The muscles in his forearms began to quiver during the motion as recollection of his prior procedures pulsed through his mind. Crimson droplets beaded at the site of the cut as he drew the knife horizontally across the faded scar on his chest. Flickering squares of red and white bit into his vision as he pressed the knife deeper into his flesh. With practiced precision, and only a fractional, barely perceptible tremor in his motion, he ran the knife slowly, back and forth, along the cicatrix. The knife sunk deeper into his chest as he observed himself performing the act in the mirror. With his free hand he reached out and ran his fingers down the mirror, mimicking the slowly draining blood that was emerging from the wound.
He paused, and closed his eyes, finding red and white rectangles bursting against his eyelids. The knife continued to move back and forth, seeming to obey a will of its own. And then, a strike. The sound of metal scraping, or of a match being struck, broke through the sickening sound of flesh parting, and interrupted the process.
Tristan drew the bloodied instrument from the re-opened gash, and reoriented it along the perpendicular scar that formed the backbone of the blocked, C-shaped mark on his chest. The white flickering overpowered the red, and a comet-like flare shot towards his eyes as the blade separated patched tissue. A rectangular burst of crimson shot up from somewhere below his field of vision, and Tristan found his equilibrium momentarily compromised. A wave of black shot out from the mirror as he pressed his hand against his eyes, and drew the knife downwards. He smelled cheap metal in the air, that of iron, and copper, as the incision was made. A stronger flow came from this vertical opening, and soon, the scarlet stream reached his navel. Tristan moved the knife up and down, the impress into his skin more severe with each north and south stroke. He pressed his eyelids together against the blasts of color assaulting his optics. A dull grey light had joined that of red, white, and black. After many repetitions with the blade, he once again heard the “snick” sound, and felt the slight catch as the blade found its stopping point. For a moment, the colors stopped blasting his retinas, and Tristan took a deep, long, breath.
Equilibrium was restored as Tristan removed his surgical tool from the freshly opened cut. He held the knife down at his side and stared for a long moment at his reflection and the right angle lacerations he had placed on his chest. He knew the third would be the most difficult. He barely moved his knife-wielding hand back towards the operation site when the colors started to pulse back into his vision. As he dug the knife into the horizontal scar, a blaze of reds, whites, blacks and greys, burst into his eyes. He recoiled at the assault upon his vision, and felt an intense headache rip into the back of his head. He pressed his eyelids together, gritted his teeth, and declined his head towards the floor. His right hand had not ceased to carve into the discolored flesh. The pain in his skull intensified, and Tristan clenched the fist of his left hand until the knuckles whitened. As the knife sunk deeper, the pain in Tristan’s head worsened to painful degrees, and the blasts of colors penetrated through his forced-shut eyelids. Tristan roused all resolve that he could muster, gritted his teeth, squeezed the fingers of his left hand into a fist, and tensed the muscles in his body. He then opened his mouth as wide as he could, and wailed all of his pain into the stale air of the room. He opened his eyes and……
He was standing at an intersection of two alleys. He was facing a direction that continued for a hundred yards or so before becoming lost in darkness. The ground beneath him was a mixture of loosely packed gravel and dirt. The two-story buildings that surrounded him were all constructed of dull-red brick. Inset in the buildings were windows with white frames and gray tinted panes of glass. The sky above the buildings was an obsidian canopy, and devoid of moon and stars. He saw so one in front of him, so he cautiously craned his neck around to glance over his shoulder. The view was the same. There was the same shabbily paved alleyway, flanked by the chalky red brick buildings, with white window frames, containing grey tinted panes.
Tristan shifted his stance, turned his body to the right, and gazed down the adjunct pathway. There was a set of three, very small, brick, steps, a few yards from him that led down towards more of the casually strewn pebbles and dirt. Otherwise, it appeared identical to the passageway that was now to his left and right. It seemed the same that is, until the mist started to billow towards him from the darkness beyond the steps.
It was a thick, full, rolling, ivory cloud, that first enveloped the alley in front of him, creeped up the rise of three steps, gathered around his ankles, and then spread down the other sections of the T. Like a rising tide slowly claiming the shore, the mist kept swelling, and churning, and increasing in density, and ascending, until Tristan found himself waist-deep in the fog. It became so thick that Tristan could barely see the gravel at his feet, and as the mist rose it began to occlude the oxblood buildings with their ivory window frames housing their panes of cloudy gloom.
Tristan breathed deeply. He brought the rising mist into his nostrils and lungs. There were notes of honeysuckle in this turbid, alabaster, fog. He even noted lavender, and lily when he drew in this rising haze. As he breathed it in, he felt a warming tingle quickly surge through his body. He took in the mist like sipping a soothing, calming, tea, rich with chamomile, mint, and lemon. He felt at peace.
And then it shifted.
Tristan was staring transfixed, into what little he could see of the bottom part of the T, or the right section, if you turn it to the side. He felt blissful, pacified, and even docile. Then the mist before him wavered and shimmered. A person-sized alteration in the consistency occurred. He could feel the fog-shrouded form move toward him. He couldn’t make out the features through the ivory haze, but the break in his reverie, and the infinitesimally small pause between inhale and exhale, told him all that he needed.
He brought his left hand to his mouth, and saw tiny droplets of moisture from the fog clinging to his fingertips. His pressed his index and middle finger to his lips, extended his tongue, and tasted the mist. Notes of honey, lavender, and lily graced his taste buds, and triggered not far into the past memories. He held all the senses tenuously in his mind and let the bygone comforts warm him.
As he stood mesmerized, the aberration moved closer. This diaphanous form blurred and floated amidst the cloud towards Tristan as he dwelled on the sudden mental deluge of past memories.
She drew nearer to him. She was so close that the smells intensified as he breathed her in. He couldn’t see how far in the mist, but he sensed that she was but a handbreadth away. And he knew, that the form moving through the fog was only his idea of what she looked like. He knew she was the mist. She was the dirt and gravel in front of the house where they had lived. She was the ruddy brick, the white frame, and the grey panes of the house that they shared. He took his left hand from in front of his face and reached out, he could feel the tingling memory heat warming his palm at his hand drew closer to hers. Her hand was right in front of his, he just had to touch her hand to merge with the memories…….
Suddenly, another proximity jolted Tristan’s senses. He became aware of another, conflicting contact. Closer yet than his left hand was to hers, and bitterly cold, was the spectral form’s touch upon Tristan’s right hand. The fingers were working to pry the knife free from the severe grip that he maintained on the blade. Tristan wrenched free from the grasp of the ghost, staggered backwards, turned to his left, and sprinted toward the distant darkness of the alley.
The mist was thick around him at first, but as he strode towards a point unknown, the mist began to thin. He continued to run, and a short while later, the mist no longer was above and around him. Another fifty yards, and Tristan’s head and shoulders were above the white flood. When he could breathe fresh air again, Tristan’s resolve intensified. No longer lulled by the tranquilizing memory scents and tastes, Tristan knew that all he needed was to distance himself from this pallid, billowing mass and he could return from this deceptive dream.
He clenched his teeth, pumped his arms faster, and willed his legs to increase their speed. As he accelerated he caught glimpses of polished metal at the right side of his vision, reminding him of what still lay unfinished. Tristan powered down the unending alley, and the mist was soon at his waist, then knees, then ankles. Soon after, the small amount that remained, was barely puffs of smoke that swirled harmlessly at his feet.
Still, Tristan continued to run. He fixed his gaze to the furthest point of darkness in the alley and pounded his feet on the dirt and gravel. The crunching and thumping of his feet on the shabby paving became rhythmic, and Tristan continued, trance like, for what seemed like hours, one foot in front of the other, arms churning, chest heaving, lungs taxed and ragged, and then suddenly……
There was no more darkness in front of him. There was no more alleyway. There was no more chipped stone and crumbled earth below his feet on which to run. There were no traces of chalky memory fog at his feet. There were no more garnet buildings, no pearl colored frames, and no graphite panes.
There was a mirror in front of him.
Tristan stood impossibly still, and stared at his reflection, his hand paused between strokes of the knife now embedded into the flesh of his chest. The comet-flares of reds, grey, whites, and blacks had stopped. He blinked slowly, just to be sure. But upon opening, his eyes only viewed freshly opened wounds, a knife, his toned upper torso, his own melancholy countenance, and fractions of the wall behind him. He closed his eyes, deeply inhaled the fragrance-free air of the room, and sighed.
Within seconds, he finished the final incision.