The Catalyst

He appeared to me a man without a heart, with naught but a bloody open wound where his heart should be. He is much stronger than he things, much stronger than me, but the place he took me to, a great library of sorts, compounded by a thousand closed doors.

He told me there were things worse than death, but I had not understood this, unable to comprehend without seeing. And what he showed me, filled me with terror.. as well as elation.

I seemed to be in two places at once, my body in some pragmatic presence, while my mind drifted freely in a world that was cast from fantasy.

He calls it the ether, a place of consciousness, a place that I had brought him to during our course of sex. He explained that I was a catalyst, while he was a conduit, two halves to the perfect whole. That I controlled the world, and that I would be responsible for taking us out and putting us back in our own bodies.

Dizziness bloomed and I grasped his arm to steady myself, an amulet led out of each door on the back of a scorpion, two snakes entwined, before the vision began to roil, fade, and at last disappear.

I was in the present, but I had not brought him back with me. I begged and I pleaded for him to return, lost in the emotional pitfall of what I had done. To him, to me. And for what? My will of life? Which was no more precious than his own. I twisted the lock on his collar, pulling it away and tossing it to the other side of the room. Only then was he mine again, beside me in this world, whole again.

I had promised myself never again. He had been right to deny me. I was not ready. I doubted I ever would be.