Volume 2 - Chapter 92 - Wielder
| cold cold and the wall is wet against my shoulder and the wall does not feel like a wall it feels like skin and the skin is breathing and i should move i should Move! i moved the alley is longer than it was. it was thirty steps. i counted them. i counted them when i came in but i have been walking for longer than thirty steps and the alley is longer than it was and the bins are different bins and the bins were red and now they are not red they are a colour i can't say. i can't say the colour. the colour has no name. the colour has a name but it isn't a name a mouth can hold. something is dripping. drip drip it isn't water. water sounds like water and this sounds like drip i haven't eaten. my stomach has stopped asking. my stomach asked for a long time and then it stopped and the quiet is worse than the asking was. mum used to make the bread on sundays. was that mum? i think it was mum… do I have a mum? it might just have been the woman. it might have been the woman before mum… or after mum? there was a woman. her hands smelled like her hands a voice not in front of me. behind me. inside me. behind the inside of me. it is speaking a word i almost recognize. almost in my language but not quite. *iiirrrroonnnaaahhhdddzzznaaaeeiii* i don't know that word but my throat knows it. my throat tried to say it back and i pressed my hand against my throat and told my throat no. my hand is dirty. my hand is so dirty. i don't remember when my hand got dirty. something is following me. i won't turn around. if i turn around it will know that i looked and the next time i turn around it will be there. i will count my steps. one two three four five five five i cannot get past five. every time i try to say six the word goes somewhere else. the word goes into the wall and the wall accepts the word and the wall is breathing again and i should not be touching the wall but i am because if i don't touch the wall i will fall down and if i fall down then the thing behind me the thing behind me the thing — i saw a light. it was a long way away and it was the wrong colour. lights are yellow or white or sometimes blue. this light was the colour the bins had become. it made my eyes hurt in the back of them, the inside of them, the place behind them where the dreams come from. i did not go to the light. i am proud of that. i held the pride in my chest for a few steps and then it slipped out through a hole in my shirt and now it’s on the ground somewhere behind me and the thing behind me is probably eating it and that is fine that is fine that is that *[inaudible whispering]* *don’t run. you are safe. just rest.* *[whispering in a language I do not understand]* *twenty-six* it said my name. the name was the name the woman called me when i was small and she was angry but not very angry and the voice was hers except for the part in the middle where the voice was not a voice but the something underneath a voice. and i wanted to answer it. i wanted to answer it so badly that my mouth opened and i had to put my whole hand inside my mouth and bite down on my fingers and the taste of the dirt on my fingers and the blood seeping from them was the only thing that kept me from answering and i cried a little bit i think because there was something wet on my face and it wasn't rain the alley ends here. it ends in a wall. the same wall i came in through. i think. the walls are all the same wall now. i think they always were. my legs decided to sit. my legs have been deciding things without me for a while. i should be angry at them but i am not because they did so much. they did so much. they walked me through the alley a second time and a third time and they only stopped because they couldn't go any further that is fair. there are shapes at the edges. they were always this close. i just couldn't see them. they have been standing at the edges of every room i have ever been in and i never looked sideways enough to notice and now my eyes are sideways *[a description that cannot be held in a sentence]* drip drip *twenty-six [in her voice]* *twenty-six [in a voice that is not hers and never was]* mum my eyes are closing. i didn't decide that. my eyes decided. the shapes at the edges are not at the edges anymore they are they are closer they are [Shortened Excerpt from [Source Unknown], [Author Unknown], date uncertain, presumed PFC 929 after post-cognitive analysis.]
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