the world cracking.  breaking up.
the shack roof splintering.  falling inward.
someone in the street below.  beating a tin trash can with a cooking whisk.

rain.

rain tapping its thousand fingernails on the rotten shingles.  impatiently, not wanting to stoop to the stature of a man by issuing its eviction in a tongue he knew.  rattling his cage.
but he knew.
i'm getting to it.
he was moving toward balance, toward standing, waking.  but then something.  a click nearly not there.  and in a rush

my hand.  my sin.  clarity was filtering into his dusty consciousness, such as was left now that all the drink'd drained dry, and through it he realized cold metal shining its chill into his palm and weighting its glow through his chest.  into his lungs, heavy thick.  long toothless mouth reaching up under his chin, powder wafting and tearing his eyes.  chamber rattling vicious.  horned nose drawing sweat from his brow, nearly blood from his neck.  tongue twitching under his index.  hours.  days.  dripping into his ears.  seconds.

and the night rang victory.  echoing out to the dark in the tearing of his throat and the shatter of glass as he screamed and threw the bulldog nestled in his palm out the window and into the wood.

he lay there in blind silence, getting his breath.  listening.  nothing but the rain.  him and the river pouring off the slant roof.  opened his eyes.  opened his eyes.  opened his eyes but he couldn't shake the dark. 

blind.  am i blind?

his heart reared like the fear of death.  panic and electricity.  panic more than blood blistering breackneck through his veins.  his skin was aswarm with some insectile, some many legged legion stealing his breath, burrowing into pores.  fever pitch chirps gouged his eardrums and he said aloud in a terrible strangled wheeze burrow, burrow because i am blind and so i must be dying and so i do not care.

then lightning cracked and at once he did care.  a tree split.  and by its burning, he understood.  damn the night.  swallowing my eyes, swallowing my eyes and making me a fool, toothy ears that pull bats from their roosts and eat their sight and feed them into the earth's deep cold belly.  damn my eyes and damn the storm.

the fire outside threw a bloody light over the room.  stretched shadows black clawed.  black clawed and not shadows.  shadows do not see and do not grin.  this place is evil and i have to leave but he did not move, only began to shake.  and mocking the tremors of his body, a rumble groaned into hearing.  like time being pulled from its locomotion by some heavy fisted devil.  feral and whispering low, tidal.  thunder piercing train brake howl.  closing.  closing in.  close in and then that devil.  that devil in shadow would be on him.

and he was running.  for fear.  for life.  for desperation.  from dark into further dark, to any way out, any refuge from hell who threatened him.  dead leaves grinding to dust under his flight and clouding the air.  he knocked something-- the end table?  and there was a shatter and a scratching as he slid on something and it dug deep and was foreign in his flesh.  bloodslick foot, balance barely kept, he still ran.  his arm punched through decaying wood, tearing skin.  more blood.  hot pain.  a wall, gripping him at the elbow with broken beams, screaming into his eyes this house will have you.  clenching with its whole strength like to tear his arm away.  i do not care take my arm but let me go i have to go i have to he faltered but his heart reared again and gave him strength and now he reared with it, throwing all his weight into his captor and it gave and crashed apart.  every footfall tore his wound wider and tripped him on his own life pouring away.  and suddenly he was headfirst, head and shoulders all flown over some gaping.  he tried to stand.  left leg.  right arm grasping for.  something cold a doorknob.  it was the cellar.  and then again his bloodied foot slipped and he was falling.  his grip was still tight on the door and so as he fell it slammed with a deafening crash.

he tumbled down steps and steps until he came at last to a rest.  there was quiet.  not even rain here.  tears streamed up his face, catching in his hair.  he lay there so long the blood from his split foot trickled into his mouth.  and still nothing from above.  how was he not falling?  because this is all a dream.  this is all a dream and so it can not hurt you and you should not fear it.  but he still shook.  and that is how he stood to his knees.  shaking.  he spoke to his heart let this fear go but his heart was not there.  his heart was afraid and would not rear.

alone, then.  he crawled up the stairs, weak and fumbling, trepidation palpable as the wood that was biting into his knees.  the fall had been quick and in contrast the climb was torture and was slow.  days long.  until the rain came back to his ears and his face sank soft into the wood of the door.  he felt around.  there were iron brackets for an old wooden brace bolt.  and the beam that sat in them.  and the doorknob.  freedom.  freedom he breathed as he touched it and it turned.

it turned in his hand, its own accord, with a scream dwarfing the devil's roar.  there was a glow under the door and the knob seared his flesh.  even cradling his hand against his chest backing down the stairs he thought this cannot hurt me this is a dream it must be a dream and the door slammed wide and he gasped.  a fire burned beyond its threshold and a terrible face in its depths licking its tongue into the well I KNOW YOU reaching for him.  and now he was screaming too and turned and began to run again.  and he thought i have never run before in the face of anything.  throwing himself stair after stair, not daring to look back, not wanting to because he could feel its breath on his neck and see its hands grasping, licking past his shoulders.

all at once was blackness.

and there were no stairs and no running.  only falling and falling in earnest.

--

its quiet but i do not trust it.  so he waited.  wary, leaned back in the sitting room chair.  cream walls turned a dry desert beige by the midnight's ravening for light.  homebrew in a waterjug pressed on his ribs.  he glanced at the clock.  two past.  late.  or

starlight laugh.  heels clapping on the pavement.  there she was.  i say i want to be rid of her, but why bother the pretense?  no one to tell, so why think a lie?

come on, we've got time.  i've told you before, i've got set hours.  you have to go.  alright, alright.  tomorrow then?  i'm open again thursday.  that's three days, though.  i'm open again thursday.  how about an afternoon?

silence.

alright thursday.  i'll see you then.  a scuffle.  no, stop, i've told you there are rules.

a pause.

and don't follow me home again.  fine.  thursday then.  and the other's steps picked up, abrupt crescendo, then fading.  hers picked up, slow, closer, and

now the door was open. now there she was, somber, drained, but elegant in red.  the same dress you used to wear to the opera.  he couldn't look at her.  there was a moment.  they stood like this.  her, open and childlike plaintive.  him, shaking and not speaking, his
 face wrenched in the ugly ghost of tears.  i remember when you bought this for me.  she was shy, hopeful.  voice like bells at a burial.

her words chimed out and echoed and died.

and something broke.

he looked up, face set now in rage, voice stoney and violent.  you will not use your whore charms on me he hissed, sneering.  her face like a struck dog.  she wailed as if dying and slammed the roll of bills into his waiting hand and ran from the room.  he looked at the money, closed in his fist, loathing swelling bile in his gut.  this is our price?

i guess so.

he gulped from the waterjug and reveled in the jagged burn.  and his eyes burned too.

--