āI start filling caps with purple, concentrating on its texture, the strange hue, imagining I can actually observe the rapid pulse of itās bandwidth. These are stupid thoughts, and as if to confirm that sentiment, darkness pushes in on me. Suddenly the slash of light on my hands looks sharp enough to cut me. Real sharp. Move and it will cut me. I do move and guess what? I start to bleed. The laceration isnāt deep but important stuff has been struck, leaking over the table and floor. Lost.
I donāt have long.
Except Iām not bleeding though I am breathing hard. Real hard. I donāt need to touch my face to know there are now beads of sweat slipping off my forehead, flicking off my eyelids, streaming down the back of my neck. Cold as hands. Hands of the dead. Something terrible is going on here. Going extremely wrong. Get out, I think. I want to get out. But I canāt move.
Then as if this were nothing but a grim prelude, shit really starts to happen.
Thereās that awful taste again, sharp as rust, wrapping around my tongue.
Worse, Iām no longer alone.
Impossible.
Not impossible.
This time itās human.
Maybe not.
Extremely long finger.
A sucking sound too. Sucking on teeth, teeth already torn from the gums.
I donāt know how I know this.
But itās already too late, Iāve seen the eyes. The eyes. They have no whites. I havenāt seen this. The way they glisten they glisten red. Then it begins reaching for me, slowly unfolding itself out of its corner, mad meat all of it, but I understand. These eyes are full of blood.
Except Iām only looking at shadows and shelves.
Of course, Iām alone.
And then behind me, the door closes.
The rest is in pieces. A scream, a howl, a roar. Allās warping, or splintering. That makes no sense. Thereās a terrible banging. The airās rank with stench. At least thatās not a mystery. I know the source. Boy, do I ever. Iāve shit myself. Pissed myself too. I canāt believe it. Urine soaking into my pants, fecal matter running down the back of my legs, Iām caught in it, must run and hide from it, but I still canāt move. In fact, the more I try to escape, the less I can breathe. The more I try to hold on, the less I can focus. Somethingās leaving me. Parts of me.
Everything falls apart.
Stories heard but not recalled.
Letters too.
Words filling my head. Fragmenting like artillery shells.
Shrapnel, like syllables, flying everywhere. Terrible syllables. Sharp. Cracked. Traveling at murderous speed. Tearing through it all in a very, very bad perhaps irreparable way.
Known.
Some.
Call.
Is.
Air.
Am?
Incoherent-yes.
Without meaning-Iām afraid not.
The shape of a shape of a face dis(as)sembling right before my eyes. What wail embattled break. Like a hawk. Another Maldon or no Maldon at all, on snowy days, or not snowy at all, for beyond the edge of any reasonable awareness. This is what it feels like to be really afraid. Though of course it doesnāt. None of this can truly approach the reality of that fear, there in the midst of all that bedlam, like the sound of a heart or some other unholy blast, desperate & dying, slamming, no banging into the thing wall of my inner ear, paper thin in fact, attempting to shatter inside what had already been shattered long ago.
I should be dead.
Why am I still here?
And as that question appears-concise, in order, properly accented-I see Iām holding onto the tray loaded with all those caps and bottles of black and purple ink. Not only that but Iām already walking as fast as I can through the doorway. The door is open though I did not open it. I stub my toe. Iām falling down the stairs, tripping over myself, hurling the tray in the air, the caps, the ink, all of it, floating now above me, as my hands, independent of anything I might have thought to suggest, reach up to protect my head. Something hisses and slashes out at the back of my neck. It doesnāt matter. Down I go, head first, somersaulting down those eight pretty steep steps, a wild blur, leaving me to passively note the pain spots as they happen: shoulders, hip, elbows, even as I also, at the same time, remain dimly aware of so much ink coming down like a bad rain, splattering around me, everywhere, covering me, even the tray hitting me, though that doesnāt hurt, the caps scattering across the floor, and of course the accompanying racket, telling my boss, telling them all, whoever else was there- What? not that it was over, it wasnāt, not yet.
The windās knocked out of me. Itās not coming back. Hereās where I die, I think. And itās true, Iām possessed by the premonition of what will be, what has to be, my inevitable asphyxiation. At least thatās what they see, my boss and crew, as they come running to the back, called there by all that clatter & mess. What they canāt see though is the omen seen in a fall, my fall, as Iām doused in black ink, my hands now completely covered, and see the floor is black, and-have you anticipated this or should I be more explicit?-jet on jet; for a blinding instant I have watched my hand vanish, in fact all of me has vanished, one hell of a disappearing act too, the already foreseen dissolution of the self, lost without contrast, slipping into oblivion, until mid-gasp I catch sight of my reflection in the back of the tray, the ghost in the way: seems Iām not gone, not quite. My face has been splattered with purple, as have my arms, granting contrast, and thus defining me, marking me, and at least for a moment, preserving me.
Suddenly I can breathe and with each breath the terror rapidly dissipates.
My boss , however, is scared shitless.
"Jesus Christ Johnny,ā he says. āAre you okay? What happened?ā
Canāt you see Iāve shit myself, I think to shout. But now I see that I havenāt. Except for the ink blotting my threads, my pants are bone dry.
I mumble something about how much my toe hurts.
He takes that to mean Iām alright and wonāt try to sue him from a wheelchair.
Later a patron points out the long bloody scratch on the back of my neck.
Iām unable to respond.
Now though, I realize what I should of said-in the spirit of the dark; in the spirit of the staircase-
āKnown some call is air am.ā
Which is to say-
āI am not what I used to be.ā ā
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