Part Three

Part Three 

The naked prince ambled through a maze of stone corridors. He was guided by some innate sense of direction--an intuition of the ghost woman and her whereabouts.  

It had led him to a door at the end of a hallway lit sparingly by low-burning torches in rusted sconces.  

He stood outside the door, drew himself up onto the balls of his feet and swayed back and forth. He listened for a sign, but the corridor was deathly quiet.  

He began to whistle a tune to draw her out, but there was no answer when his verse petered out.  

With a sigh, he opened the door. 

 

The murderer pressed his face into his palms.  

He screamed and cried and laughed and sighed.  

He decompressed and flatted out, popped like a balloon.  

The next storm was coming in slower than most.  

The murderer had the time to sit back a moment, to think.  

He found every thought offensive as they seared themselves into his mind, marking his brain as with a brand, over and over and over and over and over and over and ov--

 

The boy in the black suit slowly grew paranoid.  

He spent as much time as he could with the girl in the black dress.  

But something was wrong.  

He knew something was wrong.  

Certain words stuck.  

They stuck to his mind and his heart and his soul, and there he kept them stewing, waiting for them to reveal their secrets or implode in on themselves.  

The words broiled inside him, festering in his heart and spreading throughout.  

Every time he saw the girl in the black dress, they lovingly met each other’s eyes.  

But something was behind there, he thought.  

Something was wrong. 

 

The religious man rocked back and forth on the ground as he kept his eyes on his god. His eyelids kept drooping--he couldn’t remember the last time he slept.  

It didn’t matter. He didn’t need sleep. He only needed salvation.  

He reached out and caressed the petals of one of the flowers of his god. A warmth spread through him, taking root in his fingertips and racing through his nerves. He smiled with tears in his eyes.  

Distantly, he heard something groan…groan…groan…groan…groan… 

 

The howling drew ever closer as the child raced through worthless tomes and blank pages.  

The librarian sat down across from him on the cracked marble floor.  

“What do you expect to find?” he asked.  

The child glanced up at him cautiously, then turned back to the book. “The answer,” he said. “The cure.”  

“What cure?”   

The child clenched his jaw, glared at the librarian.  

The librarian perked his ears, listened to the howling. “It’s nearly here,” he said.  

The child’s eyes darted nervously to the door. “I know.”  

“You should go.”  

The child turned the page. “I’ll find it.”  

The librarian smirked. 

 

The sick man awoke in a puddle of vomit and blood and puss.  

He blinked a few times to find that he was blind in his right eye. He closed it and pressed against the dry, flaky eyelid to check if it were still there. He sighed in relief. The wound above the eye still let loose a trickling stream of crimson, but it had mostly clotted over.  

With an effort, he rose to a sitting position. His stomach instantly churned, and he choked out more vomit before he felt it coming on.  

The sick man cupped his nose with the plastic spoon and patted the head of his snake. He was okay. He knew he wasn’t dying.  

The sick man dragged himself to the foot of the bed.  

He heaved himself up and threw his back against the frame.  

He faced toward the door.  

The vision in his left eye seemed stronger now that his right was derelict, but it was still flimsy and fading.  

The sick man watched the door, waiting for something to happen. He was thrown down into uselessness by several fits of coughing as he waited, spewing blood out over himself and onto the floor.  

The sick man wrapped his stuffed snake a few more times around his neck.  

He watched the door. 

 

The child blinked, and, when the eyes reopened, he found the right one to be blind.  

The child jumped, and yelped, and began to hyperventilate.  

He blinked rapidly, trying to browbeat the eye back into working order.  

He rubbed at the eye.  

He hit the eye.  

He squeezed the eyelid.  

He plucked his eyebrows.  

He blinked like a madman.  

The eye remained blind. 

 

The haggard old man was led by the dog through park paths and city streets he hadn’t visited in months. 

He stayed as close to the dog as he possibly could, worrying immensely about everyone and everything they passed. His hands were trembling, and he stumbled with nearly every step.  

The dog had no such anxiety. It bound happily down the street, barking at everyone and everything that it passed.  

No one seemed to take heed of the dog. The people they passed offered no smiles or waves to it. They focused instead on the haggard old man, whom they greeted with warmth.  

The dog didn’t seem to mind being ignored. Instead, he barked at the haggard old man, pressuring him to respond to the people.  

It took several tries, but the haggard old man managed to let down his guard well enough to offer a slight smile or nod to the others on the street.  

The dog barked happily. 

 

The boy in the black suit walked down the side of a mall with the girl in the black dress.  

They walked hand-in-hand, awash in the mutual love and commitment.  

The boy in the black suit couldn’t imagine anything more important or fulfilling that the love of the girl in the black dress.  

Yet, something was wrong.  

He knew something was wrong.  

Underneath her perfect smile, 

underneath her beautiful dark skin,  

underneath her lovely and wonderful mind, 

There was something wrong.  

The boy in the black suit could sense it.  

He knew there was something wrong.  

He knew that he had to fix it. 

 

The murderer paced back and forth at his gate.  

The storm was growing ever closer, but it wasn’t coming fast enough.  

The murderer hated his charge but hated far more the burden of being idle, 

alone, 

helpless in the face of himself.  

He stood upon a barren peak in a sea of ruins.  

He thought back to the days of great plains and castles, of tall trees and ringing bells.  

The murderer’s eye began to twitch. 

 

The religious man found himself awake at the sound of a sudden crash.  

He bolted upright and crawled forward to his god. He stroked the petioles, kissed the flowers, caressed the leaves. He checked it as well as he was able, looking for any sign that hurt or danger had befallen it.  

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered into one of the flowers. “I need to be more vigilant.”  

Slowly, the religious man rose from his prayer. He glanced around the room. Nothing was amiss. Nothing was here to hurt him or his god.  

He turned around, glanced back down the hall that lead to the rest of the house.  

The religious man shuddered. Something must have happened down there.  

The religious man thought of checking what it was, but he felt bound to his god. He could see nothing amiss down the hall.  

There was nothing wrong.  

The religious man sat back down, ran his fingers down the stem, reaching as far as he could high up on that towering deity and racing down, down, down--down to the dirt, which he noticed felt a little dry. He gasped.  

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, abashed, and raced off to the side for more water. 

 

The sick man continued watching the door.  

It didn’t budge.  

Hours slipped by. The sick man lost count of them, as well as the number of coughing fits, or the amount of blood that leaked from his wounds, or the amount of times his skin cracked.  

He lost count of the times he felt sick, the times he vomited on himself, the times he collapsed to the floor.  

The sick man lost count of everything.  

But he watched the door. 

 

The child could hear the howling grow. 

It was almost to the library.  

It had grown into a cacophony that no level of forced apathy could shut out.  

The child’s eyes had grown wide; he flipped wildly through the books at his feet, often several at a time, trying to find key words to lock in on with his remaining working eye--to find the cure.  

The child tried to focus on the effort it took to read now. He couldn’t heal his eye. Perhaps there was a cure written somewhere in these pages for that, too. But he had to find it. He had to reorient himself to only be able to see on one side, to pull the book closer to the left or turn his head further to the right to read, to see at all.  

The child’s working eye was already strained. It felt like it held onto his brain by one thin cord about to snap.  

He kept blinking to beat back the tears.  

The librarian shuffled across the floor, calmly returning books the child had thrown down to their respective places. “You won’t find it,” he told the child. “You should give up.”  

The child ignored him. He focused on his right eye, trying to blink and work it back to life. The left eye was overburdened. Every blink was a breath of fresh air only to be swept away when the eye reopened and had to do the work for two.   

“Nothing that has happened can be taken back. There is no cure.”   

The child raised his head, ignored the sharp pain that raced through his spine. “It’s not about that,” he answered indignantly.  

“Enlighten me.”  

The cacophony grew closer, a great roar less than a mile away. There was a great rending screech, followed by the sound of something massive toppling to the ground. The child flinched, thinking of the mountains. The librarian remained impassive.  

The child reached out for another book, the strain sending fire through his joints; but he grabbed this treasure and threw it open, panting heavily, greedily scanning every word.  

“Well?” the librarian goaded.  

“I can still save us,” the child answered listlessly, his mind occupied with the useless words that floated up and around him in a swirling vortex of meaningless failure--and the cacophony that lumbered ever closer that never seemed to die down; any time it began to decrescendo, he could hear it ringing just as loudly in his ears.  

“There is no 'us'. Not how you mean it. Not anymore. But, yes, you can save yourself--but only by turning aside, by giving up.”   

“I will never give up,” the child sneered. “I will save us.”  

The librarian chuckled. “Perhaps you simply aren’t old enough to understand consequences.”  

The child ignored him. He raced blindly through every word that he could, through different books at the same time, unsure of when he picked up a new one or shut an old one. He was hyperventilating, his lungs were on fire, his entire body trembled, his muscled screamed, his head was a concert of incoherent thoughts and useless facts.  

The librarian walked calmly past him, back toward the front door. He stood in its frame, watching the clouds come together in the sky. He looked out beyond it--back toward the valley that the child had come from. 

“I can see It,” he said. 

 

The haggard old man trembled as he was led by the dog to a large park.  

It was vibrant and beautiful--blindingly brilliant under the light of the sun.  

The haggard old man found a shady spot beneath a tree, on the border, away from the crowd, and sat down.  

He surveyed the expanse in front of him--what seemed like an endless expanse of soft turf, forest, and park shelters stretching out into the horizon trampled and explored by a mess of people playing passionately beneath the sun.  

The old man’s heart was still racing, and it felt like every muscle in his body was trembling, but a vague sense of serenity settled around him as he sat beneath the tree, and the chaos began to fade.  

The dog followed him obediently but began to grow restless. It hopped up from its spot and started nudging at the haggard old man’s arm, tugging gently at his sleeve, barking happily.  

The haggard old man frowned and got back up with a groan.  

He chased the dog away from the tree, back out into the sun that speared him with an unnatural feeling, and raced down through beaten dirt paths snaking through the forest and bursting back into the sunlit plains as they floundered and played in the golden glow.  

The haggard old man caught the glances and smiles and waves of many more people. 

He noticed that it wasn’t as difficult to smile back as it had been at first. 

 

The naked prince found himself in the mess of a long, low room with lines of wooden tables buried under an avalanche of white paper dyed orange by candle- and torchlight that rose like mountains over the tables and lay like a coverlet over the floor.  

The naked prince glanced curiously around the room. He bent forward and plucked a crumbled paper from the floor. Unfurled it. He recognized the handwriting of a naïve boy who dreamed of being better than the man reading it.  

The naked prince let the dream float back to the floor as he walked cautiously further into the room, crunching white dead leaves as he did. He tried to espy any sight of the ghost at the other end of the room, but he found himself alone in that sea.  

He picked up another piece of paper and read a pleading note from a younger man. A sealed envelope on one of the tables held a letter from a concerned woman. Another held the message of a distant friend. All held hopeful words that received no answer.  

The naked prince poured over these words as time slipped away. He had no idea how much had passed before the ghost appeared before him once more.  

She floated above the coverlet on the floor, in front of the naked prince sprawled out on the floor, a pale blue light emanating from her figure.  

The naked prince shot to his feet at the sight of her, reaching out with longing fingers that tried to interlock with hers, but the only evidence of her existence they met was a wisp of cold air where her hand was, and the hand began to unravel and disappear at the contact.  

The naked prince drew his hands back, and the ghost’s hand began to reform.  

“I still love you,” he told her.  

The ghost gave no verbal answer, but she cocked her head and flashed a patronizing smile.  

The naked prince tried to reach out to her again, but she had already blinked away. 

 

The boy in the black suit knew that there was nothing in this entire world better than the girl in the black dress.  

He knew that.  

He knew that so well.  

But, as she walked beside him, there was something wrong.  

There was something terribly wrong.  

He knew that there was nothing worse than giving into peer pressure--than giving into the weight of the world.  

But he saw that tendency in the girl in the black dress.  

He saw that weakness.  

He loved her more than anything in the world.  

But there was something wrong with her.  

There was something deep--something important--that he needed to fix. 

 

The murderer felt his heart begin to race.  

The world swirled around him--slowly at first, but gradually picking up speed until he was the only solitary speck in a blender of all things.  

His breaths came at him choking and ragged.  

He fell to his knees, then to the ground, and had no recollection of it.  

Upon the barren rock, he began to seize and shake and howl with pain for minutes, maybe hours, maybe days, maybe forever--until everything swirled once more in the giant bowl and crashed directly into him.  

He came back to reality at the behest of a howling wind, the assault of a hard rain, and the echo of nervous footfalls.  

The storm had come. 

 

The sick man felt light-headed.  

The hours had seemed to flutter by and blossom into a day--or several--as he watched the door. He played with the snake wrapped around his neck. He imagined it tightening, and strangling him. He imagined it awaking and nursing him to health. He imagined an invisible hand reaching down, grabbing it, and chucking it--as well as himself--at the sun.  

The sick man’s imagination ran past him.  

Still, he watched the door. 

 

The religious man had his mind bent deep in prayer when there was another rending tear somewhere else in the house.  

He brought his head up, turned back toward the hallway, tried to see anything amiss.  

There was nothing. 

The religious man turned his eyes back to God, bent forward once more in prayer.  

A sudden surge of calming energy raced into his chest.  

The religious man opened his eyes and looked up.  

“Should I look?” he asked.  

God was silent, but the religious man once more felt the wave of energy. He was compelled.  

The religious man found his legs were shaky when he rose to his feet and turned around.  

The dark hallway seemed like the throat of some great beast that would devour him.  

The religious man’s legs nearly gave out. He turned back to God, waited for a sign.  

The calming presence made itself known once more in his chest--stronger this time.  

The religious man felt somewhat at peace. He nodded, turned back, and entered the dark hallway. 

 

The haggard old man watched the sun set from the top of a hill in the park while the dog lay beside him.  

They were both panting, bathing in the soft light as they recovered from their toil.  

The dog scooted closer to the side of the haggard old man.  

The haggard old man wrapped an arm protectively around the dog.  

The sun sank away, and night took hold over the world.  

The other people of the park began to filter out and flutter away.  

The haggard old man watched the stars burn to life with the dog by his side.  

The silver lights gleamed in their eyes. 

 

The boy in the black suit was something of a fool.  

He felt nothing more pure--nothing more beautiful--than the love of the girl in the black dress.  

He knew there was nothing more wonderful in the entire world than the loving caress of her hand over his cheek, 

than the wonderful kisses from her on his cheek, 

than the beautiful, wonderful, lovely, kiss on his cheek from her--whenever he was in doubt, whenever he was in distress.  

There was nothing in this world more perfect than her--than the girl in the black dress.  

But that was hardly relevant.  

There was something wrong. 

The girl in the black dress didn’t need to know.  

The boy in the black suit knew best--he always did.  

There was something wrong with the girl in the black dress.  

He always knew. 

 

The murderer shoved himself to his feet and rose to see a woman approaching him.  

He was still off-balance and terrified, blinking away the residual effects of the sudden attack.  

The woman stopped in her tracks, seeing him standing there, petrified by the wild eyes and bloodied clothes.  

The murderer took advantage of her lull to center himself.  

She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out.  

“I’m sorry,” he said, and lunged. 

 

The sick man was tired.  

He was fighting against an oppressive wave of sleep when the handle on the door began to jiggle.  

The sick man perked up immediately, fixing the handle in the blurred sight of his one good eye to make sure it wasn’t a trick of the light.  

The handle jiggled again.  

The sick man was so ecstatic that he tried to stand up before he remembered that his legs barely worked, and his fragile frame let him fall back to the floor. Waves of fire raced up and down his spine, but he ignored it and craned his neck for a sight of the handle.  

It was still shaking, and the tremor began to grow even stronger.  

The sick man forgot what pain was. He thrust his hands forward across the hardwood and clawed his way to the door. The knobby wooden floor tore at his skin, sheering away weak and flimsy patches of skin that hung off like old leather.  

The sick man didn’t allow this to bother him. He kept crawling, kept clawing.  

The door loomed ever closer. The handle shook all the more.  

The sick man was almost there. He was nearly there, he could taste the victory, he could feel it well up like an angry volcano ready to erupt in his chest, someone was there, he knew it, he knew it, he knew it, there was a path, he was ready, everything was--

The handle stopped shaking.  

The sick man stopped his crawling, flabbergasted.  

The sick man listened closely, trying to discern any sign of movement--any sign of life--on the other side.  

He heard nothing.  

The door no longer shook, and there were no receding footfalls. There was no cautious breathing, no shuffling movements. There was nothing.  

It was as if the handle had never shaken at all.  

The sick man tried to see under the crack of the door.  

The shadows were immobile.  

There was no sign anyone had come.  

The sick man let out a panicked wheeze, and his face fell. The pain he had been ignoring raced back all at once. He felt the warm blood on his stomach.  

The sick man fell away from consciousness. 

 

The haggard old man found it steadily easier to take walks outside.  

He never left the house without the dog, but he felt incredibly liberated with each step he took outside the house.  

The streets he wandered slowly became familiar once more. The people became less terrifying. The distance became no object.  

He and the dog walked carelessly through the streets, celebrating life and smiling all the way.  

But he began to notice that something ailed the dog.  

The dog became slowly lethargic, its passion diminishing more and more by the day.  

At first, it was hardly noticeable, as the dog had an ostensibly endless reserve of love and fire within it.  

But it slowly dimmed.  

The dog was slower to run to the door. It was eager to take the walks but not as eager as it had once been.  

The haggard old man held the dog as much as he could, hoping the expression of love would help endow it once more with its full strength.  

Every time he met the eyes of the dog, a blanket of warmth wrapped itself around him, enveloped him completely.  

But he could swear that the warmth was less than before.  

And there was something familiar about the chill that began to encroach upon the vacant space. 

 

The boy in the black suit didn’t like how close the girl in the black dress was to other boys.  

That was something of a line he drew.  

There was something in the way she talked, 

the way she acted, 

the way she walked.  

The boy in the black dress loved something incredible--something he could never know.  

He loved it with all his heart, with all his soul. 

But he could never realize it consciously: he could never realize the story that had already unfolded in his head.  

The girl in the black dress was perfect in every way--

yet, somehow, she wasn’t good enough.  

Somehow, he was left in the dirt, in the dust, in the hay. 

The girl in the black dress was--by far--the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most amazing girl in the world.  

Yet there was something wrong with her: that much, the boy in the black suit knew for sure.  

There was something wrong with her. 

There was something wrong with her.  

She lovingly met his eyes.  

He warily met hers. 

 

The child found the cacophony unbearable.  

Just one more book. Just one more word. Just one­-- 

There was no time.  

The child had become an unchained, hyperventilating, trembling puddle of nothing on the floor of the library.  

The librarian stood impassively in the frame of the front door, the growing winds whipping at his clothes as he watched It come closer.  

There were still so many books--so, so many. The child blinked back tears, trying to calm his nerves, tried to justify just one last goddamn word--

There was no time.  

The child stumbled to his feet, his legs writhing in resistance, his head swimming in sorrow and fire. He looked over toward the librarian, tried to see beyond him out the door with one eye. He could make nothing out in the suffocating darkness under the growing storm.  

The librarian seemed to sense the child’s gaze. “It’s here,” he said.  

The child wanted to fall down, wanted to cry, wanted to keep looking, wanted to just stop.  

On protesting legs, with trembling limbs, with thoughts of sorrow and death, the child stumbled back. He felt in full the weight of the disadvantage that being half-blind put him at in a chase.  

The child swallowed a pitiful scream and turned around. Without a word of farewell, he sprinted as fast as his breaking legs would carry him, burst through the back door, and shot like a bullet into the black storm over a broken land. 

 

The naked prince watched time unravel and become a fictional concept beyond any person’s capacity to understand.  

The letters he poured over had no apparent end--to their well-wishes, to their hopes, to their worries.  

They had no end, and they had no answer.  

The naked prince read through the words until his head began to ache and the meaning of the words became lost to him; and then he fell back onto the ground, against the wall, and stared blankly at the floor.  

His mulled over the answers in his mind.  

All his words were hollow, all the answers empty.  

The naked prince stared blankly at the floor.