I hear the door unlocking. . .

I awakened to the sound of metal clicking and clanging, falling to the ground with a deep thud. I jolted up, a ravenous pain eating through my gut, and tried to roll to my feet. I stood for a moment, horse-blanket in hand, and then fell over. My legs didn't want to obey me.

The door creaked open, letting in rays of lamplight as May entered with a steaming bowl in her left hand. She flinched as she caught sight of me, "Oh my. You don't look so good, boy."

"I don't feel so good. This curse is eating me alive." I let out a weak laugh, looking at the bowl in her hand. The food didn't appeal, despite the ache in my gut. I groaned as my vision fuzzed at the edges, countless dots of black and purple blocking out lamplight. I screwed my eyes shut, feeling another surge of pain.

"Boy?" I heard her approach at a jog, the whisper of her dress filling the predawn. There was a clatter and a thump, a slight vibration that reached my knees. I felt things seize in my chest, my eyes flickering open and peering down. Thick black veins stood stark on my skin, branching out from my heart. Looking lower, past my heart, I could see a strain in the groin of my trousers. "B~o~y?"

Sounds grew long and my vision shrank to pinpricks. The veins on my chest grew more stark by the second, and I looked away from them. I didn't want to see that; I didn't want to see the moment my heart stopped. It was already bad enough that I knew, that I knew, that I was about to die.

I looked up at May, at her concerned eyes hanging a million miles above me. I watched her lips, pain wracking my body as my strength was drawn elsewhere. I saw my empty hand raise, and then fall uselessly to the side. I felt my neck weaken and then fail, refusing to support the horned burden of my head, and I looked to my other hand.

To the rag, the horse blanket, that I'd been holding.

I closed my eyes, my mind made into molasses , and felt my clawed hand go slack.

Two motes of light swirled around the darkness of the ether, twinned and in tandem. They turned and twisted, making spirals of light. They flickered like candleflame, like the flame that sat above a millimeter of wax.

A hallucination.

One of the lights glowed purple, like lilacs, and the other was true white. Despite that, the two were identical. They were the same thing, and they were not, and then could not, and they would not be, but they were. Same and not-same, the barrier between the two tenuous and distinct. Melting and melding and separating and made whole.

Errant thoughts, the last flashing thoughts of a dying mind.

I watched the dancing pair in my mind's eyes, the last showing of some secret thing, and one more thought flashed through my mind.

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