Into The Slip

Featherman stepped across the threshold.

His life was over. It is nonexistent.

The mind follows the streams to the lakes, to the rivers, to the oceans. It expands somewhere new and unseen. Fuzzy memories fade as the senses shift.

Featherman feels the new sun on his skin and fresh air in this new world. His reality resembles Beacon, New York, in early fall.

There are streets here, but no stores or homes in sight.

Featherman feels faint. His mind flashes white.

He opens his eyes to a red sky and ash. Fire and magma rain down from tall concrete blockades. Sirens and gunfire fill the air.

Featherman holds a pistol he cannot identify. He wears military attire, his own hands barely recognizable.

A man charges, gun in hand. Featherman raises the pistol and fires between his eyes. He doesn't flinch.

A large, piercing eye rises on the horizon. A bright blue pyramid falls from the sky. Soldiers emerge, firing at Featherman. Sirens grow louder. The world becomes hotter. Breathing grows difficult.

Another flash.

Featherman becomes a wave, moving erratically. Unconsciously? Is he in space? Is he real? What is this? He feels within yet without, unmotivated. He pops from one place to another in rhythm.

A shutter sound. A red light.

Featherman is five. He rides his tricycle down the driveway. A neighbor's distant lawnmower hums. A dove coos. Pavement stings his bare feet.

Featherman is hungry. He drops the bike, running toward a door of black stone without knobs or locks.

He bangs and bangs. The rain comes. He continues banging and begins to cry.

Thunder and lightning.

He yells and bangs harder. Finally, the door opens, and he falls through.

Featherman is gone for some time. How long is unclear.

Things grow strange, hard to perceive or explain. Eventually, he returns somewhere familiar—not the same, but familiar enough.

It happens again, differently, later. He continues until he's 318.

Now, Featherman is somewhere in the slip, beholding, watched. Finding his way again. Falling out.

That old story. Like the one you're in now.