Topic: Telltale

Esmund · Date: 2016-12-04 13:03 EST

"Go, go do something with yourself, go make me proud," said the woman in the flower apron and the grey hairs at her temples. She was stewing a pot of spaghetti sauce slowly with a big wooden spoon behind the counter in her kitchen. There was a strange sigh in her voice, something that alluded to caring that had gone on for so long in the dark that it had begun to grow stale. She raised her eyes to the boy at the kitchen table across from her.

He was bones wrapped in translucent paper. He was hollow about the eyes, grey and blue; his skin was the color of a fish's underbelly. So drawn and sapped, and yet you could still see the remnants of charisma and good looks lurking there underneath it; but he was half dead and up to his eyelashes in a river of ***.

"Go do something with yourself," the woman repeated to the shell of the boy, who was barely nineteen and already fading out. One foot in this world, one somewhere else. She looked at him in the eyes, angry glass eyes, and she could see it, it was hard to understand; it was like she could see the essence of death, or what comes after death, shining out eerily from underneath his skin, through his eyes. It was chilling, the look of weathered love left her face and changed to one of horror for what might happen next.

"Don't look at me like that, don't tell me to do things," he bubbled and frothed with noxious feelings, growing rigid in the little pine kitchen chair, his hands tense and hovering over the table but not touching it, like it would burn if he did.

"You're not going to make it here, I'm not going to stand here and watch you k—"

"Don't say anything else!" He hissed out in desperation and stood up suddenly, sprung up. The chair was pushed back on the linoleum with a violent screech. "It's too painful, and I can't..can't handle you, standing there..standing over my goddamn plot, putting flowers down..." He stopped and laughed with soft resignation, drew a sharp intake of breath as bitter tears burned the edges of his eyes.

"I have news for you," toiled the youth, "I'm still here."

An ambulance siren picked up where he left off; the wailing grew louder and louder until the faces of the mother and son flickered in and out, bathed in the red and blue strobes that pulsed through the windows. He was out the door before her mouth even moved to speak, and it swung lonely on its hinges.

and I turn myself inside out, in hopes someone will see

"Esmund," the girl said, tugging on his arm. Snow had begun to flutter down in lazy, silent spirals and collect on their hair and coats.

"Esmund! It's cold, the store's closed, come on." She pulled again at the wool wrapped arm of the man with the hand stuck down in his pocket, locking it in place. He didn't budge.

He was transfixed by what he saw in there. Curiosities carved from jade, gold, bronze. Terracotta figurines with thin layers blue lapis paint, pearl necklaces, rings and chalices. Treasure. A happy sigh escaped his lips, and he stayed there, mesmerized—the blond girl tugged hopelessly on his arm, exasperated.

Finally, "You know what, Beth?" A curious tone to his voice now with a tint of childish delight and wistfulness.

"What' What is it?" She asked, defeated, letting her arms flop down by her sides and go limp.

He waited another moment, eyes still riveted to the king's treasures, then his eyes lowered to the brass keyhole on the big door of the shop.

His soulful brown eyes sparked—like a satyr's.

"I'm going to take my new paper clip on a little test drive tonight.."

**

The moon hung over the city that night like a rusty sickle. New York had lost another one of its sons.

Esmund · Date: 2016-12-04 15:44 EST

The cold numbed everything out. It was finally winter, no going back.

He strained his eyes in the morning light and felt the soft sheets under his naked back. Home, he was home. Must've gone back to Jones Beach when he was on a bender. When his knee bent with a stretch it came into contact with pillowy warmth, flesh. Nude flesh..Sitting up on his elbows with a drowsy frown, his thinned eyes looked to the right to see the supine form of the woman lying next to him, deep in sleep with her shiny brown hair spilled all over her face, obscuring it.

There was no 'oh *** moment' where everything came flooding back, because he was done with regrets. Besides, loneliness could be a killer, worse than succumbing to the winter; he breathed a sigh of comfort, exhaled completely and sank back onto the pillow. One hand sneaked over to rest palm down on the warm back of the woman next to him and she stirred with a little 'mmm'. At this he almost retracted his hand and winced.

Why was it that the night you were with a stranger, nothing was off limits" Every sordid, desperate bodily fulfillment was welcomed, devoured—nothing was off limits. But, when everything was clear the next morning and all the glitter and addictions had worn off, the slightest and most delicate touch was something to worry about—it seemed so invasive and personal, when you were just supposed to zip up your jeans, pull your shirt on and tip toe quietly out the back door.

After a few moments of considering things like this, lost in his head, he was brought back to the moment when he heard the wind whistling hard against the cold glass of the window, hissing through the eaves, under metals bars, over the roof. That's when he finally retracted his hand, squeezed his fingers together and then relaxed them again. He looked down at the back of his hand. Youth.

But for how much longer"

Esmund · Date: 2016-12-05 01:11 EST

When he got back to his room at the Inn, he was feeling unsettled. He had to look at himself in the mirror, pulling eyelids, stretching corners of the mouth, to even see if he still recognized himself.

"I'm here," he said. The reflection said it back, it looked like him, it sounded like him. It had the same brown eyes that dipped at the corners, like his mother, the little chicken pox scar on his forehead, the same shape. But it was once removed.

"I'm here!" He said it again, this time with more gusto. The mirror said it back, but he wasn't impressed. He scoffed and rolled his eyes, reached into the medicine cabinet, dismissing his reflection and grabbing a packet of Alka Seltzer and filling a glass of water. Plop plop, fizz fizz.

*

That night he dreamed that his oldest brother Hugh was sitting on the edge of a stone wall, somewhere on a hill maybe, looking out over Manhattan. Esmund was instantly overcome with the most intense sadness because he looked so much like their father, like him. Hugh was taller, was more handsome, and he always had a quiet confidence about him that Esmund coveted more than eternal life.

Hugh had also been dead for ten years.

His brother watched the city lights with such an eerie serenity that Esmund couldn't look directly at him, but he approached anyway. Hugh turned to him and smiled, so soft and so brave, sitting all up there by himself.

"Hey squirt," Hugh said to his younger brother.

Esmund stared at him, and, like in many of his dreams, had to work so hard to get any words out, but he eventually managed a "Hello." And also like most dreams where he met someone who had died, he just accepted that they were alive. Somehow, in this shadow world, they were alive, of course he was alive. Why wouldn't he be?

"You left me with all the yard work again, you said you were going to do it this week," Esmund said, not knowing why, but again accepting.

"Did I?" His brother replied, soft and confident, in that everything-is-going-to-be-alright way he always did. "I'm sorry, Es, I'll do double duty next week. How's mom?"

"I don't know, I haven't seen her. Couldn't you have just waited until I graduated, man' It would have been so much easier."

"Look," his brother said, digging into his pocket for a goldplated Mickey Mouse coin, one Esmund recognized as a gift he got for his tenth birthday. "Could you give this to mom when you see her again?"

Esmund nodded and leaned forward to reach for the coin, but with the intention of grabbing his brother and hugging him so tight that he would squeeze the air from his lungs. Before he could do that of course, he woke up.

And, the first thing he said when he sat up in his bed was: "So many ships have sailed without me!" And it made sense to him, for a moment, but then the dream was over and he didn't waste any time. He got up and brushed his teeth and forgot again.

Esmund · Date: 2016-12-05 01:25 EST

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I know you're late for your next parade, You came to make sure that I'm not running, well, I ran from him In all kinds of ways Guess it was his turn this time

Esmund · Date: 2016-12-05 14:28 EST

New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of There's nothing you can't do Now you're in New York These streets will make you feel brand new Big lights will inspire you

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Esmund · Date: 2016-12-06 02:37 EST

One pill makes you larger And one pill makes you small And the ones that mother gives you Don't do anything at all

Go ask Alice When she's ten feet tall And if you go chasing rabbits And you know you're going to fall

https://rota.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/magritte_lumieres.jpeg

Portrait of the come down from a hallucinogen

Little green men and little green pills. Aren't we just the most over medicated, repressed, under appreciated and over sexed species, us humans?

When you think about it, a pill is just a wish..

..A wish for absolution, for green green grass to lay down on with a beautiful sigh of relief, or maybe a wish to go back home.

Second star on the right, straight until morning Second star on the right, straight until morning

Esmund eyed the orange-brown bottle with the white label. 'Take this exactly as prescribed' ...'Do not skip doses' ....'May cause drowsiness'

'May have you reeling out of your mortal coil and into the stars.'

There was a feverish blink for that last one. But this was his dream, he could do what he wanted to do. It was his nightmare.

"Get back in bed, Esmund," a voice said to him. "You'll catch a cold."

He looked at the column of flames above him, with the spirits swirling around it on their brooms.

"My brother used to tell me I was too sensitive, and it made me sad," he admitted to the brown-orange bottle, then closed his eyes and leaned against a wall, to glow in the dark.

He was a dreaming machine, he could glow in the dark.

Esmund · Date: 2016-12-10 02:02 EST

Flashback Near Rochester, New York. Interstate 90.

Coming on Christmas a few years ago, a seventeen year old Esmund was driving his '79 hunter green Mustang from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to is grandparent's place in Buffalo. He'd just gotten the car as a birthday present last year, and felt cool as **** in it. His hair was much shaggier than it was present day at age twenty three, and he was a good deal lighter with scrawnier arms and legs. He wore baggy jeans and a white long-sleeved t-shirt with METALLICA boldly emblazoned on it in red letters. The radio was up full blast, some scream-o something or other, and he was banging his head along when the orange gas light popped on with a little ding, and he pulled off the highway to speed down an exit road to find a gas station.

"BP. BP, BP, where are you British Patroleum," he repeated softly as he turned the volume down on the radio, eyes glued to the right side of the road when the sign had indicated the station was 1.5 miles away. Nothing, nothing at all. It seemed to be a habit of his to miss landmarks, he could have made a sport of it. Instead of turning around, he continued to race down the road, thoughts of the boy he'd planned on meeting up with tumbling around in his head.

Jesse was a few years older than he was, he was tall and smooth-talking and had just gotten back from Italy, so he had all kinds of lewd and exciting stories for Esmund to gape at. Last summer the two had spent hours walking up and down the streets in the small suburban neighborhood near his grandparent's house talking, and he remembered the exciting way that Jesse's blue eyes lit up when he detailed his adventures.

He'd missed that, Esmund thought, and was looking forward to being around him again. He was thinking about the guy's handsome face, his lips and hands moving excitedly, when a brown-grey pinprick in front of of him suddenly drew his eyes back to the road as it grew in size in fractions of a second until it consumed his entire line of vision. The big black glassy eyes were the last thing he saw before he heard a vicious, surround-sound THUNK , was jerked forward and felt all the air and vision being sucked out of his lungs and eyes, then..oblivion.

When consciousness returned, his ears were assaulted by the sound of the blaring car horn. The pain in his head was simply inexplicable; it seemed to extend into his soul and scream from the inside out. There was no indication what day it was, where he was, only that he was very cold but felt a wet, burning warmth from his forehead, where his head hit the edge of the steering wheel and the acid from the halfway deployed air bag had burned him. Vision became clearer, he could see the rumpled glass of the windshield like a murky, frozen wave rippling in front of him. It was then that he instinctively unbuckled himself, popped the driver's door open and rolled onto his hands and knees onto the frozen ground outside, the cold night hit him fiercely.

"My name is Esmund," he whispered after fading out again, drooled onto the cold earth and forced himself up with the scratched heels of his hands. He found himself looking off down a desolate black road flanked with splintery trees. It had started to snow. I like the snow, he thought, before a wave of pain and nausea shivered over his body, and he bent over to throw up. That's when he spotted the crimson stained body of the deer about fifty feet away from him on the opposite side of the road.

He walked up to it as snow swirled and collected in his hair, as blood dripped hot from his forehead onto his nose. It was an adult doe, huge and twisted in the snow, seeping scarlet from a large vertical slash going from its left leg all the way up to the base of its skull around in the back.

He thought that the frozen, petrified look in the innocent doe's eyes was the saddest thing he'd ever seen up to the point, and he stood over the dying animal, tense with his hands balled into cold little fists by his side and cried for the deer and himself, thinking how much his head hurt and how he wished that his mother was there to take him into her arms, mop up the blood and tears with a wet wash cloth.

Instead, he was pulled back to icy reality when the animal's head jerked. It was still alive, though it held on only by a spider thread. He jumped with panic, but it was enough to staunch his tears, and his mind went somewhere else instead.

If I did this, I can undo it just as easily, he thought. He hunched forward, numbed from the cold and from a state of semi-shock, leaned in close and extended his trembling hand, bent over further until he placed his palm on the deer's neck. By the time he felt the warm, matted fur, there weren't anymore stirrings from the animal. It died, right there, no more movement in the cold snow.

Esmund withdrew his hand slowly and looked at his blood red palm for a moment. The snow fell around him in swift powdery currents. The only thing he could hear was the wind whistling in his ears. After a few more seconds of stillness, the only thing he could think of to do was to walk a couple paces beyond the dead animal to a tall drift and lean over to clean the blood off his hands in the snow.

As he did this, for whatever reason, he started to sing.

"Oh, I wish I had a river, that I could skate away on. I wish I had a river that I could skate away on."

He was too busy cleaning his numb hands in the snow and singing to notice the red car pulling up next to him on the road.

If he had a chance to go back, he would have fallen down on his knees and lamented the loss of love and childhood right there.

Esmund · Date: 2016-12-19 00:47 EST

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Esmund · Date: 2016-12-19 04:25 EST

http://www.delon-scorpio.narod.ru/photo/img/16.jpg

Deck the halls, I'm young again, I'm you again

Esmund · Date: 2016-12-19 04:42 EST

Dockside's newest mixed-use development stood at the corner of High Street and Medenine Court, a sharp fork in a popular Dockside street now bursting with new residents. In a matter of years or maybe less, a zombie outbreak or occult riots or the whims of the realty gods would vacate the neighborhood overnight, but until then, it was an attractive place for new investors eager to sell space to caf's and condominiums.

Mallory sat atop a retaining wall, her back to a dog park tucked into the sharp north corner of the intersection, and her feet dangling over a busy sidewalk. Combat boots kicked a beat against the granite bricks as she awaited her new client; in the meantime, she held up her end of the bargain with another customer, the spirit who would keep her fledgling Third Eye propped open for the next several hours.

She did not know if Ricky Robichaud had been blind in life; but from experience, she knew it was easier to ask a ghost you knew to find a dead blind man for you than go looking for him yourself. And until Esmund had his questions answered, Mallory's eyes were not her own to control, roving side to side with an eager, restless energy behind his borrowed aviator sunglasses.

Esmund looked at the piece of paper that had the directions scrawled on it, third grade chicken scratch. His writing hadn't improved since then. It was enough to get him to Mallory, and he paused there for a moment, wearing another pair of aviators (they were a comfort to him and he had several pairs) and a frayed black hoodie.

"I'm ready for some magic," he said with an enchanted whisper, and sat down next to her on the wall, folded himself up limber and spry. He tilted a little in her direction and drew close, but with enough space for a personal bubble, or an ectoplasmic bubble, whichever. He saw a glimmer of light flash across the lenses of the loaned aviators and sat next to Mallory, waited with his breath caught in his throat for the bubbles and toils and voices from beyond. Then that name popped into his head, the one he gave to her.

Ricky Robichaud ....Better off dead if you asked him. He remembered pool parties where this, uncle—-god the things that ties of blood required you to do, especially when you were younger—belched a Bud Light warning into his teenage ear: "You better watch out, Ezzie, I hear they don't like ballerina boys up at the middle school."

His ears burned, and he watched Mallory with solemn and grey-shadowed eyes.

"I want to know if he's the reason my brother killed himself, first off," he said, tone like bullets. but with a certain well-worn calmness that came from years of target practice.

Mallory's head turned to Esmund when his hands scuffled over the retaining wall, but the silver-white glow contained by the glasses continued to stray where it pleased, unconcerned by the mortal boy that sat beside it.

Until he framed his question. A sound like a death rattle passed through the air between them, and stone scraped under Mallory's fingertips as she coiled up from head to toe with tension. The spirits wanted control, but she'd already given them sight: their sight in return was the bargain.

She tipped her glasses forward, reading the pain in his past with milky eyes that locked onto his and pierced through the defenses of his present. The air around them felt stale and warm in the December chill, like cheap beer on the morning after. "There's never one reason that we hurt ourselves," she whispered. "Do you trust that answer" or do you need to hear it from the horse's mouth?"

Some of the solemnity faded from her expression as she turned away. A man standing on the corner with a clear plastic cup of bubble tea was arguing into his phone, and the frequency of his words resolved whenever he faced them. He was trying not to break up with someone named Thomas.

It sounded like Thomas wasn't having it.

"I'm prepared to read your fortune, not to," and she stopped the next word on a hitched breath, curling her fingers around rough granite. "I used the name you gave me as a go-between, a means to a spirit that can peer through time....If we're really about to ask your brother, I'm going to need a few things; but if you're asking me to invoke Ri " him instead....then it can't be here."

Her hands trembled as she recalled Ricky's voice, his presence. The hatred was too familiar. He watched her wrestle with the question he asked, he felt the shift in the air, in the ether, when he did. A coldness came over him, and he imagined (if he didn't feel) restless spirits wiggling around like catfish underneath a cloudy and dark water above their heads, all around them.

"I want," he said, lips parting, watching her closely as he did, watching her red hair, her body language, the seriousness in her voice, "I want something. I don't know what I want," he looked down, biting his bottom lip, "I want my fortune read. I don't have to go after this, I don't know how this turned into some revenge trip for me." But it always did, didn't it Esmund"

"Just tell me about things. The state of things right now, with relationships in my life, new and old, what?s to come. Tell me, I don't care, tell me anything. I just need to know something." The way he spoke, it sounded like an addict, which was in line with how he lived his life. Instant gratification. He knew Mal could help it with him, too, she had the power at her fingertips. "I don't need specifics, just give me a hit," he said, watching her close with burning, longing eyes.

"We can leave Hugh for another time," she whispered, unlatching her hands from the rough stone she'd been scraping them on and folding them in her lap. Her head stayed turned to him, the angle lazy, her other senses not sure exactly where he was, but the moonglow eyes stayed transfixed on his face from behind the sunglasses.

"You're a dancer. You're fast....even graceful, despite all the knocks you take, broken things you leave in your way. Just need to watch where you're going, is all. Stop dancing with anger. There are better reasons to do it, like getting closer to God, communing with the Devil, discovering yourself....sex....You have options." Her gaze drifted away from him, and her lips hung open, tongue curled thoughtfully behind her bottom teeth. "If you see a bright blue cat in a black rain puddle....follow it. Trust me."

Her head swiveled over to him again as she turned her hands over in her lap, picking at the uneven bumps in her chipped nail polish with her thumbs. "Your relationships" I see....a few threads before you, a few you have noticed, a few more that may catch your attention, in time....but a few of them may be cut by all the little ways that you cut yourself. I can help you spot the forks in the road: a lily-white fence with two black crows; two bloody mary's and a chipped ashtray; sudden rain, when you think you're alone. Ah....Hm." She pursed her lips, frowned, kneaded her fingertips into her threadbare jeans as she worried over what she felt.

"Beware the fish-hook man. He will hurt you, and he will mean to."

Behind the sunglasses, he could see a change in light as her eyes narrowed to slits. She rubbed her hands from her thighs down to her knees again, rubbed them together, then folded her arms and curled closer into herself.

Her gaze returned to him a final time, her face pale, her lips faintly blue when they parted to say: "Death. You've felt it in your life, more than once....you've been mourned as dead and buried, still living, by the people you love....so much, that you think you know it, that you've started to look it. But death has more to teach you. It takes your knowledge for pride and seeks to humble you. It will come again and you will see it, but it won't be yours. Friends....lovers....strangers....Death has many faces it could take, and even the dead can't tell me which one it will be."

She jerked her head away from him, rubbing her hands on the inside of her arms, drawing her head down into her fuzz-clumped scarf like a turtle.

"I'm cold," she muttered. He caught only a glimpse of her eyes behind the lowered sunglasses, irises returned to their normal color, before she clenched them shut.

Esmund's eyes went wide and pulse went quick for the mention of his brother, feel those little tiny hairs prick up on the backs of forearms and the base of his neck! He drew up his legs and clamped his hands under the crooks of his knees; he watched and listened. The images she conjured were strange and colorful and he let his eyes flutter closed so that he could let the sounds and ideas was over him. He saw a a blue cat sneaking out from under a dumpster in his head head at night, made even more icy looking by the high hanging moon in his thoughts. A blue moon' Then that song started playing, but Mal's voice cut through it.

Beware the fish hook man...

That was enough to get him to open one eye and watch her.

"Fish hook man?" While a blue cat splashing into a rain puddle seemed benign enough, he balked a little at the idea of this 'fish hook man', which brought to mind all kinds of twisted, horrific and bloody scenes to mind. It seemed like whenever there was a fish hook man in movies, it never ended well for whoever was on screen with him. "I'd be okay if fish hook man didn't show up. Or is that maybe a...symbol for someone toxic and harmful in my life?" He tossed that out there with an open palm and a little shake/circle of his head, like he was qualified to interpret messages from beyond.

When Mal was done, he considered her thoughtfully, planted his palms on the ground and hoisted himself forward to watch, scrutinize her a little..to investigate what was going on in her eyes.

And when she said she was cold, he promptly unzipped his jacket, shouldered it off, and then draped it over her shoulders, tucking it around her arms and her neck. Perhaps it did that to you, communing with...whoever.

Then, after a moment:

"I can't help but be angry, I don't trust anyone as far as I could punt them, and too many awful things have happened to me for me to not be angry." He stared downward hard at his knees.

The words hit Mallory, and she seemed to take it in the same semi-stupor she'd shown since emerging from her communion with the far-sighted dead. She felt equal parts bewildered and sympathetic, her own life such a slight and desperate affair that she felt she had no wisdom to impart to anyone; but she'd known frustration, and anger, all too well.

"I can't tell you who the fish-hook man is or what he means, only that I saw him, I could sense the hook/i], whatever it is, and that he'll ruin your frickin day and then some if you let him."

It gave her enough time to collect her thoughts on anger, as she bunched her hands in the fabric that lined the inside of his jacket. This would do for warmth, for now; whiskey later, for warmth and forgetting. "I get angry a lot, too....Life sucks. It's really damn raw," and she laughed mirthlessly through a sudden chattering of teeth. "But there's times I know that getting my revenge will just invite pain to....a few people around me....so people end up getting away with ****. It sucks....it isn't fair..."

She shrugged and shook her head at the sidewalk beneath her feet. "I dunno what to tell you. Maybe it's different for you. I just....saw you, in the future, being reckless and angry, and other people feeling it. Maybe you can do something about it. I hope you can," and she tightened her grasp on the jacket, bunching the collar around her neck. "You know?"

"Yeah, I know," he said after a ponderous moment, looking over at her with a strange expression between fear and gratitude. Above them, the wind whistled through the trees. Edmund looked up just in time to see a murder of crows flock into the sky towards the sun.

Esmund · Date: 2016-12-19 04:58 EST

He took a deep breath, but didn't exhale.

He didn't want to make a noise, stood quietly with his back up against the door in the dark room. It was absolutely noiseless, like a vacuum. The only perceptible sound was the ringing in his ears, like a bomb went off in his head and that's what was left over.

He panned left to right with his eyes, slowly, tracking everything about the room. It looked too still to be anything other than sinister he thought, taking in the fuzzy images of the bed, a chair, a mirror on the wall across the room. Without another thought, he took off his shoes and climbed onto the bed, not bothering to get under the covers. What use were they to comfort him' A load of bull, there might not be any comfort left in this space.

There might not be anything for me here, he thought, again. Let that sink in, Easy. He felt the soft concrete of the pillow under his head and closed his burning eyes, heading somewhere, zig-zagging, towards a twisted semblance of sleep.

"Hey Easy, toss me that lighter," said a man with a husky voice. No, more than husky, it was saturated with smoke, everything about it.

"Easy," he said to himself, not aware that he was dreaming, just accepting that five years ago was today, and he picked up something and threw it at the voice, but nothing happened. He tried again, and again, it felt like tape was stuck to his hand.

On the last attempt he managed to throw something, but it wasn't a lighter it was like, a neon blue rope that unraveled in the air as it arced over to the person who caught it in between two pale hands. Pattycake, pattycake.

"Nice one, buddy. Can I buy you a drink, you need anything? Just let me know," the voice cut across the darkness, somehow the voice pinioned his arms and legs in place, so that he couldn't move, couldn't even twitch.

A pale sun rose on the figure seated next to him, and as it dripped out of the darkness and into the light, he realized that it was himself, his double, that he was looking at. He was sitting, paralyzed, having a conversation...with himself.

"I heard there wasn't going to be a test," Esmund said, disappointed, but he was endlessly curious about the double of himself sitting across from him. It was clearer than looking into a mirror, he couldn't explain it.

"Then let me," the other Esmund said, reading his mind, leaning in with brown eyes that were the color of tree bark at dusk. And getting darker.

He wasn't sure that he wanted any explanation, but his twin seemed to think it was a good idea, and was reaching forward to place a hand on his thigh. The palm felt cold.

"Oh, and one last thing," the dream Esmund said.

It wasn't him anymore, whatever it was, it lunged at him with a huge black hole of a mouth agape, and swallowed him up. He thought, recalling moments after waking, that it felt like something had been injected directly into his heart.

Esmund · Date: 2016-12-19 05:18 EST

And all at once all round him rose in fire,

So that the child and he were cloth'd in fire.

And presently thereafter follow'd calm,

Free sky and stars.

Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,

Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep

And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged

Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame

Esmund · Date: 2016-12-19 05:36 EST

http://en.artmediaagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Jiang_Pengyi_Everything_is_Illuminated_No.10_photograph_240x171cm_2012.jpg

They said he was a dreaming machine, that glowed in the dark