Interlude.
I sink below to the grand dance and twirl for a while, then I open my eyes.
I make out the lobby through the half-circle of glass at the end of the darkness. I hear the echoing tick-tick-tick of the clock’s pendulum. Between the hour and second hands, I see the man who killed me.
He taps his finger to the pendulum’s rhythm against the top of the front desk. He stares at the clock, but not into it, not at me. Or whatever it is that I am, here on the other side.
I hear the squirming, squishing coterie approach from behind, and I’m enveloped within its tendrils. They feel warm and slick. They form around me, control my arms and legs, my head, fingers, and eyes. They’re inside of me too, controlling whatever’s left in there.
They spin me away from the lobby into the hidden corridor, then through their determined route up to the eighth floor.
Through a portal I see the courtyard. It’s bathed in moonlight and flickering red. The limbs move me down a corridor that’s dotted with pinholes of light. They bring me to one, and push my head forward to look inside.
I hear a noise behind me and the coterie twists me around.
I see my assassin’s faded outline. A dark aura with fuzzy outlines and a jittering interior. Its movements blur as it approaches. I feel the sharp pain in my guts, fresh like the first time. My assailant disappears.
The limbs make me stagger down the corridor, then force me to tap-tap-tap against the ground. They hoist me to look through the portal into the courtyard’s glow. Almost as if they’re taunting me.
The limbs squeeze my insides and force me to scream, so I do.
I sink below to the grand dance and twirl for a while.