If this story doesn’t get you all the way home, you’ll at least feel closer. I know because there’s already a bond between us. If I didn’t sense it right now, I would stop all this.

I’ve arrived here after reading books and authoring books, some of which you may have suffered through in the past. The point is, I know enough now to recognize that everything I’ve written was child’s play⁠—actually, not as wise, because children know they’re playing. Whereas we deceive ourselves into believing play is real, while the truth slips further and further away, until one day rearing up, perhaps after an ordeal, disguised as a terrifying monster we once tried to assimilate as a god⁠—something that has come from outside to obliterate, but in reality, has risen from within.

25.

It’s time to begin our journey forward by moving through what is past. Our destination lies on the other side, though is yet to be imagined. We will get there together, and there will be others, but you will not know the others.

Through the act of reading this novel, it’s actually you telling the story. For example, when you see words, what’s imagined comes from your experience of life, not mine:

The bus appeared at twilight

We were almost home when rain turned to snow

In the afternoon we simply walked, arm in arm across the cold sand

He was sleeping, when

That was our first kiss, then, in

How could I know the things you’ve seen and felt in the years we’ve been apart?

This journey won’t feel like remembering⁠—more like a dream, because I control the structure of what you see, but never the content. That’s for you to feast upon.

What are you imagining?

Feast takes me to Romans in togas at long tables. A mosaic pieced together by small fingers I cannot see but know were there. It’s June and I’m a sweating child in shorts. Thirsty. At Chester Museum on a school trip in nineteen-eighty-something. Just standing there, staring at the ancient multitude, overcome with despair at not having enough money to buy a toy centurion in the gift shop. I’ve eaten my lunch but feel hungry again. I’m also wondering where she is. I didn’t see her on the school bus, or in the chattering queue that snaked all the way back to Ancient Egypt.

All that from the word feast.

Where did you go? We started in the same vicinity but saw and felt different things. Stories lead us behind the curtain of somebody else’s life into the deepest chambers of our own. And so, the events that take place in this narrative have already happened to you. This book is your past but also your future.