...and when I open my eyes, I'm inside a house. More of a mansion, really, with high ceilings and candelabras, portraits lining the walls.
I squint to get a better look at the dim room, it must be a dining room, on account of the twelve foot, laquer-black table with accompanying chairs. Very modern gothic. Over in the corner I spy some sort of cabinet. Good. My flask could use a topping off. The house is silent--well, not really silent, I guess, I mean, they're aren't any voices, but still, it's not really quiet either. I pry open a drawer, hoping to come across a knife or something I can use to pry open the locked doors where the booze is undoubtedly kept, but it's dark and I'm not really looking in the drawer.
As soon as my hand touches it, its' not my own anymore. My hand isn't numb, it just doesn't listen to me. It's fondling this...i dunno...I can't tell what it is, but my hand, quicker than I've ever seen it move, puts it in my jacket pocket. I try to let it go. Nothing. I try to take my hand out of my pocket. Nope. I begin to feel faraway, that fugue state I pass in and out of, but I fight it back, concentrating.
The light in the house has changed, become thicker, syrupy. The portraits have lost their victorian sophistication and acquired a hateful sneer across their faces, spittle on their lips. With blackness creeping in the edges of my vision, I bolt from the room, out into a foyer, where I immediately spy the heavy wooden door that can only lead outside. I make it about a mile before I collapse in a bush.
...
Dark again. well, that's probably for the best, I think, and a thought pops into my head, a black flash, not a thought in words, and certainly not one of my own, a dark whisper that feels like cold oil dripping through my brain. Whatever it is in my pocket has been busy. My traitor hand is still squeezing it, caressing it. My thoughts roll away from it, like fish from a sinking stone. Fine. There are leaves in my hair, and as I'm reaching up to brush them off, a deer steps quietly into view. I've never actually seen a deer close up before. She's sniffing the grass, her ears twitching, and doesn't seem to notice me at all. It's a rare moment for me, quiet and still, which is what makes it so awful when the hollow-tip makes her head burst.
"Wooooohoooo! Yew see that?" shouts a voice, as several large crashing sounds draw closer.
"Boy, you didn't just shoot that deer, you damn near EX-ploded it! What a shot! Shee-it!"
I'm still sitting upright, bits of deer brain on my cheek and a cut from a renegade piece of jawbone on my forehead, lap warm with blood that smells strong and alive, when the hunters come upon me and the doe. Beer cans in their hands, their stupid hick mouths hang agape, at a complete loss for words. I try to speak, to explain, to ask for help, but my mouth won't obey. Instead, I am trapped inside my eyeballs watching the scene around me unfold. Part of me fights, but mostly I'm just so tired that this is a welcome respite. The two men, perhaps unsurprisingly, think that I too am somehow dead. They begin to argue over what to do, swearing and spitting, throwing beer. The smaller one draws a knife from his boot, a bowie with the confederate flag on the blade, and buries it in the back-fat between the other man's shoulder blades. Although it's a fatal blow, its not an instant kill, which gives the dying man a chance to use the second bullet in his rifle on his former friend, effectively vaporizing the back of his head. He gasps out a halfhearted curse to god, then repents and says an our father before gurgling his last.
I struggle to my feat, an insidious warmth creeping up my arm. As I pass by the deer carcass, the flies that are hovering in a food orgy drop out of the sky in unison. Going back to the house seems like the only option I have, so I start out back on the road. I'm not exactly sure which way is going, but my feet seem to be obeying me for the time being. My hand had stopped thrashing in its pocket, but it felt swollen and bruised, tired and full.
It's strange, seeing a road I've seen before but don't remember, but soon I am passing through a small town, and far, far off, I can see the spires of what can only be the mansion. I try not to make eye contact, fearing what will happen, knowing that this is all beyond me, I am ill-equipped for this task. As I looked down, though, I glanced at a homeless man sleeping in the crook of a building and the sidewalk. His eyes fly open, his face contorting into shapes no face should make, until he holds his chest and gets very still. I begin to run.
A dog, a beautiful white wolfhound darted into the road, right ahead of me. The oncoming truck tried to brake, jackknifed and hit the dog anyway, then plows into oak tree, ejecting the driver into a solid wood wall. I was unscathed, again. Not trusting myself to stop, I turn my attention to the road. My legs shake uncontrollably, making walking hard, but I force them to keep moving until it subsides.
The house was in view when I heard the fuel tank of the truck detonate. The whole town will burn. Staggering up the steps of the house, I pull the door, wrenching my shoulder when it doesn't move. A new voice, slow and heavy, tells me in an frozen instant of plodding color and shapes that I Have Taken The Burden It Held, And It Is Under No Obligation To Take It Back. It Is Mine To Bear, Forever.
A wellspring of fury that I've never known, a surging flood of rage burst in my eyes, and in that fraction of a second, my hand was my own again. I thrust the object out of my pocket, into the light.
...
Many people would think that time slows in moments like these, but they're wrong. It's flash-fast, its the understanding that's so instantaneous that makes you think that time has slowed. It's that you can't understand why you understand what you understand as fast as you've understood it. So everything has happened at once, but you can't fit that into you're perception, so everything looks slow so it'll make sense to you. This is what's happening right now, all in this moment, even as you're reading this.
....
My clammy hand holds what looked to be a ball of writhing yellow-white maggots, pulsing red light from their underbellies, eyelessly crawling. I know now that it is a Deathwish. My Deathwish. It the blackest thing in the pit of all mens souls, the immortal terror we all run from and never escape, fed by the fears of a billion generations crying out in the night and wondering why. It brings death and pain as naturally, as neutrally as a candle brings light, feeding off my desire for my own death, to end the suffering I cause, killing all those near mebut keeping me alive, for if I die so will my Deathwish. It is a spiraling event horizon no soul can escape.
Unless, chimes in the house, causing my nose to drip blood, Unless You Burn It. I Was Too Afraid To Try, But You....
The Deathwish surges in my hand and the redblack scream that splits my head in two drowns out all thoughts, mine and otherwise. But a tiny part of me whispers, burn it, so I pull out my flask and pour. The maggots writhe furiously, standing up somehow, growing, molting. I touch my lighter to it and it's not the explosion I would hope, its a wet sizzle that turns into a hiss that screams as the maggots begin to dance, melting and bubbling. My hand finally lets it drop, blistered and withered, where I stomp and stop and stomp until it is only a greasy black smear. I don't even notice the storm clouds release their rain, putting out the fire behind me and swirling the ashes of the Deathwish until they dissolve.
