, a bucket, and a styrofoam chest was inside.  Strangely, my head didn't hurt, but I rubbed where I had been struck.  A patch of my hair was missing and I felt the bumpy stitches and scar tissue.  I rubbed gently, counting each ridge.  One, two, three, four, five, six, but the bumps melted into one another and it became impossible to count.  I sat up and stood, hunched over for the height of the tent, and reached out to unzip the door.  I paused, suddenly remembering who I was with, but heard nothing.  Just wind, birds, bugs, and the crackling of a fire.  I unzipped and stepped out into the sunlight, stretching my back.

"Good mornin' sleeping beauty!" Merle was sitting on a chunk of concrete in front of the fire with some kind of animal on a stick.  I looked around, but saw no one else.

"Principle photography is over, Merle.  What are you doing?"

"That's not what's important."  He watched me as I sat on a log across from him.  "What's important is us."

I rubbed my eyes so my disbelief couldn't be seen.  We had wrapped on that storyline back in August.  Yes, we had something between us, but the writers decided to end it and had me escape him in the season finale.  It hadn't aired yet, for all I knew it was still in post production, but this was insane.  He can't possibly have thought it was real.  He's an actor too, isn't he?  He still has that thing on his arm, though, and who knows if he's sharpened it or not.  My best bet is to play along till I can get away.

I let my arms drop to my knees.  "Why'd you hit me?"

He shrugged.  That's it.  That was his answer.  I would have smacked him.  I would have stabbed him.  He had the weapon, though, not me.  I caught myself showing anger, but quickly fixed my face.

"Well, I'm here now."  I pushed myself up and walked around him to rub his shoulders.  He let out a little moan of approval and I leaned over and kissed his cheek.  "Make some for me, I'm starving to death."  I stepped back into the tent and left him to make me some food. 

Inside, I opened the chest.  I was hoping to find my cell phone, though I couldn't imagine why it would have been here.  I had left my little bag at Bill's apartment.  Bill... I wonder what they had done with him.  Who were all those people with Merle?  I suppose they were extras from the Woodbury set.  I wondered if he would be taking me back there.  I'd play along till then and I could use someone's phone to call Daryl. 

Fiddling through the contents of the chest, I found a tactical belt, a couple handguns without ammunition, some make-up, bits of hard plastic which had once belonged to something else now broken and missing, and some paper... A script or a list, it was hard to tell by the format of it.  Six pages, I counted.

"You like that?"  Merle had poked his head through the tent flap.

"What is this?"

"That's my plan for my brother when I find him.  I'm going to do all sort of horrible things to that little prick."

I dropped the stapled papers back into the chest and stood staring down at it.  It was half filled with useless bits of things, it may as well have been empty.  Even so, it was less empty than I had felt at that moment.  I loved Daryl.  He felt the same about me.  I was just a minor character with barely a name and only a tiny bit of screen time, but Daryl had talked the writers into having me escape Merle and fall in love with him in a twist of cruel irony.  Merle's character had everything Daryl's didn't growing up in this fictional world and he wanted to have everything Merle didn't by his end - his arm, his place, his men, his love.  I thought it was brilliant and, luckily, the writers did too.  They agreed to have me escape by the end of the season and they would develop my character over the next.  Daryl had his biggest smile when he told me.  I loved him so much.

"You best eat this now 'cause we're headin' out before it gets too late!" Merle called from outside the tent.  I stepped out and ate my meat on a stick.  The stick had more taste than the meat did, and was probably more tender.  It was a shame I couldn't eat it.

Merle had everything packed by the time I had finished chewing my last bite.  He carried nearly everything except the styrofoam chest.  I thought of picking things out of the chest and dropping them as we went, to leave a trail or to lighten the load or just to deny him of the things, but he walked behind me always and would have seen them drop.  When twilight came, we would make camp.  He'd stab some animal or I'd pick some passion fruit, we'd eat, and then we'd go to sleep on that tiny cot together.  He'd hold my breast as he slept with his good hand, but I'd move it down to hold my rib instead.  When he squeezed, I'd take a deep breath in hopes that he wouldn't feel my ribs.  He did a couple times and moved his hand back up.  I'd move it back down.  All in all, I didn't get much sleep.

Finally, one afternoon, we found ourselves looking over the city.  It wasn't Woodbury, but the same city Merle had plucked me from.  I shook my head, not knowing what to think or say or feel.  That night, just before dawn, I slipped from his arms.  He made a noise in protest, but I whispered I just had to pee and would be right back.  He snored in response.  I slipped out, stepped quietly in the leaves till I was sure I was out of range, and bolted.  I ran as fast and as hard as I could on the little food I had eaten and several sleepless nights.  By the time I reached the city, the sun had risen.

The first building I came upon was a parking garage.  I recognized it.  I ran up the steps, nearly out of my last breath and then I heard him. 

"Cynthia!  Come on!"  It was Daryl.  He had his crossbow and was leaning over the edge of the stairs a few flights up from me.  New energy filled me and I took the steps two at a time.  His hugs and kisses were at the end of this race and I would make it; and I did.  He had stayed on that level waiting for me and I slammed into his body and threw my arms around him.  He kissed my cheek hard as if to make up for the time we had missed together.

"Daryl!  ... Merle!"  I was gasping for breath and still felt like I was getting no air.  Daryl picked me up and carried me the last few flights of stairs.  He slowed a little as we went into the corridor that lead to the roof, taking the steps two at a time.  He kicked the door open, sat me down, and bent over for a breath or two. 

Tears immediately filled my eyes.  Rick and Glenn, Andrea, Dale, Lorri and Carl, T-Dog, Carol, even Michonne.  They hugged me and rubbed my back.  Carol had tears in her eyes.  Dale hugged me a little longer and a little tighter than the rest.  Lorri whispered how glad she was I was okay as she hugged me.  Glenn gave me an awkward half hug and smiled sheepishly... and then a gunshot.

Glenn flew backwards, blood spattered everywhere behind him.  Carol and I screamed in unison.  Rick began spouting off commands, I saw Lorri grab Carl in my peripheral vision, Andrea cocked her handgun, Michonne drew her sword.  I stared at Glenn's half-missing face in disbelief.  T-Dog dropped to his knees beside him and hung over Glenn's body.  'No...' I thought, 'Maggie...'  I gasped and turned. 

"Daryl!"  He was standing with his crossbow cocked and ready aiming every which way, darting his sights quickly from rooftop to rooftop.  I ran over and grabbed his arm.  "Daryl, It's Merle!"

"I'm not afraid of him." He shook off my grasp with his elbow and turned his aim to the door.

"You don't understand.  You have two pages, Daryl.  He has six."  That got his attention.  "He's going to kill you.  We have to get out of here!"

Another gunshot sounded.  My first thought was that it had missed, but when I turned, Carol was in Dale's arms, gasping for breath with a punctured lung.  My eyes filled with tears.  We were target practice on this roof.  We had to get down.  I quickly turned, but became full of rage when I saw Michonne standing there with her sword at the ready as if it would help in this situation.  I wanted to run her through.  I wanted Rick to shoot her in her stupid head.  Rick...

Rick was letting off rounds of gunshots at the nearest roof.  Andrea was standing next to him doing the same.  The gunshot had gotten the attention of walkers and they crowded the streets below us in their disheveled and bloodied states.  I blinked the tears from my eyes and ran to Rick.

"Rick.  It's Merle.  He's here for Daryl.  Please..."

Rick was the only other cast member who knew about Daryl and I.  He glanced over to Lorri and Carl, turned to me and nodded.  "Everyone with me!" he called out, grabbed his bag of weapons, and ran for the door.  When he reached it, it flew open and there was Merle.  He aimed a sawed off shotgun straight at me in his good hand.  'I'm a minor character' I thought as I watched the barrel jerk upwards in slow motion, the fire and smoke tumble slowly from the barrel, and the bits of bullet float towards me.  They hit me full force in the chest and I fell backwards.

The landing hurt worse than the shot.  I heard everyone yelling far away.  I saw grey sky and nothing else.  'I'm expendable' I thought... 'They killed me off before I could be a major character...'

Then I woke up.

Vision

Over the course of the next moments, a wave of excitement and energy swept over Ship and he felt he needed to move his legs.  He adjusted himself and reached a hand out to his side where a tall, dark object stood.  It was firm and rugged under his fingers.  He planted a foot downward into the green below him and wriggled at the touch of a few blades slipping between his toes.  Pushing himself up from his knee, and sliding his hand up the rough, tiny wall, Ship stood.

He gazed upwards again, watching the blue-white blinking in the green which waved and whispered to him.  Always keeping his hand upon the wall, he followed it.  Putting one foot carefully in front of the other, he stepped around until he found himself in the same place he was standing before.  Again, he circled it.  Again, faster this time.  Faster and faster until he broke out in a run.  Never letting his fingers lose touch of the rough wall for more than an instant, he leapt over the pieces of the wall which jutted out from the ground.  'Reee!' he called out.

Clumsily, he bounced to a halt and bent over with his hands on his slightly bend knees.  'Troo' he let out as he tried to catch his breath.  He looked up and patted the wall.  'Tree,' he said to it, and tree waved down at him in thanks.  Ship leaned up against it and looked out at his surroundings.  In the distance were blue-purple points with white tops, yellow and blue and green painted the bit below it. 

His stomach gave an awful lurch then.  Something he had not felt before.  He felt the need to put something in his mouth then... but what?  His eyes still slightly blurry to the colors ahead of him, Ship hesitated.  After another lurch, Ship pushed himself from the tree and stepped back out into the sun.  He began to walk.

As he walked, he named the things he saw, and his eyes became sharper and the colors stood out to him.  He passed through trees so thick they blotted out the blue above.  He walked past great golden tunnels without roofs in the ground with walls ten thousand feet high.  He jumped over streams and waded through rivers and swam across lakes.  He found some more trees with sweet smelling balls growing from them which he decided to suck on.  The sugar caked on his teeth and the juice flowed down his cheeks.

Continuing on, Ship passed a lake so large he could not see the other side.  He climbed rocks and peaked down dark caves.  He walked through valleys and rolled down hills.  So many colors and smells and sights he had never felt before... and Ship was happy.

Stepping between trees taller than he could see, Ship kicked at the needles under his feet and he heard a sound.  Ship froze and looked around.  He saw nothing, but then he heard it again.  A soft ruffle a few yards away.  He turned to look in the direction of the noise and he saw the world move.  As it moved, Ship was able to make out its shape... an odd box with long twigs beneath it.  From the box came a long, curved branch with a lump on the end.  The lump had two leaves of the same color on either side and two black spots and the pointed end was moving.  Ship stepped slightly closer to it, and it turned its two black spots to face him.  This wasn't a moving tree - it was another thing like him... but different.

Ship continued closer to it, and it stepped a few paces away from him.  He followed it, carefully stepping softly into the needles to make as little noise as possible and yet, with a twitch of its ears, it would match Ship's pace and step away.  Then, a crack, a giggle, and the deer was gone.  Ship, just as startled, forgot about the deer and ducked down behind a tree.  The sound he heard next was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

It sounded like the shadows he had known so well before being thrust into this other world.  It was higher pitched, and it hummed up and down and down and up.  Finding his courage, Ship leaned out from behind the tree and, as carefully as with the deer, stepped up behind another one slowly making his way toward the sound.  Then the sound stopped.  It was then he saw her.  Another living thing, more like himself, but shorter and different in stature with longer, black hair.  She wore aquamarine cloth which seemed to glow against the rusty needles around her.  She was looking around the forest, golden teardrops dangling from her ears.

'Hello?' she called out.

Ship, overwhelmed with excitement, stepped out from behind his tree.  The girl gasped as she turned to see him there.  He stood, frozen in place, unsure of what to say or do.  The woman turned to face him and reached out a hand.  Ship paused, but her smile calmed the bubbles inside him. 

'It's alright.  I will lead you.  Do not be afraid.'  Ship stepped up and took her hand, looking into her eyes. 

'Vision' he said to her, repeating the last sounds he thought he heard her sing.  His sight, even within the walls he had always known, had never been so clear.

Ship

A man sits.  He sees before him a wall.  He sees to his left, a wall.  He sees to his right, a wall.  Upon such a wall is a screen, which he may touch.  Upon the screen is an image.  What the image is, a man cannot say.  The image is a darker shade of grey from the wall, so a man knows it is there.  But the image changes.  It changes as routine which a man may or may not recognize. 

From his arms grow tubes.  Grey tubes with darker grey matter which flows in and out of him at all times.  There is no time here.  There are the walls and the shadows upon them.  In the distance, beyond his walls, a man can hear sounds.  They are muffled voices coming from the shadows.  He speaks to them in a language he made up.  In this man's mind, he has remembered the shadow's shapes and molded the shapes into new shapes.

This man has earned the attention of the voices.  They have become louder, closer, and yet the images remain the same.

All at once, the wall splits open.  The man can see nothing but bright, blinding white.  It hurts his eyes.  He cries out in pain.  'No!  No!' he says, 'Please!', but in his blindness he can only feel the tubes being torn from his flesh.  He can only feel weight under his arms lifting him.  He can only hear the shadows speak, but he cannot see them.  'First you must name yourself,' they say.  'Then you must name the world.  Then you must return, and name us.'

'Please, no!' the man cries out, unhearing.  'I don't want to go!  I'm not ready!'

Pain shoots from his knees as they hit the ground over and over.  He can hear rhythmic pounding on the ground beneath him.  The weight below his arms shoots through the rest of his body as he falls unceremoniously to the ground.

Blinded and weak, he curls up and cries.  He lays for a long time, his eyes shut tight, until he sees something.  A shadow.  A familiar shadow on the back of his eyelids.  'Oh!' he mutters under his breath in sudden comfort.  He reaches out to touch the shadow, as he often has, but finds an unknown sensation.  This shadow is not flat and smooth as the others.  It is in pieces, long, flat and thin.  They are bendable, and yet springy.  In a panic, the man also realizes he cannot see his arm.  It has also become a shadow.

His breath quicken, he opens his eyes just a tiny bit.  It is so bright, but not all the white he has seen before.  This is something new.  Blurred colors, amazing and beautiful, in shapes indistinguishable.  The man looks down towards the ground beneath him and grabs, with both hands, the slender green blades.  Crawling forward, tearing the soft blades with a satisfying *rip* each step, the man suddenly falls hand-first into something else.  It is like air, but thicker.  It falls and makes noise as he lifts his hand out of it and back in.  Watching the blurred vision of his hand, he listened to it *blip, blop, drip, drop* from his fingers back into itself. 

With a frightened, but excited and adventurous smile, he plunges his face into the substance and quickly finds he is unable to breathe.  In a sudden jerk, he rips his head upward and backward, choking and sputtering.  He wipes his face of the thing quickly as he can and blinks up at the blue and green shadows waving above him with a soft whisper. 

Exhausted and confused, the man sprawls out and stares and thinks.  He thinks a long time.  The bright light which hurt him so badly earlier is not so painful now, though his vision is too blurred to understand.  Remembering something and once again, feeling adventurous, he pushes himself up and leans over the edge of the green blades.  Looking down at the odd substance which stopped his breath, he saw a new shadow.  This one pinkish brown, with darker brown above it, two whitish spots in the middle and a gaping dark red hole which seemed to mimic his mouth movements. 

He reached out slowly, carefully, to touch this shadow, and it danced and *shlip-shlopped* about.  When he smiled, the dark hole became a white line.  He reached out and grabbed the shadow and lifted it to his eyes to get a closer look, but it seeped through his fingers.

'Ship..' he said to the dancing shadow below his hand.  *Ship, ship* the water replied.