I thought he was dead. How long I spent in that second-story room, thinking I was alone, when he lay so still. The mist filled everything, completely clear and attached to my optic nerve. This room is filthy and has loose water and food in it. Plastic drawers and trash. But the walls are solid and normal. The foundation below is even stronger.
An animal was trying to get through the door. It was only an annoying one.
The young man was maybe in his late twenties and not dead. He was curled up, very stiff and dry, at least to the mist. This is his house. We begin to interact.
✦
The disease has a fifty percent chance of turning you into a dark magic user.
✦
The second-story room is concrete and cinder blocks with black smoke on the walls like mold. There is a large pool outside with a play structure rising from it. I taste the chlorine, it is in the back of my throat. The water will pull me down as I try to rise.
The second-story room is not the other second-story room. It is more dangerous. The foundation is not well.
If we leave through the window, time will move differently.
We should always descend by the stairs.
Time only starts for the first person to go outside. So they should be the first person to go back inside.
✦
Something bad is in the world.
✦
I walk slower as we descend the stairs. He is agreeable and soft-spoken and unaware of certain things which seemed important because I could only value my own awareness. I thought he lived with his parents because of the antique clutter, but he bought everything in this house. Suddenly he seems lonely, to live all here alone.
He’d confused basic items for ancient gold and crystal. He used a precious chalice to hold hot dogs. His small dark hairs.
I walk slower because I want our bodies to touch. It was the mist we touched with. Turning our eyes into each other. Nerves are fibers. I felt so full as he walked into my hip, dropping brushing a step down with the full cool flesh of my left rear flesh sapling-like with my cool fluid expanding and warming in the fibers of my brain. I was completely in my brain with gauze and mist wanting to speak and be close to him. I wanted to speak because he could leave. I wanted to be close because he could leave.
Do you see anyone here? Even the animal has gone.
You have gone down the stairs, prince. You have gone into their realm.
Another case closed.