“My wife’s name is Diane. We have a two-year old son. Kelly. We named him after a friend of mine.”

Dee’s hand remained still.

“He died in a car accident. I’d known him forever. We grew up together. He was going to move to New York, become a writer. He was so talented. I know he would have made it, you know? You can just tell with some people.” He let the irony of his mistaken prescience slide away into the dark, ignored its withering tail. “Anyway, things happen. You can’t control fate.” He paused, gathered his thoughts. “I think we’re going to die, Dee. I don’t know how long we’ve been down here, but if feels like days, doesn’t it? Probably not, but it’s always so damned dark, and I’ve been going in and out a bit. I’m a little confused, to be honest.”

Matthew stopped talking, released Dee’s fingers.

He lay there, reciting the words Dee had given him. I’m going to get through this. I’m going to live. I’m going to be saved.

His damaged hand throbbed, trapped like a dying animal between his chest and the ground beneath. He let it throb. It was distant, no longer part of his body. He settled his head down again, thought about trying to sleep. Thought about his family.

Something large moved in the dark.

Matthew looked up and around, blind eyes jerking from point to point. “Dee?” he said, loudly. “Dee!”

She didn’t respond.

He reached out his hand, found hers, groped her fingers, pressed them, tried to elicit a response. The sound came from below, a few feet from his head. It was not Dee he heard. It was something else. How could something be moving beneath me? It’s all rubble... it’s impossible.

He looked in the direction of the sound as it rose, squinting desperately to see something amongst the black. There! There, the air wavered. He left Dee’s hand and reached toward it. A ripple in the air, something was coming through, right toward him. He reached for it, moaning with some mad hope, a grimace of desire on his face below wide dilated eyes.

Bright white light erupted from the ripple in the dark. Matthew screamed and withdrew his hand, the pain in his head like two ice picks rammed through his eyes. He slammed his eyelids shut, covered his face and moaned.

Somewhere, deep inside him, beyond the thick veil of pain, he realized. My god, there’s light. There is LIGHT. I’m saved. I’m saved, yes, they’ve found us! He pawed at his eyes, not daring to open them but wanting so badly to see.

The blinding flash had set off an explosion of colors behind his eyelids, swirling rainbows and flickering pinpricks of hot white flashing amidst it all. He opened his eyes oh so slightly.

The area surrounding his trapped body had turned into the black cold of space. A field of stars dense as a glittering black blanket. Blazing specks of a billion bone-white lights flew toward him, eclipsed him. Colorful galaxies spun, pink, green and blue behemoths wallowing in their own ether. His mind expanded, cold and bright and impossibly vast, his jaw dropped in awe as the millions of worlds barraged his fragmented consciousness.

There was a tumultuous rumbling as his body shook and flailed like a rag doll caught in a meat grinder. A thousand miles away he heard Dee’s voice calling to him, but his mind was bursting with kaleidoscopic colors. She was pleading for him to keep his eyes closed, to turn away, to hold her hand. He tried to look away. His head was on fire, his ears buzzed as if a thousand black flies had erupted inside his brain, whispering comforting instructions he could not resist. Look, they said, their voices a mountain of flickering, buzzing wings, countless eyes, twitching, spindly legs. You are saved, Matthew. Just LOOK AT US.

He moaned and reluctantly, slowly, turned his head to stare directly into the eternal light. He stretched open his mouth and watering eyes as widely as he could, welcoming the abyss of death as it flooded into him like a thick black river, filling him with sparkling white-hot worlds, bursting and snapping into fire like synapses, a god’s mind absorbing him from the inside out.

7

THE GREEN TURTLE nightlight appeared to be crawling up the wall. Betsy watched it, waiting for it to move one of its flippers, to inch its glowing body away from the power socket where it was fastened by steel and electricity.

She looked across the room at Margret, who was asleep, breathing easily. She fought the urge to slink out of bed, run to her parent’s room, crawl between them, safe and warm. But they weren’t home yet. They were out, and she could never sleep when they were out at bedtime.

Betsy sighed. Her eyes left the turtle, trailed along the wall to the open closet and the black chasm within. She swore she heard noises from deep within that dark abyss, scratches and grunting. Something coming.

She shuddered, flopped over, tried to close her eyes and escape the world through sleep.

The bedroom door opened, light spilled across her face. She looked up, saw her mother silhouetted against the pale yellow glow of the hallway.

“Mom,” she said, and held out her hands toward the shadow. “Come here, I need a hug.”

Her mother moved to the bed, sat down and embraced her. Betsy breathed in her mother’s warmth, caressed her hand against the fabric of her scratchy black dress.

“How...” she started, but her mother shushed her, released her from her hug. She started again, whispering now. “How was the party?”

“It was fine,” her mother said, her face a dark void. The yellow light glowing behind her made her look like the angels Betsy had seen on posters at Sunday School. She said so, and her mother chuckled, kissed her forehead.

“It’s time for you to go to sleep now,” she said, caressing Betsy’s hair.

Frank came to stand in the doorway. His body was a bright white light, illuminating the entire room.

“Time to sleep now,” he said, too loudly.

Across the room, Margret woke, sat up. She looked at her dad groggily, rubbed her eyes.

Betsy blinked, then pushed away her mother’s hand.

“What happens to us when we die?” she asked, looking skyward.

“Worms,” her mother said. “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,” she said, singsong. Like a nursery rhyme, something from an old book of fables long gone to dust, only remembered by ancient gods and men of magic.

Her mother brought her hand to Betsy’s face once more, but it was not a hand. Never was. It was slick and black and tapered to a pointed end. It pressed into her forehead, then slid across her face, leaving a searing mark, and pushed into her mouth, gagging her.

“I love you,” her mother said.

Margret yelled “Stop!” and jumped from her bed. She ran toward the bright light of her father, but her mother was too fast. Another limb shot out, ripping the fabric of her party dress. It shot impossibly across the room and speared the girl in the stomach, nailed her to the ground.

The girls wiggled, then belched what was inside them. Their mother stood and waited while their souls tore apart, in slow increments, it was always slower in the young, and separated.

“There are a million ways to suffer,” Dee said.

The room was suddenly too small and so it expanded, and their mother with it, swallowing the light. Frank blistered and became a star. The thing’s onyx trunk of a throat worked hard to take it all in, to swallow it all down, until it shone most brightly in the expanse, until it became the sky. A creator.

8

MATTHEW JOLTED AWAKE. His eyes were crusted closed, his ears ringing, canceling any sound from the outside world. He listened to the constant soundtrack of his time in the dark: the blood flowing through his body, the pulsing throb in his temple, the discordant thuds of his pissed-off heart.

An odd verse sprang unbidden to his mind. A prayer he had no memory of learning.

Blood will let blood, on my lips, on my tongue. The spark inside me is yours, the lift of my soul, that energy, yours to feast upon. My flesh is yours. I am without hope. I am without love. My humanity has been stripped from me and hangs in tatters before you, ready to accept your gift, my sacrifice. Your paradise awaits me, because all I am is gone.