William Rose - The Seven Habits

The next thing I do remember clearly is layin’ in my cell. Even though there’s a mattress beneath me, it feels like I’m on a slab on concrete and my muscles are so sore that I can barely move. So I’m just racked out there, starin’ up at the ceiling and tryin’ to ignore the smell of piss and vomit that seems to have soaked into every molecule in there.

I’m thinkin’ about Ocean. What she’s doin’, if she’d been eatin’ right… hell, if she’s even still alive for that matter. Last time I was with her, she was gettin’ bitch slapped across the face by that fucktard Gauge. Anything could have happened to her and I’d never know. So yeah, I was worried about the girl. For all I knew, she was dead and the re-death of Clarice fuckin’ Hudson had no impact on her miserable life what-so-fucking-ever.

And then I felt that ‘ole familiar wind tuggin’ at my soul. I hear the sounds all around me, feel my consciousness being stripped away, the jabs of pain that made my sore muscles seem like spa treatment. And it’s right there, man. Halfway between my cot and the stream of people who kept finding reasons to stroll by my cell for a quick peak at society’s latest monster.

Now, I actually experienced two things when the Eye pulled me in. The first one, I ain’t gonna tell you about. I figure there’s some things a man just has to keep to himself, ya know? Not secrets really. More like these intensely personal experiences that burrow down deep inside, carve out a little niche, and graft onto your soul. These are the types of things that change a man. They can either crush him like a cigarette butt beneath the heel of Fate or make him even more focused. More determined to do anything and everything he can.

But that’s all I’m gonna say about that. I will, however, tell ya about the second thing I experienced. This was one of those overviews of time… like I’d been lifted up on high by the wings of an angel with the immediate future spread out wide below me. Just this disembodied observer, yet somehow, I could still cry, if you can dig that. And I wept just like a little sniveling bitch… because I could finally see the truth of the matter.

Within the coming months something changes, man. I don’t know, maybe it’s a mutation. Maybe environmental variables, some shit FEMA released in the air to try and fight this thing with, or maybe the sickness was really just a symptom all along, ya know? Something that gradually changed aerobic cellular respiration into anaerobic.

All I know for certain is that it won’t matter if you’re infected. Not anymore. People are gonna die just like they’ve been doin’ for millenia. Old age, accidents, murder, suicide… but they’ll still come back. Those who get bit or scratched? Well, that will just kinda speed the process along. But, sooner or later, damn near everyone comes back.

Turns out, I suppose, that you can’t fight nature after all. Not really… I gave it one helluva try, though, didn’t I?

My first experience, that personal one that I won’t tell ya about, let me know that there were things I have to prepare for, things looming just around the corner. We have a limited amount of time in this skin, ya know, and we have to make the most of every possible minute. To some people, that means tickin’ off check marks on their bucket lists.

But, for me, it means trying to do everything within my power to make sure my special little girl stays as safe as possible.

I couldn’t stop the contagion, and now I’m gonna be locked away so society can sleep easy, secure in the knowledge that another madman has become nothing more than an interesting blurb in some Time-Life series.

But the apocalypse is comin’, man, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do to stop it.

You may think you’ve written the last chapter in the Adventures of Bosley Coughlin, but I’m here to tell ya, jack… my story’s not over.

Not by a long shot.

The Eye of Aeons swirls like a vortex of perfect darkness. Within its currents and eddies, space-time crashes against itself like waves cresting over breakers in a lightless sea. Centuries and millennia swish and churn, distant lands dissolving into shifting patterns of molecules, energy sizzling like monstrous slabs of bacon in the kitchen of God. All the while, billions of voices drift in and out as dialects and accents melt into a wordless drone that originates from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.

The sense of being trapped inside a cramped tunnel, that claustrophobic panic which feels as if everything is constricting like the coils of a giant serpent, squeezing and undulating, growing tighter and tighter as space seems to collapse in upon itself. At the same time, there’s also the knowledge that this place is limitless, a human body could travel his entire lifetime through the tumultuous void and feel as if no progress had been made at all. Distance and time mean nothing here, they are as formless as the consciousness of the man who’d been pulled, like space dust, into the gravity of a black hole.

He has memories of the cycling hues of color that existed on the other side of the event horizon, the way it seemed like a radial aurora borealis in the air, and how powerless he’d been before its might.

These aren’t exactly memories; he exists in a multitude of places and times simultaneously, each one happening currently, happening now . The sensations and experiences of a million lifetimes, of every possibility that has ever existed, blended into a shifting tapestry of perception… Here, he is nothing; here, he is everything, and all points in-between.

Normally, he passes through the center of the Eye in what his obstinate consciousness thinks of as an instant. He is sucked through one side and spit out into the mind of someone else in a different time and place. For some reason, he is now trapped in a holding pattern, like a plane circling an airport, waiting for clearance from the tower. He stays within the Eye of Aeons, waiting for something to change as millennia co-exist around him.

He can sense that he isn’t alone… He can feel another presence seeping into the core of his own being. He can feel it’s confusion, the panic tinged with remorse, and a sadness unlike any he’s ever known; but there’s anger there, as well. Like pinpricks of fire that jab him repeatedly, this outlander’s thoughts invade his own.

You. You did this to me. You.

I set you free . I saved you from—

You killed me.

You were already dead, you were dead the moment I laid eyes upon you. Let your spirit pass now, be at peace and move on.

You did this.

Flashes of a lifetime burst into clear focus in the darkness.

A crying little girl being pushed toward a giant Easter Bunny by her parent’s encouraging hands.

Pointing at the Washington Monument as her sixth-grade class presses their faces against tour bus windows.

That awkward first kiss, giddy with nervousness.

Clapboard hats flying into the air, kissing by candlelight, slipping on ice and falling into the snow as sidewalk people stroll by without a moment of hesitation.

You took all this away.

You were infected.

Fear burst into the formless void like an atomic explosion, pummeling him with rapid-fire shots of terror that burned hot as phosphorus in the darkness. More snatches of imagery, like quick-cut jolts of memories best left buried and forgotten in the tides of time.

A bathroom he now knew all too well, the slatted door of the linen closet closed and dark on the other side.

The whine of a hair dryer, humming that seemed light and happy, and her reflection, hair with wet tangles, in the mirror. Switching the dryer off, laying it on the counter, counting brush strokes while the stomp and clap rhythm of Lady Gaga’s Teeth filters through the thin walls.