He stumbles through the muddy field, hair matted and caked in browns and reds, his right hand bleeding, clenching and releasing in a nervous random pulse. He sheds the remains of his selfhood as it trails behind him like thin, black thread unraveling from a spool. The timbre of his heartbeat betrays just how dry, how hollow, his being had become. He arrives at the fence. Looking first left and then right, he throws a leg over the wire while holding onto the crown of the damp decaying post. He makes half a turn as he swings his left leg over to follow his right, but snags his pants on a thin rusted nail. The fabric tears with a brief proclamation. Just above and inside his knee a new cut appears. Once he would have yelped as the metal gouged his skin. In another lifetime he would have returned to the house, gone up to the bathroom, all slate and silver, its skylight ushering in the sharp gray light, and tended to his pain. He would have dabbed his wound with a wet cloth, washed it carefully with soap while wincing slightly, then applied gauze under white elastic tape. Today - the wound issues blood unacknowledged.
The field turns to rock as he begins his climb. A small crimson bird hops before him on the rocks and blurs as it shakes its head. Always a few rocks ahead of him, the bird stretches its neck and inclines its beak with unknown meaning. The man is tired but does not pause. He continues to climb, the small bird understanding and showing the way. With a short blast of its wings the bird crests the ledge and disappears. The man follows.
He's on a plateau devoid of rocks and trees, of a moderate size and nearly smooth. The man forces his breathing to slow so he can hear. Praying he isn't too late, he wonders, which direction will it come from? Will it emerge from a gap between clouds? A resonance rising up through his feet? Or would the sound simply wrap him like a shroud, tight and complete, eliminating will? His breathing now quiet he perceives the mild breeze, he listens to the soft tap as blood falls in droplets from his right middle finger. And then - he stops his breath completely, mouth hanging open, his arms lifting slowly from his sides, his eyelids shut and his cheeks quivering, he's amazed and overwhelmed. The sound the sound the sound the sound descends upon him and pushes his bones into the dirt, collapses his skull, crushes his brain, his mind, his thoughts - his flatness ever growing, a spreading shadow upon the earth.
