Fourth Day (Chapter One- IV & V)

Hi everyone.

I know I’ve been very AWOL. I’m going through a bit of selective writer’s block, but hopefully, that’ll be sorted out very soon and I’ll be back to writing posts.

Let’s not forget that voting for the Nigerian Blog Awards is still going on. So if you want to vote for this blog, or any of your favorite blogs, please CLICK HERE

Alright, so we continue with the First Chapter of Fourth Day by my brother Remy. Here’s Sections IV & V.

Enjoy.

 

IV

Something happened to Nedeseh. It wasn’t anything fatal, at least not to his mind, but it forced him to acknowledge that there is no such thing as ‘being totally alone’. He was walking through the corridors of the ‘Half-Moon’ council when he saw the doors to their meeting room. They had always been told, outside of general meetings, not to approach there alone, but always with a senior member. He stood in front of the doors, thinking about knowing what was behind the warning. He then turned away and heard voices…voices that were not those of men, women, or the living. They seemed like the angry whispers of a creature defeated by hunger and death.

“This child was fortunate.”

“Perhaps it was wisdom beyond his active mind, under his awareness, that warned him?”

“No. I sense the ‘gap’ within him.”

He pretended to stare at the door in wonder, but a great fear built within him. He first saw a flicker, and then some flickers followed it. His mind made a necessary jump to realize he wasn’t seeing a flicker of his reality, but that he was literally burning his way into the next reality. He finally saw what Nda Waniko spoke about. The first Long-Shadow seemed to materialize out of nothing, but Nedeseh’s faculties quickly came together to point out why there was no such thing as an empty darkness. He realized that he had seen them when he first saw the stranger. They bore broken wings that seemed to fold and unfold restlessly from remorse or regret from a bad choice that eternity wouldn’t be enough for them to out-live.

“You see us finally, don’t you, child?” one of them said in what could be taken for surprise.

With courage he did not feel, he asked, “What is the ‘gap’ that you see in me?”

Then they came into full view as they ‘hovered’ to him.

“Your wings are broken, yet you do not touch the ground. Why? Is it a curse you bear?”

Nda Waniko suddenly appeared next to him and pulled him away from the Long-Shadows.

“Must you always taunt death and the forms she is subject to?”, he said in a quiet, angry voice.

Nedeseh looked at him with searching eyes and Nda Waniko withdrew from him by about three paces, but he kept up without moving. Nda Waniko ran and the boy still kept up with him.

“I…I see you, Nda. I can’t explain it. Too many things, too quickly, but I can see you.”

The Stranger suddenly grabbed Nedeseh and covered him with a deep darkness he could not run from. The darkness was so void and complete, he was afraid that he had just died. The stranger then reached for his hands. An eerie illumination revealed his face to the boy.

“Someday you will understand what you almost did.”

Nedeseh felt vulnerable and lost.

“What I almost did? He was running away from me. I saw something that called to me. Something…”

“You didn’t see something. You saw a thing. You called to it and he had to protect it from you.”

“What could it have been?”

“The last thread in his cord of life. It had to be frayed for him to have what you share with him.”

“Don’t you share it with us?”

The Stranger laughed gently.

“As far as scoldings go, this one doesn’t have the necessary impact on you.”

Nda Waniko joined them. He was upset. Very upset.

“You never did anything like this when you were his age, did you?”

The Stranger pulled Nda Waniko away from the boy in what seemed, in the darkness, like a continent away to the boy. The fear in him stopped. All that remained was to exercise patience. And he did that well.

“Well, did you?” Nda Waniko asked again in an angry voice.

The Stranger nodded in an way that showed his embarrassment.

“I did. He was protected from me as I have protected you. Forgive him. Had he known what he was doing, he probably would have restricted himself to a fledgling acolyte’s level for another generation.

“It is important that he doesn’t do so. It is most important. If he tries to fight what we both know he is becoming, he will destroy a necessary balance that has already started to ‘lean’ on him. He will destroy himself with fear. It seems he is stronger than I thought. The balance doesn’t hold any respect for age, but rather for ‘capacity’.”

Nda Waniko looked at the Stranger and called him by a name no one dared to.

“Nedeseh, I know you’re happy to see the boy. But I think his coming is too early. To make matters worse, I have identified his ‘anchor’ already.”

The Stranger paused then said to no one, “Respect for privacy is respect for yourself, boy.”

Nedeseh suddenly found himself back in the halls of the Half-Moon chambers. He could hear them discussing. Now he could see the Long-Shadows. But he wasn’t afraid; merely reminded that he still had a lot to learn. And that was what started his real journey.

 

V

Some nights later deep into the rainy season, the acolytes and older disciples were gathered again in an open field. The Ndas stood before them, illuminated with a glow from within. They were slightly tense but the acolytes couldn’t understand what was going on. The disciples did.

“Slavers have come again to raid the subjects of the kingdom we protect. As expected they have run to hide in the hill forests. It is our task to ‘discourage’ their incursions. Most of you have not killed before. I hope you do. It is important that you do not seek their death, but they can be ‘difficult’. They have often brought their own special guard to fight us off. They have always failed. But they get stronger and wiser with every encounter. We must keep the upper hand and have losses.”

Nda Yakubu said these words in a deep, grating voice. There was no mistaking of his meaning.

Nda Waniko suddenly appeared next to Nedeseh.

“You. Come with me.”

They were suddenly in a very dark place and surrounded by corpses suspended by chains.

“These are the true forms of the Long-Shadows. I sense they are employing the undead. We must do like-wise.”

He then turned to the corpse with the most chains and said, “Rise, Long-Shadow. Battle awaits you tireless warriors.”

The corpse shivered without warning, making an eerie jingling noise. It straightened up then fell back, just as a strange scream of anguish rose from within the cavernous prison. Then the first Long-Shadow arose, covered in a green flame that burned in angry emerald-green hues. Soon the place was fully lit in a blend of green and orange light and about seven Long-Shadows stood around them.

The first one possessed neither wings nor their dead, factual words. He seemed to care about what he said. His bearing seemed regal.

He walked up to the both of them. “This is the next Emptiness? I can see the gap in him. It is at home with him.

“Boy, my name is Etsu Bagidi. I was a king sworn to protect my people till the end of my life. I took on this form to extend it to the end of the world.

“Nda Waniko expects then to employ the services of the ‘sand sprites’. I can see you met with one.”

Nedeseh’s jaw was locked in fear. This thing said it was a king. Of his people. He had never even heard of him before.

“Wh… what is the gap that y…you speak of?” he half-stuttered.

“I will explain later. Now. Come.”

There was a loud roar and the green fire filled the room and when it died down, they stood at the top of a hill.

It was dawn and they met the wind blowing at full strength, when it suddenly died down to a literal whisper. Etsu Bagidi nodded as the whisper rose and fell as if in conversation.

“Tell the 3rd column to stand back.”

Nedeseh suddenly noticed there was a man’s shape that seemed to dance undecidedly between becoming more corporeal or simply fading into complete invisibility. It turned to look at him before not standing there at all. He couldn’t tell the moment it left.

“Nda Waniko, it seems they’re intent on engaging us rather than hunt for slaves. They have earth-giants with them. It might have to do with the defeat of their king’s son.”

Nda Waniko managed a humoured smile,”You think?”

The wind picked up into a howl until Nedeseh picked up a thin human laugh distinctly threading through it.

It was the Long-Shadow King’s laughter. The green flame burned fiercely around him in an impossibly healthy verdue green and it revealed a living shape like his human form.

“Is this the result of ‘cheating death’?”, Nedeseh asked himself, “Whatever this is, this is not life.”

 

Fourth Day (Corrections)

Hi everyone. I had a particular post I planned to write for today, until something happened yesterday. I hung out with Remy yesterday, and he pointed out to me that what I had given y’all to read as Chapter One of Fourth Day was actually section one of Chapter One.

*dodges all the stones and rotten tomatoes*

However though, I realized that the entire chapter is quite long; long enough to be very tedious to read here. So instead of giving one chapter a month, I’ve decided that I’ll break the chapter into sections and put it up on the fourth day of every week, which Thursday for all purposes. So today, we’re going to rehash Section one which y’all have already read, and then sections two and three. The next sections will be up next week…and so on, till next month when Chapter Two comes out.

Make una no vex o.

Let’s not forget that voting is still going on for the 2011 Naija Blog Awards, and you can vote for your favorite blogs by clicking HERE.

So then, on with the First Chapter of Fourth Day.

Fourth Day (Chapter One)

I

It was a rush of light followed by a solid darkness. He was told to always remember his name. His true name. As out of body experiences go, this was as much as his mind could grasp without fragmenting into detached splinters of memories. He heard roars of things hungry for things not flesh, blood and bone. The roars spoke with a sentience older than time. It was the kind that had always been. If he could shiver, he would have, but all he was left with was a sense of something like complete, infant-like helplessness. He was experiencing death. Lightning flashed around him with such fury that he suspected each bolt might have been a once-living being cut down in his/her prime. With this intuition he understood what it meant not to fear the first death. It did not compare with the promise of finality that echoed in the darkness, an emptiness that seemed eager to absorb him into its history known only to the first dead souls. Nothing was truly random.

He thought of looking up, but he let it go, because he had no sense of direction or balance. He just ‘drifted’ along. The lightning became even more fierce, tearing at the darkness and he fully realized it wasn’t a storm of clouds and rain. It was a storm of life looking to catch him and bring him back. The lightning became more purposeful and fiercer. It sought him out with a distinct desperation, seeking him out as one would seek an important thing. He felt a shiver and his logical mind told him he was quickly re-acquiring his body. He had no idea of what to do next to speed him out of the nothingness that was quickly separating him from the living. He heard his old name being called out by something close to him. He remembered stories of spirits claiming a man when he responded to his name. He didn’t want to answer. He knew it would be death, sure and unyielding. He recalled what the elders told him.

“Remember your name. Even a fool can do that without proving how different he is from the others who barely returned.”

He started to call his name out, and then he heard others calling his name as well, in a kind of chant. Soon he found himself being held down by 7 of his peers. His body felt alien, estranged to him. As he looked about him, he found he saw past the ‘solid’ and could actually see the ‘true nature’ of things. He wept from the shock. He had only taken the first step towards a journey to the true nature of reality. Reality as it truly was when the first lights were called into being.

He looked at the men who stood around him. His eyes hurt, his lungs were numb but working, his limbs seemed to relate to more than one shade of reality. This feeling spread throughout his body. It seemed he was very tired and at the same time he was not. An elder signaled to the others.

“This one’s transition seems to still be going on. It seems he connected with something between the gates. Whatever it was, it took a liking to him.”

There was a silence in the room and the boy suddenly realized another had joined them. They gave him wide-berth as he walked towards the boy. His face was young, but his gait, his hair and his eyes spoke of an age beyond that of anyone else in the room.

“I see. I never liked coming to these transition ceremonies. But I could not stay back. I recognize what happened to him. It called out to me.”

He walked to the boy and asked, “What is your name? The name they gave you to bring yourself through the gates and back?”

The boy looked at the elders and they nodded assuredly to him to answer the question.

“Nedeseh”

The stranger smiled and said, “There is no coincidence after all. That was my name. It is given to the least likely to succeed in line with ‘established’ traditions. It happens very infrequently. Very infrequently. The last time it was used was over 50 generations ago…”

An elder spoke up, “You speak too much. The boy cannot take more information. He will be confused.”

The truth was the boy was disoriented. The fact was the boy did bring something with him and it spoke to the stranger the way a Lion would greet another.

“That boy was me. When the time is right, you will drop Nedeseh and pick up mine. A heritage older than anything you can imagine outside of everything you know awaits you.”, the boy heard in his spirit.

He looked at the stranger, who looked back at him and said, “We will meet again. Soon.”

 

II

It is a strange to me that people find some things strange, like the fact that paranormal things occur in most societies, but under different names like vampires, werewolves…but that is for another time.

The stranger spent his time observing the boy’s progress as an acolyte of the Half-Moon Chamber. Depending on certain pre-dispositions he has, he might be of the Light or of the Shadow.

To be of the Light or of the Shadow had nothing to do with good or evil, clean or unclean, right or wrong. The man who founded them made them understand that there are only degrees of light, complete darkness does not exist. But all things function according to the least level of light they can use. Members of the ‘Shadow-Circle’, and indeed of the ‘Light-Circle’, do a lot more than just see with the levels of light. So much more.

The lessons Nedeseh started with were akin to learning a ‘new maturity’. In the old days, acolytes were chosen just before their adolescent years. Their testosterone levels were about to climb…they would need all they could get. So as they got used to older, bigger bodies, they would also adapt to their post-transition phase.

Wankiko was the Nda, or father, that guided their awareness. He brought them into an open field at night and had them stand in silence for about an hour. It felt like an eternity. Then there was a loud explosion. They all started to run and suddenly they were in different location. Nedeseh found himself in a desert. The air tasted differently and he was puzzled by the sudden cold. He then saw a girl with the same expression walking ahead of him. He tried running up to her and suddenly found himself standing next to her. Then she was behind him. He was about to turn to where she stood and he was behind her.

This game of tag continued until the dawn was near.

He saw her shade of skin. She was Bedouin, but he didn’t know that. She just seemed to be a darker shade of albino to him. She spoke to him in a tongue he couldn’t grasp at first, then after her fifth sentence he ‘heard’ her voice; her true voice. The voice she hears when she speaks to herself.

“Don’t tell me you are deaf?” she said to herself, frustrated obviously with his silence.

“No. I’m not deaf.” he replied and she stood still in half-fear, half-amazement.

Then the stranger appeared next to them. He looked at the girl and said something in her language. It calmed her down. He turned to Nedeseh and laughed.

“Your teachers haven’t travelled this far before. That’s why they couldn’t find you. Do you even know where you are?”

Nedeseh said, “The Sahara desert, where the slave caravans travel.”

The stranger looked at him evenly then asked, “How did you know this?”

Nedeseh wasn’t sure and the look on his face confirmed this. The stranger said something to the girl and she suddenly vanished.

“Come. Let’s get you back to your people.”

Nedeseh turned to see the girl and she literally disappeared into the wind like a dream bordering on a nightmare. The stranger laughed at him.

“You think that’s disturbing? Wait till you realize what ‘you’ did.”

The stranger took hold of his hand and they burst into the darkness to appear in the midst of the other acolytes gathered by the elders. The look on the faces of the elders suggested they had lost a battle they never wanted to fight in the first place.

“He wasn’t found by any of you because he stepped out farther than any of you has had the courage to try reaching. And on his first try.”

Nedeseh was stunned by the words of the stranger. The elders didn’t share the amusement of the stranger. They quickly gathered Nedeseh amongst his peers. The stranger nodded at everyone present and suddenly wasn’t there anymore.

Nedeseh was now curious about the stranger. Very curious. It must have been all over his face because Nda Waniko placed a hand on his shoulder then gave him a look that promised to exchange his patience for the truth.

III

Nedeseh grew in the art, gave all he could to it, but it took even more from him than he thought he had. He could travel through the space between shadows and lights with ease. All of them could. They even had an advanced game of tag and all you had to do was touch someone from behind. Nedeseh loved playing that game so much. He never really ‘experienced’ his first run and he hoped he could recapture the ‘feeling’. All the acolytes did.

Like the time Nedeseh discovered a new angle running. He came in late into the game but he was told the most impulsive of them was ‘catching’ everyone else. He had decided not to run away, but to run on one spot. To be more accurate, he ran so as not appear to be running.

The first few tries the earth seemed to race up from beneath him and met him very hard on his ass. When he adjusted his timing a bit, he ended up in the earth neck-deep. It was almost like being buried alive. He ran out and found himself hugging the earth with gratitude. Had he ended up in a rock-formation, he would have been killed for the second and last time. He adjusted his timing and this time ended up chest-deep in the red earth. He looked at the game so far and noticed the others were too engrossed to realize what he was doing. He pushed even harder and ended up waist deep. It was better than the first try, but he hated the grains of sand accumulating in his clothes. Then knee-deep, then ankle-deep…then he kept his ‘relative’ standing position. He pushed himself to do it faster and faster that when he was ‘ambushed’, he ran behind and tagged the boy. The boy turned around to see him, and then screamed in fear as he ‘ran’ 25 paces away from Nedeseh. Nedeseh was almost confused until he saw he had outrun his illusion of himself. It stood where he had been practicing running on one spot. It was breathing and then when he recognized the moment he decided to run off. Then the illusion looked at him with a face a little older than he was. It winked at him, and then faded away. The boy overcame his fear and walked over to where the illusion had been performed. Both of them had lost breath from the experience.

“That was the best surprise I have ever seen since they made us do the first run that night.”

Nedeseh smiled and said he thought so too.

“But you are still the best ‘catcher’ amongst us.” Nedeseh offered.

The boy studied the patterns on the floor, “I’m guessing you tried it about…23 times? Or you were not counting?”

“My name is Nedeseh.”

“My name is Pandieh.”

“Want to try what I did?”

“No. I don’t think I have what you have, Nedeseh.”

“What do you mean?”

“That trick was not your trick. It had a life of its own. It belonged to itself.”

“I don’t understand…”

“It looked at you when you stood behind me.”

Nedeseh was confused because he could tell Pandieh was not lying, but he didn’t know how to explain it away either…and it did wink at him.

He got so very curious on grounds that would prove to border dangerously on disciplinary action, had he been caught…every time. Nda Waniko grew wary of Nedeseh’s influence and called all the tiers of the acolytes together to explain their reason for being and their need for discipline. He pointed out the danger of going where you’re not prepared for. He spoke about the Long-Shadows and Nedeseh’s tier were wondering what he was talking about.

“When the time comes, you will see them. You will see them. The sight of them has driven bolder men than you mad with fear…and they do more than just frighten mortal life. They guard you.”

Eventually they all grew out of the search…almost all of them anyway.

Nedeseh’s best friend was a boy called Pandieh and those 2 were trouble. Nda Waniko knew this as well as all the other elders, but he resisted any suggestions to separate them. He insisted that the bond would help in the long run.

“None of you has lived long enough to see a circle being completed. There’s only one of you here that knows how important it is for these boys to stay close. Even the griots know what I speak of. So kindly do not assume my reasons for insisting. Should you live long enough to understand the wisdom in my words, remember this day.”

Fourth Day (Chapter 1)

Chapter One.

It was a rush of light followed by a solid darkness. He was told to always remember his name. His true name. As out of body experiences go, this was as much as his mind could grasp without fragmenting into detached splinters of memories. He heard roars of things hungry for things not flesh, blood and bone. The roars spoke with a sentience older than time. It was the kind that had always been. If he could shiver, he would have, but all he was left with was a sense of something like complete, infant-like helplessness. He was experiencing death. Lightning flashed around him with such fury that he suspected each bolt might have been a once-living being cut down in his/her prime. With this intuition he understood what it meant not to fear the first death. It did not compare with the promise of finality that echoed in the darkness, an emptiness that seemed eager to absorb him into its history known only to the first dead souls. Nothing was truly random.

He thought of looking up, but he let it go, because he had no sense of direction or balance. He just ‘drifted’ along. The lightning became even fiercer, tearing at the darkness and he fully realized it wasn’t a storm of clouds and rain. It was a storm of life looking to catch him and bring him back. The lightning became more purposeful and fiercer. It sought him out with a distinct desperation, seeking him out as one would seek an important thing. He felt a shiver and his logical mind told him he was quickly re-acquiring his body. He had no idea of what to do next to speed him out of the nothingness that was quickly separating him from the living. He heard his old name being called out by something close to him. He remembered stories of spirits claiming a man when he responded to his name. He didn’t want to answer. He knew it would be death, sure and unyielding. He recalled what the elders told him.

“Rememeber your name. Even a fool can do that without proving how different he is from the others who barely returned.”

He started to call his name out, and then he heard others calling his name as well, in a kind of chant. Soon he found himself being held down by seven of his peers. His body felt alien, estranged to him. As he looked about him, he found he saw past the ‘solid’ and could actually see the ‘true nature’ of things. He wept from the shock. He had only taken the first step towards a journey to the true nature of reality. Reality as it truly was when the first lights were called into being.

He looked at the men who stood around him. His eyes hurt, his lungs were numb but working, his limbs seemed to relate to more than one shade of reality. This feeling spread throughout his body. It seemed he was very tired and at the same time he was not. An elder signaled to the others.

“This one’s transition seems to still be going on. It seems he connected with something between the gates. Whatever it was, it took a liking to him.”

There was a silence in the room and the boy suddenly realized another had joined them. They gave him wide-berth as he walked towards the boy. His face was young, but his gait, his hair and his eyes spoke of an age beyond that of anyone else in the room.

“I see. I never liked coming to these transition ceremonies. But I could not stay back. I recognize what happened to him. It called out to me.”

He walked to the boy and asked, “What is your name? The name they gave you to bring yourself through the gates and back?”

The boy looked at the elders and they nodded assuredly to him to answer the question.

“Nedeseh.”

The stranger smiled and said, “There is no coincidence after all. That was my name. It is given to the least likely to succeed in line with ‘established’ traditions. It happens very infrequently. Very infrequently. The last time it was used was over 50 generations ago…”

An elder spoke up, “You speak too much. The boy cannot take more information. He will be confused.”

The truth was the boy was disoriented. The fact was the boy did bring something with him and it spoke to the stranger the way a Lion would greet another.

“That boy was me. When the time is right, you will drop Nedeseh and pick up mine. A heritage older than anything you can imagine outside of everything you know awaits you.” the boy heard in his spirit.

He looked at the stranger, who looked back at him and said, “We will meet again. Soon.”

Fourth Day: Prologue

Hey there people. How’s the day going? Good? I hope so.

So I know I said the first chapter of Remy’s “Fourth Day” is supposed to come up on Saturday, but I really just couldn’t wait to share with you. So I decided to put the prologue up today. The first chapter will be up on Saturday. I should warn you though, that Fourth Day isn’t in the same category/genre of writing as yesterday’s story. But if you’re one for good fantasy, I’m sure you’ll like these. I still think Fourth Day would work amazingly as a manga, but well… that’s between Remy and I sha.

So, enough talk. Here’s the Prologue to Fourth Day. Read and enjoy. Remember constructive criticism is always appreciated.

 

Book One: Emptiness

Prologue.

It once humored me that some people believe in dragons and living shadows. Now, I know they are luckier than most. Like a child who sees fire work in his home and may never see fire attempt to dominate man’s environment. There are more terrible things on the other side than an ordinary man’s mind can handle. Fortunately I was no longer ordinary a long time ago. I myself had never seen these things, but I have seen what they can do.

Guardians of the Ungrateful is what he called them. The Emptiness was the closest and shortest english translation of his name. Though for some reason beyond what I can grasp now, he represents anything but vacancy.

Anyway, as I write this note, these are not the thoughts going through my mind. Just one thought. A single, powerful, overwhelming thought. No, I’m not depressed or scared or in trouble. I’ve just seen it all. The next journey seems too far away and I have to make that leap for myself.

Even if this email makes no sense to you, I hope you agree with me that it is one hell of a suicide note. The document attached to it however is not.

If I never told you, you are one really amazing woman. I hope you always know that.

Love, Richard Lewis III

 

Anne French opened the attachment. It was the book that Richard had been working on. It was a project based on a series of entries by three English officers of the then West African Frontier Force. They all had encounters that seemed to form a pattern Richard spotted out; Living Shadows and men who literally lived in Light. All three had passed away sometime back, so personal interviews were not possible. Being as resourceful as he was, Richard managed to triangulate a wide area where these ‘phenomena’ were encountered. His emails were getting fewer and fewer and further apart over a period of three weeks. Richard had the annoying habit of mistaking emailing for tweeting. Of all the editors at Harrison Oldman and Underwood, she tolerated him the most, even during the times guilt colonized his face when his demands were too unreasonable. Richard not sending an email every three hours was a relief to her, but when they would come, they took on an ‘awareness’ that he did not seem capable of achieving on his own. They had a focus that at once impressed and frightened her. Richard started to age in his words, like he was suddenly awake to things even she herself prayed to remain asleep to for long time to come. He dropped his ’empty prima donna’ facade for a ‘man past the mundane’. Way past the mundane.

When his body was flown back into the UK, there was a contradiction of a man who accompanied Richard’s coffin. His hair was white, but his skin was young, his eyes were old and his look seemed to re-appreciate all that he saw. He looked slightly diminutive at his 5’10”, and yet his body language suggested someone used to being in charge.

“Hello there. You must be Ms. French.”

His voice had the quality of an ambivalent minor deity. He stretched his hand for her to shake, but she was hesitant and he noticed.

“Just like he said you’d be. Richard told me that you hated confrontation and considered all confrontation to be whatever surprised you.”

She blushed at being ‘exposed’.

“Please. Don’t be embarrassed. Richard did care very much about you and was often embarrassed at being juvenile when he could have been more, as you’d say to him, ‘More homo-sapien, less homo-stupid’.”

She laughed at the memory then suddenly burst into tears.

He left her to deal with the coffin details and went off in the direction of customs. She met up with where the coffin was being loaded on a hearse.

“Homo-stupid… suicide is homo-stupid.”, she whispered to no one.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t ask for your name.”, she said aloud with her hand out stretched.

“My names are difficult for an English speaker. You can call me ‘Sushno’.”

“Isn’t that Hungarian?”

“In a general sense, yes. But its meaning doesn’t belong to them alone. I’m sorry. It was quite a long flight and I really hope you’re not going to be offended if I ask for some time to rest? He will be buried within the week and I’m certain we will have a lot of time to speak soon.”

“Sure, of course. Where will his body be taken to?”

Sushno looked at her curiously, like one appraising a new angle of an already exhausted subject.

“Plan on joining him? He will be ready for his funeral soon. You know what? Hotel food has never impressed me. Know any good places to eat?”

It was over dinner that her mind worked furiously sub-consciously. Sushno was a Hungarian word meaning a deeper sense of loss, incompleteness, vacancy, a form of…

“Emptiness”, she said aloud.

“I was really hoping you’d come to realize this before the next morning.”

She started to tremble and he nodded in self-affirmation.

“I guess you’ve read a lot about me. Fear is the natural response to meeting with me. As far as the world knows, his last work is fiction. It doesn’t mean anything to anyone who relegates their dreams to things other than their internal troubles. I won’t harm you.”

“Can I see what you can do?”

Emptiness looked at her. It wasn’t an animal-gaze. It was from a higher function.

“You think you know what you ask, but you don’t. I took Richard to some places and he saw things that took him further from his comfort zone than he had ever experienced. It drove him to kill himself.”

“Where you there when he died?”, she asked in a flat voice.

“Yes. I was. It was the only way out for him after all of the things that he had seen. He didn’t pass away to preserve any secrets.”

“How did he die?”

“You might find it hard to believe. But it wasn’t painful or uncomfortable. He didn’t suffer.”

She sat in shock and he put his hand on hers, but she didn’t flinch. He pointed across the room and she saw a man that seemed out of place. Very out of place. He sat behind a light. It was like no one else saw him there. Like they chose to see past him.

“Why don’t you say hello?”, Emptiness suggested, but she refused.

“He will not harm you.”

As the man stood up, she realized it wasn’t that his side of the room wasn’t well lit. He seemed to will the light away from himself. He was like a living shadow. She jumped when a customer walked through him. When he sat next to her, his face became better defined. It was Richard. She started blinking rapidly as the tears started to burn their way down her face.

“Richard…”, she gasped softly.

Richard’s eyes were older, his face more at peace.

“Don’t touch me. I’m sorry. My second transition is not yet complete. It’s not astral travel or anything of the sort. I just can’t be attached to another living being until I have reclaimed my body as my own.

“It’s all in…”

“The book. I read it. It’s your best work yet.”, she said with a shaky voice desperate to be brave.

END.

So that’s the Prologue for Fourth Day. Chapter One comes up on Saturday, and subsequent chapters on the fourth day of every month. Tell us what you think okay?