Page 4 of Where Light Cannot Follow
Something cold brushes my bare chest. Someone touches me, and I'm undressed. I want to jerk away, but my body has become a foreign country, unmapped and unreachable. It’s as though it isn’t mine anymore. A vehicle I no longer command. So many questions form, but none that can be answered. My world has devolved into the chaos I meticulously try to avoid.
The space smells like rubber. Like alcohol and chemicals. Like my father's hospital room at the end. I still don't know why I bothered to visit. Now that same coppery tang of blood and sterile scents assails me.
A siren wails, dull-edged and pulsing as if muffled by fabric.
A jolt hits my chest—hard, electric—but no answering beat follows. Just the hollow ache of silence where a rhythm should be.
"Patient has no pulse," someone says, their voice focused, firm.
More movement. More touching, maybe. More of the endless, dull wailing of a siren.
"Patient is in asystole."
Something presses against my sternum. Or maybe it’s just the weight of my own dissolution. Perhaps this is the place between the act and the end. The moment before the curtains fall and shadows descend.
The first voice echoes through my fading thoughts. "Time of death?"
"8:03 pm."
PART II
“The descent into Hell is easy.”
—Virgil, Aeneid
3
VIRGIL
3. Virgil
A new man arrived today.
That's hardly notable, considering where we are. Fresh souls arrive like blooms on a hillside in early spring—abundant, inevitable, and largely unremarkable. I scarcely notice most of them anymore. After all, few are salvageable.
This one doesn't appear to be either. Yet something about him gives me pause.
He continues walking through his dreamscape, tall and severe and handsome, with dark eyes that cut like winter wind and a jaw carved from marble and perpetual dissatisfaction. Even within his own perception of himself, he's beautiful. Which is curious, being as he's here.
His reality has become clearer as I've watched him march down the street he's conjuring. It's Manhattan. I’ve seen this environment in countless other minds. But this version is unlike any I've encountered.
The first time I witnessed New York City through another soul's memory, it was vivid—a vivid hell, certainly, but vivid nonetheless. Taxis carved reckless paths around pedestrians, horns blaring their mechanical fury. Pigeons roosted and squabbled over scraps of foods I still can’t name. Sunlight ricocheted off endlessly tall buildings so brilliant I had to shield my eyes against the onslaught.
This is the same city, but hollowed out. Gutted.
The same towers rise, even higher than I remember, disappearing into low-hanging clouds that spiral with the lazy malevolence of a dragon's breath. The streets stretch long and empty, populated only by the echo of footsteps that aren't there. There's something profoundly cold about it, not in temperature, for I can feel nothing so simple as that. No, this is the cold of a life lived in isolation, of warmth deliberately turned away.
A sigh escapes my lips and dissipates. I've had many years to accept the reality I inhabit.
"Fresh blood, Virgil?"
I straighten but refuse to acknowledge the demon who has materialized beside me. Malrec moves deliberately into my line of sight, unwilling to be dismissed so easily. He's handsome—they all are, demons—with sharp cheekbones that remain defined despite the glum lighting of our newest visitor's imaginings. Malrec drags a hand through his dark hair, and the gesture makes the heavy muscle of his forearm flex with calculated grace.
"Why do you persist in this?"
"It keeps me busy," I answer, my voice dry as winter grass. I learned long ago not to encourage demons. If one becomes tedious or boring, they lose interest. It's fear they feast upon, terror they bundle like harvest wheat.
Malrec practically radiates with stolen anguish today. It vibrates off him in waves, coiled energy that sets his eyes ablaze and makes his olive skin gleam. He’s always been hungry, even for his position.
