"I love you." "I love you." "Forever. I love you," their voices chant, a litany of passionate desire and spiritual communion.
"I love you. Love you," Livvie's voice echoes as he lies in the hospital bed, dreaming that she is sitting beside him. "You knew I'd come for you. Nobody could keep us apart," she says.
"Come. Come closer," he urges in a soft, husky voice. "I want to feel your body next to mine."
"You feel so good. I've missed your touch," she sighs, lying down beside him, her head on his chest.
"Everything will feel better now that you're next to me," he whispers.
"Let me make you whole again," she murmurs, "just like you did for me. Let me bring you back to eternal life."
Tears streaming down his face, he turns his neck, longing for her bite, the liberating ecstasy that would free him forever from his mortal flesh. But there is only emptiness where she had been. The dream has vanished, and he is alone, staring with bleary, drug-hazed eyes at the stark, imprisoning hospital walls.
"Olivia. Olivia. If I can just get to the door," he gasps, struggling again to get out of bed.
From the fog of whiteness he sees spinning colors, the painting on the wall oozing and dripping like melted crayons. He tries to head towards that maddeningly shimmering mirage, but everything keeps whirling faster and faster. He is trapped in the vortex, being dragged deeper into the maelstrom the more he tries to climb free.
Such is the experience of humanity forced upon Caleb. While Ian moans and groans about being immortal, yearning for the entrapment of mortal flesh, the severed-thread limitations of the human lifespan, Caleb seems to see in the human condition the horror of time, vitality, health, and possibilities cut short. He can glimpse the terrifying terminality of everything he desires, the end to dreams, passion, and ecstasy, the bleak triumph of nothingness. |
