Your eyes are open before you’re awake. Your eyeballs are thick and sludgy, and your veins have never felt this way. They’re like the snaking vents of volcanoes, those lightning-shaped conduits that reach up to the Earth’s surface, ringed with layers of minerals and bubbling with magma. It’s funny. You can’t remember your name.
The taste of the air is what hits you next. There’s dust, sure, but also a wet staleness, a familiar bitter-sweet edge, and you try to place the smell, put a month to it or even a year. It seems like a bit too much thought to put into remembering a smell, but maybe some context would help you figure out what’s going on here. Maybe all it takes is one memory to trigger the others; one domino falling to see the shape they form.
Your legs, meanwhile, have started to come alive. You didn’t notice at first, not until just now, that you hadn’t been feeling them. Not really. It’s hard to notice what you’re not noticing until you notice it. That feels like something someone told you a long time ago, or a quote from a movie, but you could just as easily have made it up. And the tingling in your legs, it’s more of a buzzing now, like the humming of bees when an unwelcome predator invades their hive.
What’s happening here? Why do your thoughts dance like this, circling and skipping like a child’s? And why is there so much mold on the ceiling?
It takes untold minutes before you can turn your head. When you do, there’s a delay before the movement reaches your eyes. It’s a bad refresh rate, a late invite to the party. And the room, it doesn’t make sense. This isn’t the old house or the new. This isn’t even a house. You wouldn’t describe it as anything, really, not a place so much as a thing you’d pass through to get to a place. A space between spaces.
Finally your arms begin to work, though they function like two snakes you’ve convinced to follow your suggestions. You watch your left arm twist in the air above you as the right arm slaps against your torso. Slowly, and with great patience, you convince them both to stick straight up in the air, together, both of them swaying softly as if pushed by the wind. You could almost convince yourself that they’re someone else’s. That you’re watching footage of arms.
Eventually the muscles run out of strength and your arms fall back down, hands flopping to the ground with a dull but clear sense of pain, clearer than anything you’ve felt since your eyes opened, or at least since you started seeing through them. The impact echoes through the space around you, sounding hollow, sounding lonely. Dusty tears sting at the corners of your eyes.
Your body is a broken machine going through its startup routine. Methodically firing up systems, taking status reports, failing most, until like a miracle deserving its own book in the Bible, you place your hands on the cold floor and push yourself into a sitting position.
The movement is so sudden that it’s over before you’re fully aware you’ve made it. But it works, and you sit here like this, eyes swimming, your skull a boulder balanced atop your neck, until you’re finally able to see straight enough to get a look at this place you woke up in. This not-place.
And the not-place, well, it’s both less and more than you imagined. The space of it seems to go on further than the light can touch, and yet nothing fills it, nothing uses up its room. No furniture, no machines, certainly no people, leaving it a hollowed-out shell, but a shell of what? Even warehouses show signs of use. Safety signs on the wall, floors marred by scuff marks. But the not-place looks to have never been occupied in however long it’s existed, as if it was never intended for use. Existence for existence’s sake.
“Hello?”
Your voice comes out louder than expected, hoarse, but with a desperation that carries it into the pregnant darkness. The word echoes once, then dies. You think about calling out again but decide against it, realizing that you might be better off alone. You certainly wouldn’t come to a place like this of your own volition, and that means someone brought you here. Someone with grave intentions, or at the very least bad judgment and no qualms with putting you in danger.
With your legs feeling more and more like your own, like they might actually support your weight, you lean forward and draw them up underneath you until you’re resting on your knees. But the floor is hard concrete, and it digs into the bones of your knees. With your palms pressed flat against the floor, fingers spread, you push yourself up with half your strength and pray with the rest, body lifting up into the air, legs straining to keep it that way, up and up until you’re standing, really standing. Not straight, but close enough.
You can’t believe it worked. From a virtual corpse to a person standing all on their own, this is your birthday and graduation day rolled into one. You might even feel like celebrating, if it weren’t for the not-place and how much more of it you can see from up here. How it seems to go on and on.
“Is anyone there?” you ask, throwing out caution for the chance to be heard by someone, anyone. One echo, then nothing. Dark space spreads out around you, an emptiness like you’ve never felt. Like every decision and none at all.
You walk forward, if only because it’s the easiest choice, and find you’re steadier on your feet than expected, no breathalyser needed, no touching your nose. Whatever it was that made you sleep like that, it’s out of your system by now, at least enough to let you move unencumbered.
A whisper on the blood, nothing more.
And so you walk. And walk. And walk, but the not-place goes on and on in its never-ending supply of nothing.
It’s been a while now and here you are, still walking, still looking for a way out, or at least some clue to what this place is. If you can figure out the type of building you’re in, maybe you can assign it some kind of logic, rules to how it’s laid out. Where the windows and doors should be located. It could give you some goddamn context about why you’re here, alone, drowning in the shadows.
More time passes. More walking. You assume it’s been hours, but it could be days or minutes. Your eyes play tricks on you, crafting entire objects out of the darkness; a tree here, a massive face there. A black dog with maggots for teeth or what have you. Every time you reach for one of them, these conjured spirits, the sheer act of movement distracts your mind enough to wipe them from your vision. Sometimes you don’t reach out at all, just so they can keep you company a little bit longer.
You try not to think about the thirst, or the hunger. Thinking about them won’t do anything except make them worse.
And then, for the first time, the shadows in the distance take the shape of a person, low to the ground but unmistakably human. A head and torso on top, legs spread out on the floor toward you, and a wall behind them, solid and made of brick.
This time you reach.
This time it doesn’t fade.
You’re not alone.
***
He can’t be more than thirty years old, though you’re thinking it’s closer to twenty-five. He has a round face and a mop of messy, dark hair and a length of gauze wrapped around his head to gag his mouth. His undershirt is stained with sweat and his slacks are simple and inexpensive, the kind favored by office workers and low-end businessmen.
His wrists are also chained to the wall, another shackle mounted at the waist, a third locking his ankles to the floor. As you approach him he tries to speak, asking for help, but all that comes through the gauze is a strangle of muffled sounds filtered of their meaning. He struggles against the shackles less because he thinks they’ll budge and more, by the way he motions to them with his head, to bring them to your attention. As if you’d miss a thing like that.
“Listen to me very carefully,” you say, in a tone that says you don’t trust him, and you certainly don’t feel sorry for him. You’re not about to take anything at face value, not here and not the way you woke up. “I’m going to come over there and remove the bandage from your mouth. I’m going to do it very slowly, and you’re not going to move or say anything. Not a muscle, do you understand? If you move even a little bit, I’m putting the bandage right back where I found it and I’m leaving you here. Nod if you understand.”
The man stares back at you, eyes red, and nods once. So you do as promised and walk to his right side to untie the gauze. His tongue is dry, and the fabric sticks to it. The moment you pull the gauze free, his body tenses as if he’s about to cry out, but then he remembers what you said and stops himself.
“Who are you?” you ask, standing over him. He tries to speak, but his throat is so dry that only a cough comes out. You wait patiently as he takes a breath and clears his throat.
“I … don’t remember,” he says, looking embarrassed, like it’s somehow his fault. “You?”
“I’m asking the questions,” you explain. The way he looks at you changes, as if maybe it’s your fault he’s here. For a man shackled to the wall and floor, he’s a slow learner. Now that he’s paying attention, though, you realize you need to ask your questions, and to make them good. “Do you know how you got here?”
He shakes his head. “I woke up here, like this,” he says. “All I know is I was given something. Drugs.”
“How do you know that?”
“My arm. There’s a needle mark.” He glances down and to the left.
You take a step forward, careful to keep your distance, and see it there: a drop of dried blood encircled by a yellowish bruise inside the crook of his elbow. It could be that he’s a junkie, but from a quick glance you don’t see any other marks on his arms. You’d have to check his legs and feet to be sure, but first you check your own arm because it’s safer and easier. It takes a few seconds to find it on the outside of your bicep: a bruise that’s tender to the touch, with a tiny hole at the bullseye that tells the story, or at least the start of one.
“Who did this to us?” he asks, throwing away the idea of not asking questions.
“For all I know it was you. Or me.”
“You can’t remember, either?”
You shake your head. “We need to figure this out. Like what kind of place this is. Or why you’re shackled and I’m not.”
“I’m glad you’re not,” he says. It’s an odd comment, but you understand his meaning. That if you were shackled, you wouldn’t be much help to him.
You move to his left side, getting a look at the metal brace holding his wrist to the brick wall. It’s a tight fit, leaving no room for him to slip free, though by the rawness of the skin it appears he’s been giving it his best. You can’t see how it locks, and even if you did, you don’t have a key.
“I’m going to try something,” you say. With both hands wrapped around the shackle and one foot planted on the wall, you tell him to pull as hard as he can while you use all your strength to do the same.
You strain and sweat, the both of you, but not a thing changes or moves between the shackle and the wall. The metal doesn’t budge. The brick holds. It’s as if you’ve done nothing. Still you try again, harder this time, until your veins bulge and a scream leaves your dry throat, but still nothing moves and nothing breaks.
The not-place, unchanged.
You sit down on the ground to catch your breath, to think for a moment, though it’s more of a collapse. Suddenly you don’t want to look at the man shackled to the wall, not just because he’s a reminder of your failure, but because you know that soon you’ll have to stand up and walk away from him to continue your search for an exit. You also know he’s not going to like that. Logic says that if you can’t free him, then you need to find a way out and bring back help. But logic means nothing when you’re chained up alone in the dark.
A thought occurs to you. Your left hand searches your left pant pocket but turns up nothing. Then your right hand does the same. This time, your fingers touch a piece of paper deep down at the bottom. So you pull it out, and unfold it, and read it.
“What is that?” the man asks, and you look up, caught.
“I think it’s a clue,” you say.
The man on the wall looks excited by this, because a clue is better than nothing at all. A clue is hope. It’s a chance, no matter how slim.
“What does it say?”
You show it to him, bring it close so he can read it himself with exhausted, red eyes.
“Through the X,” he reads aloud, then squints up at you. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you seen an X?”
You shake your head.
“Someone’s playing games with us,” he says, voice cracking. “Look around, it has to be here somewhere.”
You glance around, peering into the void around you, not knowing which way to go or if it’s worth it. If you’re going to just stumble around in the dark for a bit and return empty-handed. But then what else do you have to do? Your schedule is open at the moment.
“Do you have anything?” you ask the man shackled to the wall and floor. He shimmies his legs as much as he can, which isn’t much.
“I’m not sure. Maybe the left one. You’d have to check.”
You approach him and stick your hand down his left pocket while he leans away slightly, giving you more room to work. Your fingers find something made of paper, but it’s wrapped around something solid. As you take it out of the man’s pocket, he stares at it, then you.
“What is that?” he asks of the small bundle in your hand. Instead of answering him you slowly unwrap it, fold by fold. It’s less Christmas gift and more bomb disposal.
At the center of the paper, cupped in your slightly trembling hand, is a knife. It’s small and folded up, like the kind Boy Scouts and campers carry. You look at the man from whose pocket you took it a little differently now. He had been carrying a weapon, after all, and you’ve just disarmed him.
“Maybe we have to dig our way out,” he says. “A knife that small would take forever.”
“Maybe that’s the point.”
Then you read the words on the paper. They read: While he’s alive.
“What does it say?” he asks, and you decide not to tell him the truth. Regardless of who the message was intended for, him or you, it doesn’t bode well for what lies ahead.
“The same thing. ‘Through the X’.” He deflates a little. Like you, he’d been hoping for another clue. Something to make sense of it all.
“Alright,” he says. “So what do we do now?”
“Just give me a minute to think.”
Feeling the weight of the small knife in your palm, you think about what the notes could possibly mean. One points to an X you don’t see, while the other gives instructions you don’t understand. Someone’s obviously pulling the strings here, you’re just not sure what kind of show they’re putting on, or for who. Something is missing, something that ties all of it together, most of all the parts you’re both meant to play.
“You’re not leaving, are you?” the man in the shackles asks. You want to ask him what he’s talking about, until you realize you’ve walked a good distance away from him while you were thinking, so far that you almost can’t make out the details of his face in the dark. You consider this, whether you should leave him there, if only to look around for more clues, or perhaps the X mentioned in the note.
“Hey!” he shouts, desperation creeping into his voice. It stirs an anger inside you that would embarrass you, were you to give it a voice. You don’t owe this man anything, and it’s not like you chose to be the one not shackled to the wall. You’re certainly in no mood to be anyone’s only hope.
You decide in the end to stay with the man, if only because whoever brought the two of you here intended for you to find each other, and the only way to advance the game as far as you can tell is to stick together and see what else you can find. So you return to him, noting the breath of relief he takes, the slight relaxing of posture, even though the shackles give him a limited range of motion.
After inspecting the immediate area for markings, you decide to ask him a few questions in case you’re able to uncover any more clues.
“So,” you say, “have you remembered anything yet?”
“Like who I am?”
“Or how you got here.”
His eyes dart sideways, a look like he’s trying to recall a dream from the night before. “Only flashes.”
“Such as?”
He looks like he’s trying to read the dark. “I get this brief glimpse. Walking through a garage, and then it’s later, and there’s something covering my eyes, but my back is cold.” He pauses. Squirms. “Listen, can I ask you for a favor.”
“Ask first and I’ll tell you.”
“It’s nothing big, just something that’s been bugging me. So I’ll just ask, and you can say no if you want.”
You say nothing.
“I know it’s a weird thing to ask another person, but I think we can agree these are weird circumstances.” He pauses. “Can you, um, scratch my stomach? It’s just that ever since I woke up here I’ve had this itch. I’m going out of my mind with it.”
“Alright, alright,” you say, because things can’t get any weirder than they already are, and even if the man chained to the floor and wall has orchestrated all of this, you doubt his master plan was to get a stranger to scratch an itch. So you go to him, again, this time to scratch his stomach with your fingernails. Quickly, in a non-friendly way.
But then you notice something through the shirt, a dark mark on the skin of his stomach showing through. “Do you have a tattoo?” you ask.
“I can’t remember my name, you think I remember something like that?” Then he looks down to see what you’re talking about and says, “Huh.”
You grab the bottom of his undershirt and lift it up, without asking for permission, without waiting to see if he’ll ask you to do it, and when you see it, the thing painted on his stomach, you let go of the undershirt and watch it fall back down, covering the shape again. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say, the letter.
“I didn’t see it,” he complains, “what was it?”
You ignore him, focus instead on piecing together everything you know. Taking inventory of all the clues you’ve found so far. And the inventory goes like this:
One piece of paper that reads Through the X.
One piece of paper that reads While he’s alive.
One small knife with retractable blade.
And finally, one man with an X painted on his stomach.
You look at him, the man asking you about the mark on his skin, the mark meant to itch, meant to be found, and instead of telling him the truth, you bend down next to him and tell him to lean forward as much as he can. He argues, asking again what’s painted on his stomach, and resists when you try to pull him away from the wall.
“Hey, hey,” he says, “can you just tell me first what the hell is on my stomach? It’s my body, you know, I have the right to know.”
You exhale, and you nod, and you say, “You’re right, I’m sorry. I’m just as scared and confused as you are. I don’t know who I am, and I don’t know what I’m doing here, or what I did to end up like this. The thing is, I…” You take a breath before you say it. “I think I know where the exit is.”
His eyes light up for a moment, ignited by hope, before the full weight of what you said sinks in. He glances down at his stomach, covered again by the sweat-stained undershirt.
“Let me see it,” he says quietly. So you lift his shirt again, far enough that he can see the X for himself. He stares down at it for a few, long seconds, then quietly says, “What was on the other note?”
“To be honest,” you reply, “I’d rather not talk about that.”
“I think we have to. I think there’s no way around it.”
He’s right, and you know it, but that doesn’t make it any easier. You tell yourself that you’d want to know if you were in his position. Then you dig the paper out of your pocket and show it to him, because it’s not the kind of thing you want a stranger to take you on your word for.
He reads it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to believe it. Saying it out loud like that, hearing it, sort of makes it …”
“Real,” he finishes the thought. Just the word alone has mass. “Whoever did this, this whatever it is, they’re out of their minds. Sick.” He raises his voice, shouting into the dark. “You’re fucking sick! I hope you can hear me, so you know what I’m gonna do to you when I get out of here!”
You look around, wondering if there are cameras, microphones, anything to record and watch what happens in this place. Why else would they do such a thing? Who would go to such lengths to create a scenario they’re not even around to witness?
How would they know if he was alive when you did it?
None of it makes sense. Not the not-place, and certainly not what’s happening in it.
“What about you?” he asks.
You turn to face the man chained to the wall.
“Are you gonna listen to them?”
“Of course not.”
“What if it means you die here?”
“Then I’ll die with a clean conscience.”
He nods. “I don’t know if I’d do it. If it was the other way around, I mean. Maybe if I knew who I was. Who was waiting for me.”
You walk over, push your back against the wall and slide down next to him. “I guess self-preservation takes on a different meaning when you don’t have a sense self.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Whatever that means.”
***
You and the man chained to the wall sit for a long time like this, neither of you speaking. There’s not much to make small talk about, it turns out, when neither you or the person next to you remembers anything. And really, it’s not the time for small talk, anyway.
“How long do you think we’ll be here?” the man asks.
“I’m guessing as long as it takes,” you reply. “One way or the other.”
He looks out into the emptiness. “Maybe you should look around some more, while you still have the strength. See if you can find some clues or something. I mean, who says this is the only game? Maybe they set something else up out there. Something …”
“Easier.”
“For both of us,” he adds.
You look out into the emptiness as well, but you don’t see what he sees. Because the difference between you and the man chained to the wall—besides the obvious—is that you know what’s out there. You wandered that darkness for so long, during which time you found nothing. No doors, no windows, no notes or other clues.
He has the hope of the ignorant. Whereas you, you’ve tasted the shadows, and you know them to be empty.
“You’ll be okay by yourself?” you ask.
“Not really,” he scoffs, “but it beats the alternative.”
You talk for a while, deciding on the best game plan for searching the not-place. What you land on is this: he’ll pick a direction, and the you’ll walk in it for your closest guess to an hour. Then you’ll turn back, find him again, and he’ll choose a new direction. This way he’ll stay involved in the search, and neither of you will be alone for more than a couple of hours.
It’s not the best as far as strategies go, but it’s better than nothing. Better than sitting here and waiting for the end, whichever end that might be. So you stand up and get ready to leave, but you feel like you should say something to the man before you go.
“In case I don’t see you again-”
“You will,” he cuts you off. “I don’t want to hear that shit right now.”
“I’m just saying, this building is massive, and I don’t think I’ll get lost, but for all I know there could be traps out there. Other games.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Just that I’ll do my best. But if I don’t, it was good meeting you. And also, I guess, I’m sorry.”
“Just find a way out,” he says. “We’ll save our sorries for after.” Then he looks around, thinks a moment, and points left.
So left you walk.
As the darkness of the not-place takes you back in, you notice that it feels different now. Maybe it’s because you have a home base now, someplace to keep in the back of your mind and find your way back to, and in a way that’s worse.
And then, a hundred feet out, you remember everything.
It hits you like a rock to the back of the head, a million gigabyte download, and suddenly you remember your name, and you remember your job, and you remember your first kiss and your first car and even that argument in college that cost you a friend that you still think about. You remember all the things that make you you; favorite foods, taste in movies, best friends, casual friends, family members, both distant and close, superstitions, religious beliefs, allergies, passwords, sexual preferences, habits, hatreds.
All of it is back, and for the first time since you woke up in the not-place, you’re afraid. Truly afraid. Because now you have something to lose. No, that’s not right: now you have everything to lose.
Weighed down by this new fear, you turn around to look back at the man chained to the wall, wondering if the same has happened for him. You can just barely make him out through the darkness. He’s still in the same place, obviously, his head turning this way and that to scan his surroundings. His eyes don’t pause when they pass you, mouth doesn’t open to ask you why you’ve stopped. Which means you can see him, but he can’t see you. Either his eyesight isn’t as good as yours or something else is blocking the sight of you.
It doesn’t matter.
What does matter is the feeling that overcomes you as you watch him, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, cursing under his breath. The feeling isn’t pity, as one might expect, or something as selfish as guilt. It’s anger. Anger at a man who could be so selfish, so unthinking as to block the only exit with his body. A man who could put such a burden on you. You, who was already having such an unthinkably bad day, and now has to shoulder the weight of a stranger’s life.
You watch him there, not doing anything to help, not even speaking to you with respect. You, who didn’t ask to be here, who only wants to get home to family and friends. And as you watch him, the anger inside you turns to rage, then resentment.
Minutes become an hour, and all the while, under the heat of your anger, a thought grows inside you, blossoming, hardening in place, until it’s all you can think about. Until it’s not just something you might have to do, but something you need to do.
It’s a simple thought, really, as all dangerous thoughts are.
Both of you don’t need to die here. No.
But one of you does.
Somewhere around the second hour of your absence, the man’s eyes grow heavy. His head begins to sag, neck stretching longer and longer to hold it up. He’s tired, tired of being chained to the wall, maybe even tired of life. Who knows what kind of awful existence he was living back in the world? What soul-squeezing job he wasted away in all day? Who know what loveless marriage or bitter divorce has drained the joy out of him, this husk of a man?
Finally he falls asleep, and the breath catches in your chest. You wait a minute more, just to be sure he’s really sleeping, and then you walk back to him as quietly as you can.
Standing over him, you take the knife out of your pocket. It feels heavy in your hand, the metal cold on your palm. You’re no stranger to the knife, but you’re not exactly a doctor, either. You have no deep understanding of the task ahead, but then maybe that’s a good thing. Ignorance and bliss and all that.
The man doesn’t snore, but he does breathe heavily, a kind of uneven wheezing made worse by his bent neck. Either it’s the drug still in his system or his poor lifestyle has taken its toll on his body. He looks like the kind of man who drinks and smokes, the kind who eats too much and ignores his doctor’s warnings. It’s no wonder his marriage got into such a bad state. Guys like this think they know everything, that they’re the captains of the world, even as the ship is sinking. Even as everyone around him laughs behind his back and cries and shrinks away.
In a lot of ways, you’d be doing him a favor. Surely his best days are behind him, all that remains for him are repeated trips around the sun, increasing in speed and decreasing in quality, until some point in the future a biopsy test comes back with bad news. Then he can look forward to months of pain and embarrassment and family members reassuring him that he’s not a burden, all the while praying for the end.
You get down on your knees next to him and unfold the pocketknife, carefully feeling the blade with your thumb. It’s sharp, not as large as you’d like it to be, but it’ll cut well. Holding it a few inches from the man’s belly, the place where the X is painted on his skin just beneath the undershirt, you steel yourself for the task ahead. Sweat beads your forehead. Your hand shakes.
Just then, the man’s eyes open. He spots the knife first, eyes widening, face tensed up as a look of terror seizes him, and then looks up at you.
“My name!” he cries out. “I remember my name! I have a kid!”
And you plunge the knife into his stomach.
He screams as you begin stabbing him, again and again. You need to get to the point of no return as quickly as possible, before doubt enters your mind. He shakes and struggles against his shackles, but they hold strong. You continue to stab and dig and cut your way through the skin and subcutaneous fat, the layers of muscle and connective tissue of the abdominal wall.
There’s resistance, but it gives. The man is in incredible pain but he’s alive, the way the note asked for. There’s an incredible amount of blood. It’s warm on your hands. The smell of it in your sinuses as you bring back more and more.
The man begins to beg, but he’s too late. Your blade punctures the space within the abdomen. There’s no solid interior here, only organs suspended by connective tissue.
Cutting becomes pushing. Movement is without landmarks, just a mess of guts to breach. The stabbing feels less like injury and more like an intrusion; a squelching insult to the temple of his body.
The man’s eyes swim in his head, which means you need to move faster. Only while he’s alive, after all. His body leaks heat, the pain overwhelming his ability to speak. Breathing becomes shallow as his nervous system begins to overload.
Your face is covered in sweat. Your hand is entirely inside his warm, leaking gut, and you swear you can feel his heartbeat, but then again maybe it’s your own. You can’t stop now.
The man finally catches a break and passes out. His head slumps and his body goes slack. But this is no time for you to rest, not when you’re so close to the exit. You keep digging. Pulling things out and throwing them aside wetly.
You find the spine and push past it, buried halfway up your arm. The man’s heart slows. The color has drained from his face. He’s dying now, actively dying, and you need to finish the job before he does. The blade reaches the inside of his back, so you hack and push through the resistance; another wall in your way.
You feel the moment his heart stops. It might as well be your own.
There’s no time to waste now. You push through the other side, feeling the flesh give way to open air, like blowing a kiss. You’ve done it, but you can’t see it, so you pull out everything you can get a grip on, cut and widen the hole, like the manic bailing of a ship. His blood is all over you, warm but already cooling. The floor is littered with what he once hid but no longer needs. Mounds of wet tissue and leaking devices.
Desperate to see the exit, you push your head nearly inside the man, in the excavated tomb of his body, and witness firsthand the violence you’ve wreaked. Red, wet chaos, and the stink of blood and bile and waste.
But also, you see the exit.
The beautiful exit.
Light shines through the hole in the wall, as if the very gates of heaven are overflowing. Your terrible ordeal is nearly over. You’re almost out of the not-place. You can return to the real world and never speak of what happened here, never tell a soul what you needed to do to escape.
What you needed to become.
Except there’s one small problem with your plan, and it doesn’t feel like a coincidence. It feels more like a cruel joke. A final insult from the strong-pullers..
The hole in the wall, where the light of freedom shines so brightly, it’s too small for you to fit through. Maybe when you were much younger you could have squeezed through it, and even then just barely. But now the task is physically impossible.
You can almost hear the laughter on the air. In the dark. Everything you did, everything you became to reach the exit, it’ll all be for nothing if you can’t fit through the small hole in the wall.
But then, maybe you could.
Maybe if you didn’t have arms.
You don’t have the time or the energy left to overthink this. You made the hard decision once, and you can do it again. And if you don’t, then everything up until this point has been for nothing. You’ll die here, and with dirty hands.
So you do it. You feel the place where your arm meets your shoulder, massaging the muscle, searching for the soft spot between bone. Then you place your blade there, take a deep breath, and begin cutting.
Very gripping!