The light above me hung there like a broken halo, an oblong circle of cadmium yellow splintered by the darkness of night. The crown of my head was pressed into the lamp post, and every time my heart beat, my skull knocked against the knurled and tarred wood. I coughed, feeling blood sluice out of me, flowing across my skin like warm milk. Some of it had poured into my boot, and it was thick and slippery between my toes. My sock was soggy, and quickly cooling in the November air. I moved my right arm ever so slightly, and a jet of warmth spurted onto my face, a small rivulet of blood trickling down the slope of my jaw and pooling in the crevice of my mouth.

My sensorium was shutting down, searching desperately for a foothold. What was left of my sight was essentially a descending cone, narrow from the halo falling wide to the earth, encircling me, my own spotlight, my own private sun. My hearing was also trapped inside this cocoon, but was halfway gone; my left ear was reaching for anything, but my right ear was a ringing vacuum of sound, pulled inside out, under water, under blood. All I could feel was divided bilaterally, a straight razor of warmth and cold cutting diagonally from my shoulder to my leg. My body quivered with each beat of my heart, a tightening convulsion in the back of my neck. I watched as my chest rose then slowly fell. With each exhalation I felt new blood spill from somewhere deep inside of me.

“…You don’t even know how lucky you are…”

At my right side, my fingers combed through cold blades of grass, hunting for the smooth plastic of the video camera. Every move of my finger pulled at the tendons in my forearm, shifted the medial head of my tricep. The muscles twitched along my shoulder, and more blood poured out of me, the sound like vomit slapping wetly against the ground.

“…In the Dark Ages, many Christ…i…a…n…s thought that the Pope of Rome was the Antic…h…r…i…s…t…”

At my left side, I felt the cold feather of fingers against my wrist. The way that I was lying, with my head fixed to stare straight up, I couldn’t see anything except the ascending cone of yellow hanging against the velvet night, a perfect composition of flat angles and endless dimension. That same halo of light was now starting to resemble a pineapple ring. So, in truth, I can’t positively say anyone was kneeling next to me, but I could feel the change in the air. It was like standing under a noon sun when a cloud decides to steal the day. The touch was delicate and soft, like a breeze that drops the temperature a fraction of a degree. It felt like the fragile hand of a small child.

“…My fidus Achates…why can’t you see your g…o…o…d fortune…?”

I also couldn’t say whether or not the voice I was hearing was real, a common problem of hallucinations. It sounded like many people speaking at once, phonating like parrots or robots, layers and layers of soulless words, all at different pitches and tones. For the most part, the voices were in flawless synchronization. Every few words, though, one or two of them lagged behind, pulled at the flow, giving the whole voice the effect of a warped record.

“…Scripture concludes that the Antichrist is a ‘man of sin.’ Hence, these men of sin have run the g…a…m…u…t, from Judas Iscariot, to Hitler, to Stalin, even Kissinger. But these were all proven untrue, as you and I both know, and skeptics of the Book have really taken advantage of this to m…o…c…k the prophecies that are, in fact, very t…r…u…e…”

It was slow and deliberate, a demonic chorus trapped inside
my head. The way I heard it, I was reminded of the talking books from my youth, running at sixteen revolutions per minute.

When this thought materialized, the child’s hand at my wrist altered in texture, in weight, from a delicate feathery touch to something coarse and heavy, a beastly capsule pressing against the pulse in my cephalic vein.

Adjusting my eyes, I slowly lowered them downward in a methodical line connecting the faint pinpoints of starlight poking through my cocoon of zero time. I saw the thick head of a mule, its giant outstretched ears looming over me. A thin black forelock was curled between two red eyes, gleaming like polished shooter marbles. As I focused on them, the redness drained from the sockets, rivers of bloody tears falling down the mule’s snout, forked by either nostril into smaller streams. The eyes became solid white, opaque and lifeless. The mule opened its mouth, began forming words within its whinnying and grunting, the winding down of a chorus into a hoarse bray of human speech.

“…The name of the Wild Beast that you will ride to the top of earthly kingdom power is 666...Another way of writing W is VI…Therefore, WWW, as in World Wide W…e…b, is transliterated six hundred and sixty-six…”

My fingers touched the camera, and began probing the many different textures for the protrusion of the record button. I didn’t know if it was on, if it was still recording, but I couldn’t take the chance. I eased the camera around, pointing the lens toward the blackness of the open field, and rested my palm over the microphone.

“…Do I look like Francis?” the mule asked me.

My tongue was thick and heavy, sponging all moisture from my mouth. I replied, “Yes,” but added, “though that was a little before my time.”

“And yet, my question was not lost on you.”

In the distance, I could hear the merciful wail of an ambulance.

“Causality of phenomena will still be established.”

My throat was a clenched fist. If I squeezed hard enough, the words would slip out between the fingers. I squeezed, and the words, “We’ll see,” came out in a whisper.

“You know that you will not die,” the mule said to me. “…post aut propter…”

The siren was close now, maybe at the end of the street. I connected the stars again, slowly upward, focused on the street light without blinking until my eyes burned and my pupils glazed over in tears. The sensation of the hoof lifted away, blood coarsed freely through my wrist. Mere feet from me, I could hear the gravel crumpling beneath rubber tires, the abrupt amputation of the siren’s squawking. I closed my eyes, searing the cocoon wide open.

Can you still hear me?

Yes.

Why?

Because I wanted to tell you what my intention was.

Your intention…

I didn’t think I would die after this or by means of this. After this or by means of it…I will positively live.

When I opened my eyes, there was a flash of lights, a flash of people. Where there was nobody, there was suddenly a small crowd. With the EMT’s swarming me like wolves, I felt like big game, laying there wounded and vulnerable, an overweight moose with broken legs. Police officers were now towering over me. The world was moving under water.

I don’t remember it, but afterward I was told that I kept muttering, “Om Mani Padme Hum,” over and over again. It’s an old mantra of Tibetan Buddhists, and apparently, I kept repeating it while I was in the back of the ambulance, all the way to the hospital. I don’t know why, exactly, or even if I did. What I do remember was being set onto the gurney, lifted into the air, and seeing not more than ten feet from me a little girl in a red jumper dress. She had short blonde hair, and her bangs were pinned back with a bobby pin. Beneath the red jumper she was wearing a blue and white plaid shirt, with puffy sleeves and ruffles. In the crook of her left arm she was cradling a baby doll. Even though this moment lasted just a few seconds, I can carve from my memory a sculpture with amazing detail. I remember that the baby doll actually resembled the little girl who was holding it, though their outfits weren’t identical. I remember that the baby doll was wearing red booties, but they were sewn on, fake. I remember that she was partly made of cloth, partly made of ceramic, and that two of her fingers were missing, so that what was left of her hand looked as if she was signing in ASL, I Love You. I remember that the little girl was barefoot, and she was chewing gum, smacking it loudly from cheek to cheek.

Weightless in the air, muttering “Om Mani Padme Hum,” the little girl looks at me and says, “Hoist with yer own petard?” She had a Southern accent, but it sounded unintentionally deliberate, the speech impediment of a lazy child. I remember looking at her squinty eyes, and then also squinting. I remember thinking that her hand must’ve been the delicate touch I had felt against my wrist, that maybe she was the one who had called for help, the figure I had seen when I stumbled out of the darkness and into the light, the one who had watched me stagger all the way from the middle of the field to where I collapsed in the street.

Rolling backward into the ambulance atop the gurney, I remember straining my neck to gaze longways at her, our eyes meeting in the hollow of my barren, blood-spattered chest, her tiny face framed by my red-soaked boots.

She said to me, “I hope ya come back real soon.” She said, “I hope ya figger out how to make rain stop.”

And then, like the overwhelming relief that surges through you when you wake from a nightmare, the doors of the ambulance came swinging shut.