and something moves in the darkness across the tracks. Have to stay awake, alive. Danger in that presence in the dark. Can't make my mind take hold, keep going blind, ears buzzing, spatial sense full of shapes that can't be there. I try to roll over. Something sharp pushes into the inner flesh near my heart. I move the other way to ease the pressure and feel the bones of one arm grate together. I hold my head still, concentrating on vision. I am hurt badly, maybe mortally. The something is a shadow on the road across from me. It stands looking down the track where the train has stopped and people are pouring out of it as steam billows out around the far away engine. Hide. I pull my body farther into the weeds with one arm and one leg, holding my belly together with the broken arm. My spatial sense flares suddenly, trees ahead, a woods. I keep crawling, feeling back behind me for that figure that still stands in the darkened road watching the train down the track.
Inside the trees I feel safer, but my body is numbing in several places, pains beginning to swell in my back, stomach, arms, one leg, and the sharp thrust of the broken ribs against my heart. I am on all fours now, dragging one leg, waving my head back and forth to clear one sense so I can find a place. They will not clear. Keep blanking out. Let the body do it. I see a dark place. Blank. I feel the living form moving behind me now, farther away. It does not know where I am. Blank. I am digging slowly under a fallen log. I feel the pain and hear something whisper softly. Blank. I am under the log. Blank. I hurt too much. Who is Renee? I call a name. Blank.
Chapter 2
I float and sink in a painful fire that burns me when I move. There is a dark pain that impales my chest when I sink, and the fire burns me everywhere. My senses are falling away from me in the dark painful sea, and I cannot swim any longer. I let myself sink again so that the sharp pain impales my heart like a severed head on a stake. I cannot hold. I let go and the stake presses in so that the pain rushes up into my mind and flares there like an explosion. And then it is quiet. I am floating in the dark sea, but I no longer feel the pain, or rather I feel it, but it does not matter anymore. Lights, sparks appear in the mist and the current takes me toward them. They are eyes, many pairs of eyes with thoughts behind them resting as if on snags of rock in mid ocean, the eyes watch me as I float and drown before them. I hear their thoughts as they think to each other about me. They are wondering if I am dead yet. They do not care, merely wonder about the creature with their abiding trait, curiosity. I would speak with them, but I cannot move my mouth, and my mind is a burned out cinder from the last flare of pain. I can only listen, feel their thoughts with what used to be my spatial sense, most joyous of my senses, now only a receiver of dull thoughts from the sparkling eyes in this fog that extends forever.
"It is dead?"
"Yes. It floats without moving."
"No. I see a thought."
"The last merely, the final burst which we can see. It is dead."
"The man killed it like any animal."
"Yes. The men kill anything. It was a nuisance to the man."
"Few are left."
"There are others?"
"They would not help."
"It is not their nature."
"Alone is safe."
I sank. The sparks flew upward. For a long while in darkness I lay on the bottom of the sea, not breathing, listening to the slow hiss of my last thought escaping like a fine thread running off the emptying spool. Then, when my mind felt the last flicker of the thread slip past and disappear, I felt buoyant and rose, unwilling, into the fiery sea again, feeling again the pain as I rose and the darkness became lighter to my senses, and I heard the spool of thought running again like an undertone of agony trying to be thought. And now I hear myself scream for the pain, cut off the scream with my thought and make it silent. I feel my body. The pains can
Inside the trees I feel safer, but my body is numbing in several places, pains beginning to swell in my back, stomach, arms, one leg, and the sharp thrust of the broken ribs against my heart. I am on all fours now, dragging one leg, waving my head back and forth to clear one sense so I can find a place. They will not clear. Keep blanking out. Let the body do it. I see a dark place. Blank. I feel the living form moving behind me now, farther away. It does not know where I am. Blank. I am digging slowly under a fallen log. I feel the pain and hear something whisper softly. Blank. I am under the log. Blank. I hurt too much. Who is Renee? I call a name. Blank.
Chapter 2
I float and sink in a painful fire that burns me when I move. There is a dark pain that impales my chest when I sink, and the fire burns me everywhere. My senses are falling away from me in the dark painful sea, and I cannot swim any longer. I let myself sink again so that the sharp pain impales my heart like a severed head on a stake. I cannot hold. I let go and the stake presses in so that the pain rushes up into my mind and flares there like an explosion. And then it is quiet. I am floating in the dark sea, but I no longer feel the pain, or rather I feel it, but it does not matter anymore. Lights, sparks appear in the mist and the current takes me toward them. They are eyes, many pairs of eyes with thoughts behind them resting as if on snags of rock in mid ocean, the eyes watch me as I float and drown before them. I hear their thoughts as they think to each other about me. They are wondering if I am dead yet. They do not care, merely wonder about the creature with their abiding trait, curiosity. I would speak with them, but I cannot move my mouth, and my mind is a burned out cinder from the last flare of pain. I can only listen, feel their thoughts with what used to be my spatial sense, most joyous of my senses, now only a receiver of dull thoughts from the sparkling eyes in this fog that extends forever.
"It is dead?"
"Yes. It floats without moving."
"No. I see a thought."
"The last merely, the final burst which we can see. It is dead."
"The man killed it like any animal."
"Yes. The men kill anything. It was a nuisance to the man."
"Few are left."
"There are others?"
"They would not help."
"It is not their nature."
"Alone is safe."
I sank. The sparks flew upward. For a long while in darkness I lay on the bottom of the sea, not breathing, listening to the slow hiss of my last thought escaping like a fine thread running off the emptying spool. Then, when my mind felt the last flicker of the thread slip past and disappear, I felt buoyant and rose, unwilling, into the fiery sea again, feeling again the pain as I rose and the darkness became lighter to my senses, and I heard the spool of thought running again like an undertone of agony trying to be thought. And now I hear myself scream for the pain, cut off the scream with my thought and make it silent. I feel my body. The pains can
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