The Seven Habits

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

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.

Reflection of the linen closet door flying open, a pink blur of movement, a completely naked, wild-eyed man, glistening in sweat. Tom? Tom Stark? No. No, no, no…

Hands yanking at her hair, fistfuls with pale, bulbous roots still attached to each strand; she’s pushing, scratching, clawing, screaming. Her attacker’s face leering so close the tips of their noses nearly touch; the linoleum cool and slick against her writhing back. Yelling, meaningless jumbles of words sharpened with animalistic growls and grunts, spittle flying from his snarled lips, she opens her mouth to scream for help, saliva so hot it seems to have been boiled sprays into her mouth.

He’s trying to force his way into her; no, no, not Tom, not Tom Stark, not the friendly insurance agent from down the block, this can’t be happening, she’ll wake up at any moment, a dream, has to be a dream…

You’re a murdering bastard and I hate you, you understand? I hate you!

I didn’t…

Her attacker scurrying out into the hall, the scent of singed flesh as thick and heavy as steam, little bits of flesh and charred eyebrow still sizzling on the end of the curling iron that had been heating near the sink. Not raped, thank God, not raped, but cowering in the corner of the bathroom, shivering, crying, spitting repeatedly because that bastard drooled into her open mouth and it makes her feel dirty, so dirty, like some tiny piece of him is still within her mouth, infecting and tainting her with its presence…

See? You were infected and I had to… A sensation like falling through darkness and reaching terminal velocity instantaneously. Everything seeming to rush away at the speed of light and come crashing together all at the same time. A gasp, a burst of color and perception, the muted sensation of being in another skin, of anchoring into a mind that is fixed to a corporeal form. There is pain… physical pain that can only accompany having a body. There’s something else. He feels at home in this new skin. Like a well-worn chair that has molded and contoured itself over the years to fit the shape of his particular form. Familiarity.

He knows what this body will say before its lips begin to part. He thinks its thoughts like a man reciting a poem with a recording of himself. He knows this body all too well…This time the Eye of Aeons has allowed him to jump into his own head.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The sound of wood scraping over concrete cut through the fog in Ocean’s mind as efficiently as if it were Gauge’s sickle. He was really going to do it, he was going to lock her away in this dingy little room, would fulfill all of Vessel’s dire warnings. Warnings she had so desperately wanted to believe were nothing more than some transparent attempts to turn her against the very people who had taken her in. People she had trusted… people she had loved.

Ocean sprang to her feet and threw her body against the door, hoping it would fly open and catch Gauge unaware. He must have caught the flurry of movement in the shadows, he quickly pressed his shoulder against the other side and Ocean slammed into a surface that was as immovable as the walls surrounding her.

“I hate you!”

Thrusting her hands through the bars, she grabbed for Gauge’s long hair but he pulled back with a laugh, leaving her with nothing more than a few dark strands in her fist.

“Nothing personal, honey… but all that food in Heaven? It won’t last forever, you know. We need some way to … supplement it.”

She wanted to say something that would cut him with its ferocity as thoroughly as he’d cut Vessel. To hurt him in ways he’d never been hurt before and make him see what it was like to bleed, but she could only stand there and glare at that crooked little grin on the smug bastard’s face.

“Now, don’t you start giving me trouble, too. I’ll have to take a bit of that feistiness out of you.”

I want to see him cry, to hear him beg as he tries to squirm away.

“I’m gonna bar this door and then I’m gonna go fuck Levi for a while. Tell her how much I love her. Hold her and kiss her.”