He tried to steady his breath, think of his parents’ pool, the smooth flow of confidence, the cashier’s belt buckle, his own imaginative genius, but comforts were dried leaves blowing away.

Down, down, down, he went.

~PAUSE IN NARRATIVE REPORT~

The bio-affect readings stopped right at Blithe’s submergence in the Shadowlands. We were so different, but I knew exactly how it felt: the terror and, beyond the terror, the need to touch the terror and pass through it; the rigid compression of feelings that were too much for a body in a single moment in time; and the beginning of a wild substance with its own laws and its own will. Sitting in my bedroom, with the Bio-meter turned to its black LACK, I wanted to send a feeling directly to Blithe, a feeling big enough to hold the desert and its strange bloomings.

~NARRATIVE REPORT CONTINUED~

He walked down the shoulder of highway and every orange streak across the sky blinked at his new form, following him to the entrance of the park, and the signs, yellow lettering on brown wood, were not calming.

He fell deeper and deeper toward the wet dark place, which demanded visitation after his long abandonment. The oncoming night was full of coyotes and scorpions, but this didn’t stop him from undressing to his briefs and T-shirt. His insides were writing their own Line, obeying a logic that was not subject to the usual cloying restrictions.

Rita found him in the morning, about an hour into the Lost Horse Mine Trail, arms and legs outstretched, as if posing in some durational performance. He was naked, with two scorpions resting on his chest.

His eyes were open.

Slowly, he gestured from the top of his chest across his abdomen and down to his pubic hair, now public.

“Come on, sit up,” she said, and the scorpions scuttled away.

Her eyes lingered on his crotch. She handed him a floral silk robe from her backpack. The robe felt expertly chilled. She scooped up his clothes and handed him a wool-covered canteen, which rested in his cupped hands. He stroked the softness. Blithe didn’t care to evaluate if this woman in white linen was there to harm or help. As with the scorpions, he figured that if he stayed submerged in his own undoing, nothing could harm him more than that.

In the parking lot, day hikers sprayed and rubbed their skin. She put his backpack on his lap, and the car door slammed him inside.

“Do you need to call someone?”

He shook his head.

Words were no longer the units of sentences. They didn’t touch. He counted on habit to hold them together.

They drove off toward the inland sea.