Control.” His thoughts pinged Chuck’s tone with a harder edge than he intended, so he attempted to mask his irritation with a whispered joke.
“I see dead people.”
If Control understood the reference, she didn’t show it. She proceeded with protocol as he took another deep breath and purged the tension from his body, channeling it down through his legs and releasing it via his feet chakra. The lights continued to dim until his office was a landscape of silhouettes and shadows. From the overhead speakers, a bell chimed three times in slow succession, each wavering ring allowed to fade before the next was struck. The scent of sandalwood wafted on the borders of perception as jets hidden within the walls puffed scented vapor into the room.
With the halo nestled against his head, Chuck closed his eyes and emptied his mind of conscious thought. As he slowly inhaled through his left nostril, he pictured a current of white light looping through his sinuses and filtering through his brain before being pulled down into his diaphragm. He held the inhalation for five heartbeats and released a long sigh, exhaling further tension, worry, and all the mundane concerns of a flesh-bound spirit. After five more beats of his heart, Chuck repeated the process through his right nostril, slipping deeper and deeper into relaxation.
He visualized his hands as clearly as if his eyes were open: the wrinkles on his knuckles, semitransparent hairs sprouting from the tops of his fingers, and the glossy shine of his nails. At first, it was as if his hands were illuminated by a spotlight upon a darkened stage; but within seconds, details of the room flooded his imagination and he felt—as well as saw—the phantom appendage flex without actually being moved physically.
Two minutes passed before he drifted toward the ceiling, his astral form slipping from his body like a balloon from the grasping hand of a child. He looked down upon a body that appeared to be wrapped in the arms of sleep; his chest rose and fell with evenly spaced breaths and his eyelids flickered slightly. Chuck knew he wasn’t sleeping, though; he existed in the boundary separating wakefulness from dreams, floating weightlessly with a silver ribbon streaming from his sternum.
“Have a good Walk, Chuck.” Control’s voice came as if from a great distance, fuzzy and comforting. “You come back safe, you hear?”
And then the physical was gone. There was no sense of movement or travel, no sudden rush of speed or the sensation of falling like other Whisks reported. For him, the break was always instantaneous, an entire reality set supplanted as he seamlessly transitioned into The Divide. Normally, Chuck saw trapped souls as a faint glow in an expanse that couldn’t be described as either light or dark. On occasion, he’d even caught a blur of movement in his peripheral vision, a flutter of pale wings that vanished upon further investigation. The Divide was nothing and everything rolled into one, a gestalt of probabilities where there’s no past, present, or future. There was only an endless state of Now.
Usually
. This time, however, Chuck didn’t hover within the ultimate Zen; this time, he’d set down squarely within a Cutscene.
Storm clouds flickered with lightning above a scorched panorama of cinders and ash; hot winds belched the stench of carrion, leaving an oily patina over what he thought of as his skin, and smoke roiled from fissures in the baked earth, bottomless chasms that burrowed into infinity. The landscape was ringed with mountains, each boulder suggesting the features of a tortured face within its shadows and crags as waterfalls of acid bubbled ravines into dissolving stone.
A castle stood in the distance, and its soot-stained walls looked as though they’d burst, full-formed, through the ground, hurling rubble in a starburst pattern as they ruptured the earth. Towers rose from each corner of the castle and their stone facades were perforated with
“I see dead people.”
If Control understood the reference, she didn’t show it. She proceeded with protocol as he took another deep breath and purged the tension from his body, channeling it down through his legs and releasing it via his feet chakra. The lights continued to dim until his office was a landscape of silhouettes and shadows. From the overhead speakers, a bell chimed three times in slow succession, each wavering ring allowed to fade before the next was struck. The scent of sandalwood wafted on the borders of perception as jets hidden within the walls puffed scented vapor into the room.
With the halo nestled against his head, Chuck closed his eyes and emptied his mind of conscious thought. As he slowly inhaled through his left nostril, he pictured a current of white light looping through his sinuses and filtering through his brain before being pulled down into his diaphragm. He held the inhalation for five heartbeats and released a long sigh, exhaling further tension, worry, and all the mundane concerns of a flesh-bound spirit. After five more beats of his heart, Chuck repeated the process through his right nostril, slipping deeper and deeper into relaxation.
He visualized his hands as clearly as if his eyes were open: the wrinkles on his knuckles, semitransparent hairs sprouting from the tops of his fingers, and the glossy shine of his nails. At first, it was as if his hands were illuminated by a spotlight upon a darkened stage; but within seconds, details of the room flooded his imagination and he felt—as well as saw—the phantom appendage flex without actually being moved physically.
Two minutes passed before he drifted toward the ceiling, his astral form slipping from his body like a balloon from the grasping hand of a child. He looked down upon a body that appeared to be wrapped in the arms of sleep; his chest rose and fell with evenly spaced breaths and his eyelids flickered slightly. Chuck knew he wasn’t sleeping, though; he existed in the boundary separating wakefulness from dreams, floating weightlessly with a silver ribbon streaming from his sternum.
“Have a good Walk, Chuck.” Control’s voice came as if from a great distance, fuzzy and comforting. “You come back safe, you hear?”
And then the physical was gone. There was no sense of movement or travel, no sudden rush of speed or the sensation of falling like other Whisks reported. For him, the break was always instantaneous, an entire reality set supplanted as he seamlessly transitioned into The Divide. Normally, Chuck saw trapped souls as a faint glow in an expanse that couldn’t be described as either light or dark. On occasion, he’d even caught a blur of movement in his peripheral vision, a flutter of pale wings that vanished upon further investigation. The Divide was nothing and everything rolled into one, a gestalt of probabilities where there’s no past, present, or future. There was only an endless state of Now.
Usually
. This time, however, Chuck didn’t hover within the ultimate Zen; this time, he’d set down squarely within a Cutscene.
Storm clouds flickered with lightning above a scorched panorama of cinders and ash; hot winds belched the stench of carrion, leaving an oily patina over what he thought of as his skin, and smoke roiled from fissures in the baked earth, bottomless chasms that burrowed into infinity. The landscape was ringed with mountains, each boulder suggesting the features of a tortured face within its shadows and crags as waterfalls of acid bubbled ravines into dissolving stone.
A castle stood in the distance, and its soot-stained walls looked as though they’d burst, full-formed, through the ground, hurling rubble in a starburst pattern as they ruptured the earth. Towers rose from each corner of the castle and their stone facades were perforated with
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