chapter seven--

I've been shot before, the sudden feeling of impact, the screaming chorus of the nerves, the cold finality as the blood leaks out and the desperate scrambling of your mind and body as the faculties sputter and wink out one by one...

"Is he dead?"
The voice seemed far away and muffled by a thick wool sheet, I could not discern the sex of the whisperer only the words as they slowly sunk into the thick black tar that was my perception.

"Oh my god, he's dying. There's so much blood!"
That one was female, but who? My memories were gone, replaced by the sudden now of the pain that radiated in my chest like a blossoming star. The throbbing of the music that filled my ears and rattled my bones seemed to come and go like a fast rising tide.

No not a tide, my pulse. The thick quickening that for my whole life had kept me alive, the source of all my power and knowledge. I was astonished by how cold I was without my blood, the way the angelic music that filled me with so much pain would ebb, revealing a bitterly frozen shore.

As the black wool tightened around me, seemingly growing darker and heavier I knew I was as close as I had every come to death, fear should have overtaken me completely but as it was I could only observe my new reality with curiosity.

I waited for what I expected, the fractal imagery and sudden shapes as my brain dumped the image cache and wiped the perception clean, the memories that would run in reverse, sharp frames of time cutting me into a hundred pieces each one flat and fading.

DMT, Salvia, LSD, Mescaline, Jenk, mushrooms of all sizes and shapes, I had done all these things together and seperate in my attempts to perceive the true world that I knew existed just between ours and the next.

Instead it just stopped, nothing moved anymore, nothing made a sound. The black wasn't even black anymore, no more color, no more nothing. I wasn't I.
A thought slowly moved past my not-eyes like a fading marquee,
"My name is Aleister-"

And just like that it was over.

Ever look at the sky during a clear blue day? Has the sight of those silent worms as they crawled across your vision made you wonder just what was in the womb that spawned you?

I knew I still alive because even through the haze of death I could feel the slow slithering of the millions of beings that lived in and on my body, the mass of worshipping bacteria that lived upon me the way you and I wallow on this earth.

But again I lost I and all there was was fading thoughts and dull feelings, my body far beyond pain and caring.

Then the lights, cold and hard, a million globes of white burning my vision and causing my skull to roll with pressure.

I had a skull, I had eyes, my nose blocked part of my vision and suddenly I knew who I was. And inevitably I  again learned about pain.

The sharp antiseptic smell that you only find in two places, emergency rooms and tattoo parlors. My chest felt like anxiety and desperation made real, a gaping crater that used to be my ribs, my heart beat with a slow mechanical pace.
I moved my head and saw blue tubes and red wires running all around me, a sarcastic smile came to my face.
I should have spent my life in worship of technology, mysticism and the occult was nowhere to be seen when I was trapped in the not-cold of near death.

Seeing a friend would have been nice, feeling Karrey move the hair from my eyes and kissing my forehead, in the blankness of the hospital room I would  have welcomed an old enemy, back from the dead to smirk at my current pain.

Instead there was no one, I tried to yell or get someones attention but my voice would not come and the strain of trying to sit up sent me in a tailspin and the old familiar wool spread like a mold across my vision.