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Then the light, the unbelievable light. The light, and the Divinity, and the lonely old man with his small eyeglasses. With his bible and cross and his absolute faith. “Boy!” You snap back to this, whatever it is. The air is freezing gray. The black is everywhere, you’re reduced to sitting in a room with leaking dark water. It roils, sable fingers playfully tracing the last circle of white that you and Cornelius are sitting in. The ceiling is bowing in, both your chairs start to rot. “Do you have a- oh no wait I’ve got one.” He reaches into his boot and pulls out a match box. He shakes it to a small, dreary tune. He opens it to reveal one, just one. “You have to bleed son. You have to bleed if you’re gonna learn what’s comin’.” He strikes the match. “You know who he is. You saw what happened to me, in San Francisco.” A pipe is in his mouth, he lights it. “Kill em’ Campbell, kill em’ all. Take your lashes, approach the Lord.” He puffs a steady beat on the pipe, despite himself, his lips tremble and his knuckles are pale clutching his bible.
“He’s done for me son, he’s done for me like I never imagined. I never imagined how terrible…” He reaches forward and claws your shoulder. “Listen boy, this is what I can do for ya, each lash is a victory, find a man who can read, find him! Listen now!” The black starts to cover his ankles, tears start to drop from his eyes. “Listen! The man who can read, and your cousins, they’ll help you. Be careful Campbell, the more you learn, the more things will sniff you out, awful things! God Campbell!” Both hands furiously clasp his bible. He opens it again, and pulls out a revolver. His hands shaking, he cocks the hammer. “Please save yourself boy.” The black begins to funnel into his mouth, and he shoots you in the head.
You fall off your cot, face first onto the freezing dirt floor. You are covered in sweat, wrapped in linen, and in pain. A moment passes, then another. You are convinced you are about to die, the anxiety railed up into your stomach when you see a spark of gold under your tent flap. You steady yourself onto your hands and knees, ignoring the shrieking pain in your back, and open the flap. Sunlight pours in, blowing golden breath onto your cheeks. It’s ascendant, you must have slept all afternoon and night into the next morning. You make your way to your feet, only to double back over at the feeling in your back.
You slowly crawl over to the small hand mirror on the table, unhook your top, and assess the pain. Inexplicably, it’s a wound, a bloody stripe the length of your entire back from hip to shoulder, red, bloody, and raw. That on its own is mystifying, but the true fear returns when you clean away the worst of the blood. Dappled in the crevice of the wound is a pattern, all along the interior. It is nothing you’ve ever seen before, a gruesome branding, raised like woodblocks.