Again, in that black place.

Jordan knows he’s dreaming. He recognizes all this scenery, or lackthereof.

So why can’t he change anything? 

Isn’t this his dream? Couldn’t he be lucid-dreaming right now?

Does he feel so helpless? That even in his brain, he can’t shirk that quivering ball of fear?

He sees it, now. The remains of that brown-soaked beast, its thick muscle warped within a tangled knot of barbed wire and bent-up metal bars. It hangs down from some far-up ceiling and sways gently (but loudly).

There is no house, no wife, no son or daughter anywhere in the distance. There is no grand boxing arena. Not even behind him is anywhere that gut-wrenching go-back-to. The jungle of this blackness has swallowed everything up.

All but one other thing, though it is only there for a moment. In the “sky”, far above.

A streak of golden light, passing fast as a comet.

Then, quickly gone. 

Another few minutes of suffocating nothing. It’s when he makes to start wandering that he begins to hear the laughter of children at play, and the leaking behemoth disappears.

His attention is suddenly pulled painfully from it to his left hand’s index finger; it is on fire. 

He sees and feels it shrivelling. Over his own yelp and yells he hears the not-Zain roaring “UP! GET UP! YOU FUCKING ‘TARD, YOU’RE GONNA FREEZE TO DEATH!”

And, just like that, Jordan is shunted from pitch darkness to blinding whiteness, lurched to consciousness. His entire body burned with biting cold, though his finger felt worse somehow.

He shook it panickedly when he saw that a droplet of Scorcho Sauce was boring a hole into its tip. He sighed audibly as he plunged it into the snow, finding relief. 

The snow groaned under foot, somewhere, when he did.

Jocelyn and Rudy had both passed out like him. Rudy was visible, though half-hidden in his chair by snowfall, but Jocelyn was nearly entirely buried on the ground. Why’d neither of them sought cover underneath the trees? Jordan was also blanketed in snow– why hadn’t he?

They were in a thickly-populated pine forest, and it was still pale daytime.

He twisted his sore neck. No men with guns, good. But– Rudy’s left arm. Something had bitten through his coat sleeve and taken a chunk out of it.

Jordan rubbed at his eyes and blinked. Their tracks had been covered, good. But– there were tracks, other ones. Oddly shaped. Maybe what had bitten into Rudy.

The bite wasn’t too deep, but it seemed it had bled its share. If wolves were about it’d be a problem.

Jordan pulled himself closer to Rudy. Moving like this took considerably more effort than he’d have thought; the snow’d really sapped his strength. He wouldn’t be able even to get to one of Rudy’s leg-stumps.

He shook Jocelyn’s shoulder, brushing snow from her face. She awoke with a jolt, like he had. Some word had been on her lips, a waking whisper; a name, or something of the sort.

Together, the two woke Rudy. None amongst them recalled being so exhausted– perhaps it was just the frost, numbing them somehow. 

They re-oriented themselves with the help of a compass out from Rudy’s vest, then rolled, pulled and were pulled on.

———————————————————————————————————————

Again, in that black place.

This time, though, the nothingness all around is no terror. Jordan feels like a child again.

He lives a full day as that child. His younger self smiles more than his older, and Josh and Scott smile with him. From time to time, as they pretend and game and create, Jordan hears faint angered yelling.

The curse words they use make him laugh, but he otherwise heeds the voice little. He does not recognize it.

The world is not perfect, as a child. The hormonal rush to avoid or impress, the unending uncertainty, it is all there, and only thickening further.

But it is at least free of any need for sharpness or hate or diligence, for a binder or phone or that jab in your chest shaking you roughly awake.

Again, Jordan is half-covered in snow. It is still day. The cold is numbing everything but a small pain upon his head’s back. The sky, gray like old porridge, smiles glumly down at him as if to say “welcome back, to hell.”

They were at a different spot of the forest. He remembered making progress, at least.

Rudy continued over to Jocelyn, poking down at her with a stick.

The man’d stayed but moments behind to mark the trees, to cement their direction. 

The girl woke with a start. Something had flash-dried on her face as streaks from her eyes to her chin.

The old man scratched at his orange faux-gauze. He’d been quick to cut from Jordan’s ruined pants to tie his own newly-ripped skin. “Fuck. I’d not thought the cold would get to us this quick.” he said, short of breath. “Worse, I think we’re being stalked.”

Rudy pointed out to a set of trees but two dozen paces away. They rustled for a moment, caked-on snow falling loudly from one then that next to it, as if something were moving amongst them.

Jordan and Jocelyn mirrored each others’ exhaustion. Rudy hadn’t been sleeping in the snow, which would make what he’d surely say next all the more hateable.

The man continued, calmly. “Let’s try going around them.”

———————————————————————————————————————

This time, they saw it. Jordan and Jocelyn, that is.

Jocelyn had spawned a cramp in her back, and lowered Jordan to oust it.

Rudy had continued but a few wheel-turns further, then fallen limp. In turn, the two fell silent.

Calls of his name did nothing to rouse him. His rifle was nearly slipping from his shoulder

In the snowfall, it took a moment to realize– something had impacted his neck. Jordan thought it had to be something more mundane, but Jocelyn insisted. The old man’d not even brushed near the trees, save for just earlier. 

A pine tree’s needle, short but sharp, was embedded shallowly, there– just to the right of the nape. It had flown out at him from somewhere, she kept saying.

“It hit him like a dart.” Jocelyn whispered. Why was she whispering? “No, it’s not gonna be some more weird shit, that fucking prison’s like miles away now.” Jordan grumbled, hearing a complaining tone in his voice for the first time in a while. “It might’ve just– uh–”

Jordan trailed off as Jocelyn raised her sleeve and produced a pine needle. She pressed it longways onto that arm, right next to a pin-wide prickhole– one red with coagulate.

“I didn’t feel it happen,” Jocelyn said, looking slowly about as if they were surrounded. “But last time I woke up I found this in my arm.”

Jordan hated his fucking life and he hated women almost as much. He sighed and lowered his chin back into the frost. She was losing it like one of those religious moms. One or two freaky ghosts, and now the trees had guns or something.

“Did you feel anything? Like a sting?” Jocelyn continued. Jordan closed his eyes. “I’m chest-deep in snow, both my legs are swiss-bullet-cheese and filled with melted latex, and just a second ago I burnt through my own fucking finger. EVERYTHING STINGS, YOU DUMB BITCH.” he replied, in his mind. He heard the Not-Zain snorting and wheezing.

There was some liveliness powering her face that Jordan’d not seen on it before, and it wasn’t at all dimmed by his angry silence. “It’s only happened while we were moving. That’s why it only happened to him.” she said, in thoughtful whisper. 

A moment later, something emerged from the trees right by Rudy.

A moose. Not a particularly large one, either. It stepped, cautiously, towards Rudy. Slowly, it lowered its head to the old man’s arm.

It was when it began to chew through his cotton glove that Jocelyn whipped out her looted pistol.