Quoted By:
>Unto the breach
You do not experience dread or apprehension at the sight of the <span class="mu-r">RED</span>ness. You are relaxed and comfortable right now. The elevator voice told you that you would be safe, and you trust the elevator voice completely. It told you to step confidently, so you do.
Outside the elevator, there is no ground to speak of. You are floating in <span class="mu-r">RED[/i:lit]ness, or rather the REDness is supporting you from all sides— densely, like fog, warmly, like a cupped hand, tightly, like jute rope on bare skin. It could be said to be gripping you. It could be said that you are, from then on, not in physical control: that when you move from place to place, you are being carried, and when you move your eyes or your mouth or arms or twist your neck from side to side, your body is being carefully pushed and spun.
This does not occur to you. You feel safe and comfortable inside the REDness, which after all is your own self. You know it has no intent to harm you. There is only one minor issue: even though you are moved back and forth and up and down, and even though your neck is swiveled all around you, you can find no sign of any specific presence. Everything but the elevator is homogenously, squirmily, tumorously RED.
You mean to speak to the elevator voice, reassuring it that nothing here is wrong, but you have been moved so much you cannot actually find the elevator, and (besides) a mouth is a complicated thing to operate. Something is bothering you, but you don't know what it is.
Eventually your jaw is opened and a RED tendril curls curiously down your throat. After a few exploratory feelers, it unfurls furiously, fuzzing down into your lungs and up to the root of your tongue. Little hooks latch into your bloodstream.
"It's empty," your voice tells the elevator, wherever it is.
Huh. (Your face frowns.) You are still at perfect ease. You are not experiencing dread or apprehension. It is possible you are experiencing a tiny flicker of insight. The place outside the elevator is— it is not the location of the presence, necessarily. But equally it is not empty. It is very much not empty. There is not a single space in it that isn't RED.
When you breathe, now, the RED breathes with you. Or possibly the other way around. You are losing some of your appetite for investigation. You are wishing somewhat that you could see the elevator— not to go inside of it, just to see it. You feel as though you have otherwise seen everything this place has to offer you. The elevator voice did not say you wouldn't experience boredom.
(1/3?)</span>
