I felt a bleakness withing me covered in the tar and chemicals I inhaled from my half smoked cigarette, that slid through my body like a boiling serpent that settled dripping off my heart and into the emptiness of the pit of my stomach. The clockwork of my being has slowly been deteriorating and rusting with time as I take in every detail of every minute of every day, feeling as though I've aged ten years for every one I've been alive. The stale smell of new mixed with old smoke and home that emitted from the interior of my van gave a slight comfort as I stared at the inside roof of the vehicle from the flat of my back on the slightly dirty floor clutching an old jacket of Cory's that I had given him for Christmas as the cigarette dangled between my lips and the white envelope, still unopened, called to me.

Rolling over to one side, I mashed the remains out into a blue plastic ashtray I had bought in Washington that showed a picturesque view of a mountain surrounded by thick, green forests with big black words say "Washington, no place other." My knuckles whitened as I gripped Cory's jacket and had an urge to throw the ashtray out the window into the humid streets still drying in the fatal sun from a late afternoon shower. I had been laying in like this since I left the cathedral, but before I left was stopped by a priest who inquired about my attire as I was heading out the door.

"Excuse me, miss. Might I ask you about your wardrobe. This is a church and all you seem to be wearing is men's underwear."

My head turned slightly and the corner of my mouth turned up as I replied softly, "You out of all people, father, should know that when faith is needed in an urgent situation what you wear isn't an issue."

All he did was nod and told me to wait for a moment as he excused himself. For reasons unknown to me, I actually waited and when he returned he was carrying an old brown leather aviator jacket. Although I feel like accepting it from the priest was similar to making a deal with the devil, it has nothing to do with morals, just the guilt of having someone look at you with that mist of pity behind their eyes. In actuality, I think I'd rather sell my soul than have someone look at me with that kind of pity.

After loading up on death sticks, I turned off the car in the parking lot of a Jordanian pastry shop downtown and for the past nine hours and twenty-seven minutes I have layed in a slightly dormant state going from staring at the ceiling to boring holes into the crisp envelope. Reaching over, my hands shaking slightly, I picked it up taking in the almost course feeling of the paper as if it were old parchment and slid a finger underneath the seal finally breaking it as I sucked in a large breath between my teeth.

There was a simple piece of paper with a thin layer of plastic covering what looked like a Listerine strip and the words " Place on tongue". Wow, I haven't accepted foreign substances from shady people spouting questionable things in a long time. Peeling off the plastic, I picked up the blue strip and stared at it momentarily, hesitating before placing it on my tongue.Within moments it dissolved leaving a bittersweet taste in my mouth akin to eating unripened wild berries and I silently laid as still as possible waiting for it to come to me and when it did I wasn't sure if I was ready. Alice didn't have shit on me as my world fell and faded as the death of a star, first blindingly bright then darkness, as I danced in the ashes of nothing and was pulled into a deep trance like coma.

--

Somehow it had taken me beyond the beyond, through ancient corridors of my mind and into the endless abyss, crashing into to me at full speed and never stopping with a constant flow of images and voice. My senses in this place were unbelievably heightened as one moment I was running through a moonlit poppy field in bloom releasing fragrant multicolored pollen chasing a silhouette of my brother under a sheet of stars that sang in beautiful unison like angel's weeping, giggling merrily as if this were a game of hide and seek or tag. His familiar voice that I had longed to hear echoed as we had come to a stone labyrinth with high dirty walls that hung ominously, " Charlie, come on. Just a little faster, we're almost there." I felt as though I was some kind of experimental rat clawing through this endless maze in the dark looking for the cheese at the center.

My charcoal lungs heaved in disapproval and the muscles in my legs slowed like sand bags against my will as if a puppet master was behind a curtain deciding my fate and then I stopped, the sound of his footsteps diminishing into the blackness until their was only silence that replaced the song of the night with a grief that trickled like rain on my ears. Gripping my knees, I fought for breath concentrating at the ground which seemed to be the only thing not completely out of reach, when the sound of crumbling stone and twisting wood exploded in front of me revealing a door.

I honestly didn't want to enter it, I wanted to catch my breath and keep running, keep trying to find him in the darkness even if he was a dream far off. Then as this idea planted itself in my mind a voice boomed from all around me, surrounding me totally and vibrating my body with every powerful word " You have to give up before you can see."

" I can't give up. I've come too far to just quit," I screamed back at the omniscient voice feeling the guilt and hatred for myself bleed into my blood stream like a poison and so I ran. Despite knowing Cory would be a hallucination, he was something I needed to obtain not only to see his smile again but for my own selfish reasons of forgiveness. Fighting the imaginary exhaustion and deep rooted pain ripping at my blackened lungs, my legs felt as though they were doused with carosine, set afire. And I was a burning woman screaming and screeching through the bold night like an Amazonian warrior goddess searching, but always coming to another stone wall.

Then, after hours of fleeing the voice rang out again " Accept your fate."

As I found myself at another dead end, I threw up my fists and began angerly banging them against the stone wall as my eyes welled up and tears flooded my furious face in an angry defeat. After a few seconds, the door appeared again a tall cedar spectacle intricately crafted with millions of symbols wrapped in vines shredding through the stone. Clenching my fists, I got up and brushed the dirt I acquired from the ground off of me and stood seething in front of it with burning cheeks and dry eyes before my hand mechanically reached out and my fingers tightly wrapped around the brass handle.

This wasn't a test, it was a forceful push into what was real. Everyone kept topping the world off with sugar for, but it was true. It was my fault where Cory was and nothing, no matter what, was going to bring him back. It WAS my fault that he was kidnapped and tortured as it was my fault that he was in a coma. Pity, grief, and shame were no luxury that I could afford. I would have to bare these marks forever.

Opening that door, meant so much more than I could have ever comprehended before I did that simple little action of turning the handle. Eve ate from the tree of knowledge and gained what she shouldn't have, despite the warnings, temptation was her down fall as they say. I say it was stupidity and the bitch cursed us all.

Walking through the doorway I entered a familiar place that I had never been before, a slightly barbaric war tent made of painted animal hides and intricately woven strips of cloth. It appeared that I was a ghost on the background of memory, a flash in the movie, the cigarette burn in the corner of the screen when reels are switched that is there but no one notices. The smell of dirt, blood, and smoke filled my nostrils and made my head ache as I slowly stepped forward and out of the tent into the screaming world. It was my dream, the burning city of...Babylon.

Every inch of me locked up and this world seemed to freeze as I stared into my own eyes burning with ferociousness and passion that could pierce the soul like a darkened blade. The same eyes, the same face, everything only her hair was a long braided stream and what looked like a tribal tattoo of small symbols scrawled across her cheek bone under her left eye in a line. But I knew what it meant, they were symbols of the ancients only given to those of higher authority, each symbol had a different meaning, but those were more than just markings of authority. It slowly came back to me as the foggy thoughts rose into my head. They marked her as a leader, warrior, and showed she had a spiritual connection to something higher in nature, something dark. Her skin was smeared with dirt and sweat with blood matted into her mane and splattered across her body, dripping from the blade she carried in her hand.

And then she passed right through me into the tent, as if I weren't real. My body was still in shock, my eyes fixed into the smoldering night. When I regained myself I turned into the tent where she, I, was washing the dirt off of my face and body. I could feel her exhaustion, but then I understood why I came here as soon as she stood. From chaos outside came in a familiar face from the back of the tent that sent electricity through my veins, Gabrielle.

They collided still covered in blood, tangling themselves in eachother's beings, connected as one burning violent storm growling like lions in the wild. They were the same ink in a pen writing a ballad of eternity. The energy they emitted rolled off of them in waves and suddenly I was her, feeling how we worshiped eachother's every particle. Death wasn't an end for us.

And then, I was pulled from this untamed world painfully as if I had been taken apart and forced piece by piece on an atomic level through the eye of a needle into a plane where there senses didn't exist. I couldn't hear, see, smell, taste, or touch until the same voice vibrated through me, " You must remember for the sake of everyone. At 4:18 pm on Thursday, you will required to be at South York station. Everything will fall into place from there. We need you."

In one swift painful burst my eyes opened up and I was gasping for breath in the back of my van again, as if I had been held under water. A slight drip came from my nose and a spot of blood fell onto Cory's shirt. I'm just hoping there was no permanent brain damage involved in that.