PROLOGUE
"And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon return'd to Earth! "
You are dead.
Energy, growing, rising, reaching out, crackling... running out of control like a train jumping its tracks.
No.
Forms, faces, one in particular... That lithe, twisting form, offering help, offering to give his life to correct this mistake, though he did not know he was.
Not dead yet.
Refusing the offer, making a sacrifice youself. What were you thinking?
Too soon returned to Earth.
Darkness, icy pain coursing through the body, igniting and exploding somewhere deep in the lungs... lights, colors, shapes dance in the slim space between the eyes and the lids. And all... is gone.
Too soon...
This won't do. Not at all. Come back... You cannot let go yet. Not just yet.
Returned...
There is work to be done.
The soft, muddy earth welcomes its lost child back as the Hudson disgustfully spits up the mutated body, glad to be relieved of the hideous passenger.
Water pours from the hidden depths of the large, powerful form, and as the old flows out, in flows the new air, the new life, the new conscience. The ground is now covered with stale water, thin blood, old pains, and past memories.
Minutes pass in stillness as the world comes into focus, as he tries to make sense of things. It all remains a blur, a black hole in his memory. Slowly, he pulls himself to his feet, but not by his own accord. Someone- no, something- else is doing it. He is once more just a passenger, a passenger in his own body.
Go. Remember.
And the creature, this reject of Hell, returns, stumbling into the new world without a single look back.