Sympathy for the Devil

I hurtle backwards, blowfly no longer battering itself to death against the glass,, the droning snarl of high-altitude British airships discharging their deadly cargo deafening as flying debris hurtles past me and a very, very old man in a hospital bed in an old-fashioned parlor somewhere in London, nurse texting oblivious, his red eyes veiled by pale lids tracking back and forth, a wind-up toy tank winds down in broken circles upon the red-poppy carpet…

Swallowing a scream, I plummet through the void, strange false teeth and my great grandfather's magnifying glass gripped in one hand, shorn white hair in the other. The dragon who is many releases me, deliberately tipping over the silver pitcher in a cascade of frigid mercury and faded paper flowers with an echoing laugh.