Chapter 1

There has been a lot of time for thinking. About the things I had done, the mistakes I had made. There were a lot of mistakes. A lot of chances taken. My flesh is a road map of them. I didn't do anything wrong. Nothing you wouldn't have done, not if you were in my position. Had my condition. Not if you knew what I knew. What I still know. There has been a lot of time for dreaming, too. Dreaming about everything. Everything I could do is only a dream now. A dream among the living, among the weak. It took me weeks, maybe longer, to realize that I was only imagining that I was still breathing. I could hear it, the rasp that my breath became near the end, the ragged gurgle of blood. So many nights I fell asleep to that horrid goddamn sound. The sound of drowning in my own life force. I was the whole fucking ocean – imagine my surprise at how simple it was to evaporate!

It started seventy years ago, but you wouldn't know it by looking at me. Not even if you dug me up. Not even if you opened my coffin and peered curiously inside. There would be no doubt in your mind that I was dead. This old visage of mine would conjure up old nightmares, things you hadn't thought of since you were a child. I know – I was a child once, though I know you wouldn't want to think of that now, not this twisted thing I've become. You'd pity me, you'd be sickened. You'd feel afraid but strangely safe. There would be no doubt in your mind that things had been . . .fucked from the very start. The cheap suit covers most of the scars. But my face didn't go without harm. My head is a mess of tumors and fractures, protrusions which might seem to be shattered horns. But I'm no demon. I'm not a creature. But I did haunt the night. By the time I was finished – and I mean me, myself, finished, over – I didn't even need to wear a mask. Nobody could have recognized me. Not that anyone would have anyway. Not even my mothers – those who claimed the title in foster care or my real mother, all of whom I knew so briefly – this is no longer the face which might have at one time been loved, or lovable. My real mother – I wish I could recall your face, now! I can see your eyes looking at me. But that's all that is ever there. You could prop us both up in our coffins now! A demented horror show of a family reunion! Only Willis would be able to see me as I was meant to be seen. The real me, the old me, beneath the scars. And even he'd have to sand down through a few dozen layers of distended skin and strange growths. Fuck, who knows. Maybe I'm mostly just bones and dust now.

Seventy years and now I'm here, in this hole, beneath the earth I had once walked, even when it was only in the shadows. But just as that might not quite have been the beginning, this has not been the end. All this time to think. All this time to examine, to hypothesize – one part of me has always been the scientist. Will forever be. I have my theories. I have my experiments. All that raw data to go along with this raw, most primal of forms. I wonder what my laughter would sound like here, all clicking teeth and dried out husks of lungs. Joking, and at a time like this! I keep thinking of time. I kept journals of all the experiments, logging dates and times, being precise, as precise as possible, cataloged and preserved. If only I could go over those journals again. It might make sense now. This time. Here, where time has been all but irrelevant. I tried counting once, to see if I could figure out in seconds and minutes and moments a measurable, sustainable unit to discern the length of my stay. But I kept drifting back to memories, recalling triumphs and mistakes. So many fucking mistakes. If only I could get some of that time back. Just a month. A month more and I could have figured it out. Could have fulfilled my destiny. But time hasn't meant much here. Hasn't meant much at all. All this time to read, to research, and time has lost all meaning. And it's been pretty goddamned dark.