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All his grief and his love and his self-hate had brought him back this far, this near to the moment...
It couldn't end now.
After a time, he moved to the living room, his legs pacing, his lips cursing, himself waiting.
The door slammed open.
She stared at him, her mascara smeared, tears upon her cheeks.
"!hell to go Then," he said.
"!going I'm," she said.
She stepped back inside, closed the door.
She hung her coat hurriedly in the hall closet.
".it about feel you way the that's If," he said shrugging.
"!yourself but anybody about care don't You," she said.
"!child a like behaving You're," he said.
"!sorry you're say least at could You"
Her eyes flashed like emeralds through the pink static, and she was lovely and alive again. In his mind he was dancing.
The change came.
"You could at least say you're sorry!"
"I am," he said, taking her hand in a grip that she could not break. "How much, you'll never know."
"Come here," and she did.
Corrida
He awoke to an ultrasonic wailing. It was a thing that tortured his eardrums while remaining just beyond the threshold of the audible.
He scrambled to his feet in the darkness.
He bumped against the walls several times. Dully, he realized that his arms were sore, as though many needles had entered there.
The sound maddened him...
Escape! He had to get away!
A tiny patch of light occurred to his left.
He turned and raced toward it and it grew into a doorway.
He dashed through and stood blinking in the glare that assailed his eyes.
He was naked, he was sweating. His mind was full of fog and the rag-ends of dreams.
He heard a roar, as of a crowd, and he blinked against the brightness.
Towering, a dark figure stood before him in the distance. Overcome by rage, he raced toward it, not quite certain why.
His bare feet trod hot sand, but he ignored the pain as he ran to attack.
Some portion of his mind framed the question "Why?" but he ignored it.
Then he stopped.
A nude woman stood before him, beckoning, inviting, and there came a sudden surge of fire within his loins.
He turned slightly to his left and headed toward her.
She danced away.
He increased his speed. But as he was about to embrace her, there came a surge of fire in his right shoulder and she was gone.
He looked at his shoulder and an aluminum rod protruded from it, and the blood ran down along his arm. There arose another roar.
...And she appeared again.
He pursued her once more and his left shoulder burned with sudden fires. She was gone and he stood shaking and sweating, blinking against the glare.
"It's a trick," he decided. "Don't play the game!"
She appeared again and he stood stock still, ignoring her.
He was assailed by fires, but he refused to move, striving to clear his head.
The dark figure appeared once more, about seven feet tall and possessing two pairs of arms.
It held something in one of its hands. If only the lighting wasn't so crazy, perhaps he...
But he hated that dark figure and he charged it.
Pain lashed his side.
Wait a minute! Wait a minute!
Crazy! It's all crazy! he told himself, recalling his identity. This is a bullring and I'm a man, and that dark thing isn't. Something's wrong.
He dropped to his hands and knees, buying time. He scooped up a double fistful of sand while he was down.
There came proddings, electric and painful. He ignored them for as long as he could, then stood.
The dark figure waved something at him and he felt himself hating it.
He ran toward it and stopped before it. He knew it was a game now. His name was Michael Cassidy. He was an attorney. New York. Of Johnson, Weems, Daugherty and Cassidy. A man had stopped him, asking for a light. On a street corner. Late at night. That he remembered.
He threw the sand at the creature's head.
It swayed momentarily, and its arms were raised toward what might have been its face.
Gritting his teeth, he tore the aluminum rod from his shoulder and drove its sharpened end into the creature's middle.
Something touched the back of his neck, and there was darkness and he lay still for a long time.
When he could move again, he saw the dark figure and he tried to tackle it.
He missed, and there was pain across his back and something wet.
When he stood once again, he bellowed, "You can't do this to me! I'm a man! Not a bull!"
There came a sound of applause.
He raced toward the dark thing six times, trying to grapple with it, hold it, hurt it. Each time, he hurt himself.
Then he stood, panting and gasping, and his shoulders ached and his back ached, and his mind cleared a moment and he said, "You're God, aren't you? And this is the way You play the game..."
The creature did not answer him and he lunged.
He stopped short, then dropped to one knee and dove against its legs.
He felt a fiery pain within his sides as he brought the dark one to earth. He struck at it twice with his fist, then the pain entered his breast and he felt himself grow numb.
"Or are you?" he asked, thick-lipped. "No, you're not...Where am I?"
His last memory was of something cutting away at his ears.
Love Is an Imaginary Number
They should have known that they could not keep me bound forever. Probably they did, which is why there was always Stella.
I lay there staring over at her, arm outstretched above her head, masses of messed blond hair framing her sleeping face. She was more than wife to me: she was warden. How blind of me not to have realized it sooner!
But then, what else had they done to me?
They had made me to forget what I was.
Because I was like them but not of them they had bound me to this time and this place.
They had made me to forget. They had nailed me with love.
I stood up and the last chains fell away.
A single bar of moonlight lay upon the floor of the bedchamber. I passed through it to where my clothing was hung.
There was a faint music playing in the distance. That was what had done it. It had been so long since I had heard that music...
How had they trapped me?
That little kingdom, ages ago, some Other, where I had introduced gunpowder-- Yes! That was the place! They had trapped me there with my Other-made monk's hood and my classical Latin.
Then brainsmash and binding to this Otherwhen.
I chuckled softly as I finished dressing. How long had I lived in this place? Forty-five years of memory--but how much of it counterfeit?
The hall mirror showed me a middle-aged man, slightly obese, hair thi
The music was growing louder, the music only I could hear: guitars, and the steady _thump_ of a leather drum.
My different drummer, aye! Mate me with an angel and you still do not make me a saint, my comrades!
I made myself young and strong again.
Then I descended the stair to the living room, moved to the bar, poured out a glass of wine, sipped it until the music reached its fullest intensity, then gulped the remainder and dashed the glass to the floor. I was free!
I turned to go, and there was a sound overhead.
Stella had awakened.
The telephone rang. It hung there on the wall and rang and rang until I could stand it no longer.
"You have done it again," said that old, familiar voice.