tthhee oddiissee, Chapter 9
It was too dark to see anything. It was as if he knew all of his body parts were there, but none of them were connected. His entire body was vibrating with energy, uncomfortable, like he was going to burst at the seams. He was hot, boiling, he had never sweat so much in his life and it felt like it was forcing its way through each individual pore, in the most unnatural fashion.
He tried to stand, but he immediately collapsed, landing on his hands and knees on the hard ground. He was choking, and the pressure in his head was building. It felt like his eyeballs were going to explode. There was shrapnel in his stomach, and it was forcing its way through his throat. It was large, far too large, but it was still coming. He kept trying to force it down, try to make it stop, but it wouldn’t, threatening to tear through the skin in his neck like it was tissue paper. It started coming out of his mouth, hot, terrible, jagged, and wet. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it seemed like it felt alive.
He kept trying to find the air, air that wouldn’t come, no matter how much he opened his nostrils, or tried to get his lungs pumping. He was on the verge of passing out, he could feel all the blood in his body pumping hard as if the veins were trying to power up to strangle him from the inside.
It finally fell out with a wet thud. Whatever it was, it was heavy. He took in a large breath, gasping for air. The heat that was in his body had dissipated, and the sweat was now a welcome coolant in the cool air that surrounded him. He sat down on the ledge and leaned back, only to find the wall wasn’t that high behind him. It wasn’t a wall at all.
The lights came up, and he saw that he was sitting on a glowing white wedge, floating in the middle of the air, in a series of glowing white wedges that formed a large spiral staircase-like structure in the middle of nowhere. There was no ground to be seen and no features above that seemed to lead to anywhere else. The sky was dark blue that bled into fiery orange, but gave no idea of anything resembling land, sea, or anything else. Strangely, he still didn’t have any conception of himself, knowing he was there, but not being able to see it.
A figure floated up from below, floating in the middle of the staircase, just above him. It was a man with limbs that were too long for his torso, pale skin, black circles under his eyes and wild gray hair going any direction. He was wearing a black cloak that hung from his outstretched arms in a crucifix position, with white gloved hands on either side. His eyes were calm, but his smile was sinister and his face was slightly crooked.
“What now, Ro?” he asked.
The stairs moved around him, keeping him in place, while they rotated upward.
What are you? he thought. Or least he thought that he had that thought.
“That’s not something for you to worry about, right now,” the stranger responded.
The stair that he was sitting on moved out from under him, with nothing else to catch him. He fell.
Ro woke up, face up, in the dark. He could barely see anything at first, and was in a daze. His eyes adjusted to the very level of light eventually, identifying a few hanging light fixtures in the ceiling above. His entire body was aching as he sat up, and his head was pounding. There were some walls around him, but they didn’t seem very high and he couldn’t work out what they were. Another labyrinth?
He tried to stand, but collapsed quickly. Ro was too weak to do much of anything. He crawled his way over to one of the walls, only to find himself stopped by a large pane of glass. He pressed up against the glass to try to stand up on his feet. He was still woozy, and his legs kept shaking. He turned around to see a long, thin, dark figure in a large opening on the other side of him. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he didn’t trust it.
He moved to the side, only to find it going the same direction. He tried to walk away from the glass, but fell immediately on the ground, finding the figure doing the exact same thing. It was a large mirror, the size of the glass pane he was pressed against. Ro examined his reflection, or did it as well as he could in the dark, from so far away. Why don’t I look like me?