Orpheus - Haunting the Dead.pdf - Dice

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CORRIDORS
sucking and sliding noises over his head. All the gel
that covers the room is beginning to run like melted
snow, pouring away and draining toward the furnace.
Ed slips, falls into the icy torrent. It pushes him
forward. He tries to press his hands to the floor, but
everything is too slick and he’s tumbling, tumbling, up
over the lip of the furnace and down, down, down.
Nowhere
The feeling of falling has stopped.
Ed is hanging, suspended, upside down. He feels as
if he’s miles long, his feet leagues above him, his arms
light-years wide. Below him in the darkness, he sees
Victoria, her black hair sprawling around her against a
blacker darkness. She’s worlds away but within reach,
and as she looks up at him her eyes seem like planets,
her tears like oceans.
He forces an arm toward her, shouting for her to
grab hold, but his words are swallowed up by emptiness.
She seems to see him, a sad smile crosses her lips. They
move, and he can almost read the words, Goodbye,
darling, goodbye.
Something is rising below her. A shape that stretches
farther than he can see, that reaches the horizon, that
is the horizon. A universe of flesh, or a body made of
smoke, Ed can’t be certain. He watches as Victoria
tumbles down toward the leviathan, not sure if years
are passing by, or seconds. When a vast maw opens up
to accept Victoria’s body, she’s a mere speck of dust
swallowed up by a nebula.
All Ed can do is stare at the infinite creature—if it
is a creature—as it fills more and more of his field of
vision. It’s tangled up in an unending maze made of its
own body. It’s close enough to touch, but an incomprehensible
distance away. And it’s calling him. COME, it
commands in a voice that crawls up his spinal cord and
into his thoughts. COME. He knows that he can’t deny
the directive much longer, and that he doesn’t want to.
HAUNTING THE DEAD
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