I awake surrounded by the strange wash of colors. Mostly deep red and dark blue swirling in the otherwise void realm where we’re floating just like I was in space.

  “Where the heck are we, Dave?”

  He refuses to elaborate. The marble-man flies through the mixed-paint world like some Peter Pan sailing on wires. Doubt strikes me like an upset stomach: what is he trying to do to me? I don’t like this Peter Pan thing. I don’t like this creepy, floaty place. I don’t like any of this, and I don’t think I ever will. Better just get used to that feeling.

  “Come along, Jack. We’re inside your mind. Sort of. We’ve got work to do.”

  I shloop after him. Less like Peter Pan and more like a ball of spaghetti.

  “Where’s Roger?” I ask.

  “Roger? You mean tin can?”

  “Yeah. But don’t call him that.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s my name for him.”

  “He’s a robot. He can’t come here. It’s just you, me, and whatever monsters lurk here.”

  “Hey, I thought I was the monster.”

  “You are. And they are you.”

  “Knots and ropes. Got it. I’m picking up what you’re putting down now, Dave. As much as a man can. But I’ve got to say, my tentacle arms are kind of getting full.”

  He looks over his shoulder at me.

  “Full arms make a man strong,” he says, then turns back to continue flying forward.

  Strong man? I’m enough of a circus freak already. He wants me to face these inner demons, to go to battle with them. He wants me to conquer this landscape, to bring order to the chaos of my soul.

  What does this guy think he is? A priest or something? Some kind of space shaman? No. Not enough feathers to be a shaman. No congregation to be a priest to.

  He hinted at his true nature: he’s some kind of ancient spirit, something he thinks I can’t really understand. Something he doesn’t even really understand. Maybe don’t worry about figuring out what he is. Not yet. Maybe focus on figuring out who you are, Jack. Learn and know. Know yourself.

  May as well try to solve that mystery while we’re shlooping around. Who are you, Jack?

  I’m a man with a past. That past is full of broken pieces, like pottery shattered on the ground. I can’t go back and undo that shattering. I can’t go forward and fill my cup when it’s broken, either. I have to do the work. I have to glue my pieces back together.

  Kintsugi. What does that mean? What is that word? I don’t like it. Sounds Japanese.

  “Are you figuring things out, Jack?”

  “Did you just bring me here to go for a space walk?”

  “No, but that’s part of it.”

  “What’s kintsugi? What does that word mean?”

  “Kintsugi…”

  “Don’t say you don’t remember.”

  “Kintsugi is finding beauty in the cracks. It’s a practice, perhaps ancient to you, where broken pottery is glued back together with golden lacquer.”

  Kintsugi. That’s me then. Damn. I’ve died and been reincarnated as a Tojo. Just my luck. Maybe if I die again, I’ll be reincarnated as a dog or something. Little paws. Little wagging tail. I think I’d like being a dog.

  “I take it we’ve made some headway then,” says Dave.

  “You could say that. How do we put the pieces back together?”

  “We have to find them first.”

  “First knots, then monsters, and now pottery. Is everything just a metaphor from now on?”

  “Symbols are more real than reality, Jack Wolfgang.”

  That doesn’t make any sense. Whatever. I guess I should be used to things not making sense by now.

  We delve deeper into the psychic ether, deeper into the strange, whirling madness. The place is so quiet I feel like I can hear my own thoughts echo. I can’t tell if there’s a slight breeze as we fly through the void or if that’s just my imagination.

  This whole place is my imagination, right? Maybe that’s part of the lesson here. I’ll figure that out later. Right now, I need to focus on finding those pottery pieces Dave is talking about.

  After flying for an hour, we finally come to a field of a dozen boulders as large as a man.

  “What are those?” I ask.

  “You tell me,” says Dave. “It’s your head you’re inside.”

  “Funny. As much time as I spend mucking around in here, you’d think I’d recognize everything. This whole place is stranger to me than outer space.”

  “Perhaps you’ve never truly looked inside, then.”

  Shut up, Peter Pan.

  I shloop up to the closest rock and inspect it.

  Never looked inside… How about I take this rock and look inside your head, you Renaissance knock-off? That’s not much of an insult, is it? Need to come up with something better…

  “What is it, Jack?”

  “Oh, uh… Looks like it’s a piece of something.”

  “Everything is a piece of something.”

  “Can it with the guru talk, Mr. ‘I-Can’t-Remember.’ We’re here to figure this out, right? Give me some real hints.” That was better, but you’re losing your touch, Jack. Maybe I’m just rusty. Out of practice. Yeah, I’ve just been alone in space for too long.

  The marble-man refuses to elaborate again, only looking at me with a shrug and a wry smile.

  “I get it then: you’re only allowed to lead me here. I have to figure the whole thing out for myself. I guess that’s how we all get by: we all have to figure it out for ourselves.”

  I grab one of the rocks and try to pull it. It doesn’t budge, but my intuition tells me I'm on the right track; there’s a sort of power that flows into me when I touch the rock, the same sort of power that comes from fascination.

  I reach out to another rock. The fascination amplifies. I look over my shoulder, proverbially, at the marble-man. He’s still wearing that same stupid grin across his face. I can’t help but feel inspired by his smile, like I’m looking at a master watching his student unravel the machinations of a complex fighting technique. Too bad I’m just grabbing rocks.

  Stretching my tendrils across the ether, I grab all of the rocks at once. Yes. This is it. This is the way. The revelation fills me like hot air readying a balloon to race for the sky, but in a moment, I’m struck by the incredible weight of something like a cannonball of grief landing on me, trying to drive me back down to the hard ground of ignorance.

  ‘Don’t you know any better? You can’t do it, Jack,’ says an unholy, mocking voice in my head. My grip slips from the rocks, and my arms shoot back toward me, retracting like springs loosed from their tension. The force rattles my purple mass like electrified gelatin.

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  ‘Give up. Give in. Just let the pieces lie where they’ve fallen.’

  Like hell.

  I shoot my tendrils back out to the rocks, grabbing them once again, this time in defiance instead of curiosity. The strain is incredible. My eyes feel like they’re about to burst from my fleshy, purple mockery of a body.

  I will fight. Even if it means being destroyed. You can eradicate my flesh, but you cannot kill my spirit.

  ‘What spirit? Kill? It’s already shattered. You’re already broken.’

  What was broken can be remade.

  ‘Remade? You’re dead, Jack.’

  Then I’ll follow the one who knows his way out of the tomb.

  ‘No one leaves the tomb.’

  You sure about that?

  ‘As certain as I am that you’re a failure and always will be.’

  My multitude of arms tremble under the weight of his words.

  I don’t have to prove you wrong. I just have to keep fighting. He’s already beaten you. The truth is what it is, regardless of how either of us feels about it, regardless of what either of us sees of it. It prevails. It’s always there. It’s always waiting, waiting for the lost man to come to understanding. Waiting for him to reach up and accept the hand offering to pull him out of the well, to lead him from the tomb.

  If I keep fighting, I will arrive, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. We might have to figure it out on our own, but we don’t have to walk alone. As for you? Sit to the side and watch me leave. I’m done sulking in your prison.

  The voice goes silent.

  That shut him up.

  Realizing my eyes are clenched shut in the strain, I open them. The blocks of stone are closer. They’re lighter, but not because I am stronger. I can tell that much.

  Someone is helping me.

  I look over my proverbial shoulder again at the marble-man. He’s still just floating there, arms crossed, that same wry grin.

  Boy, would I like to knock that smirk off his face.

  My grip slips a little. The stones jerk away from me.

  “Alright, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?”

  “For being a jerk.”

  The stones become light again.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “For what?”

  “Your help.”

  “All I’ve done is bring you where you need to be, Jack. The rest is between you and … someone else, I suppose. I can’t quite remember who, though…”

  “I know who.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah … but, something tells me you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.”

  “I don’t think I could hear the name even if you said it.”

  “You said it yourself when we first met.”

  “Did I? Sounds like something I would do.”

  “What are you?”

  The rocks keep moving.

  “I’m me.”

  “And what is that?”

  “It’s something. That’s all I can really say. Focus on the task at hand, Jack. You’re almost to the hard part.”

  “The hard part?”

  The stones are within reasonable reach now. I can get my eyes on all of them and start to see how they all fit together. I slide them around, turn them, looking for patterns that match up, piecing them together, slowly building the frame of what I quickly realize is a doorway with two doors that meet in the center.

  Doors to where?

  I look for a handle: each door is a smooth, brown as sand hunk of now solid granite, or something like that. I’m no geologist. The cracks are gone. Then suddenly, they’re back. Then gone again. Then back.

  The thing is still fragile. Putting it back together isn’t the same as if it were never broken. The cracks will always be there. I have to find a way to bind them and make them beautiful.

  “This is where the kintsugi begins, right?” I ask the marble-man.

  “Makes sense to me,” he says with a shrug.

  What kind of guide are you? Do you even know what you’re doing, or are you just making it up as you go? I can already hear his stupid quip back: “We’re all making it up as we go. Life is a string of improvisations. Us: clowns performing on the stage.” Actually, that one’s kind of good. Maybe I should be the guru here. Anyway…

  What does a man use to bind the broken pieces of his mind? Whiskey and cigarettes? That’s a pretty nasty lacquer. From here on out, I’ll have to find another way to get by. I don’t like it, but … I like freedom. As jaded and cynical as I’ve become, I don’t like being a rat in a cage. The cage is open, and I’m out in the big wide world now. I have the chance to do things differently.

  I look down at one of my right tentacles like a man looks at his hand to ponder what such a delicate piece of work is capable of, how it can bring so much life and so much destruction. I wriggle the thing and remember I’m not made in God’s image anymore. At least not my flesh.

  Does that even make a difference? I didn’t choose this flesh. This flesh was thrust upon me. That sounds pretty gross. Regardless, make the most of it, Jack. Make the most of it. That’s how you get by now.

  “I’m going to get by. I’m going to keep struggling.”

  The tip of the tendril glows gold.

  “I’m done with the old ways. It’s time for Jack Wolfgang the tentacle monster to be the man he’s always wanted to be, not the man beaten down into a hole by fate, fortune, and fear.”

  I start tracing over the cracks on the door.

  “Let this be the moment I offer my wretched mind, my hideous body, and shattered soul to truth. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

  The golden glow fills the cracks like molten metal fills a mold.

  Kintsugi. That word’s starting to grow on me. Means a lot more when you see it in action.

  “Jesus Christ?” asks Dave. “Hmm. That name. That epithet.”

  I give him a look over my proverbial shoulder once more while holding my tendril to the door. It begins to burn. I grit my teeth and watch as the smoldering purple flesh transforms into a trembling white hand. My hand.

  Is this it? Is this it?

  “Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  With awe, I yank my tingling hand away to look at it. It folds back into a wriggling purple tendril.

  “No! No, no, no!” I yell. “I was there!”

  Pressing my tendril back against the door’s golden seam, I feel nothing but smooth gold and rough stone.

  “I was there! I was going back! How can you take this from me again? Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!”

  “It’s not an incantation, Jack. You can’t just say words to make things happen.”

  “I want to go back! I want to be a better man! Isn’t that enough, damn it?!”

  “We can’t undo what we’ve done. I remember that much. Be glad you were given the soul of a man; you can at least be forgiven and made new. Your will can change. Many were not made so, and so once they have cast their lots, their fate is sealed.”

  Gritting my teeth in outrage, I consider making an obvious misogynist joke. I consider it, but I want to be angry. My tendrils clench like they’re wrapped around that anger, never wanting to let it go, wanting to strangle it and hold its corpse until all the universe burns and dies away. I feel betrayed, and I want to die now more than ever.

  I am the betrayer. I gave the man a kiss. I nailed Him to the cross.

  My eyes well up with tears. My face snarls in disgust. Then…

  “Women really are stuck in their ways, aren’t they?”

  …I let it all go.

  “Ahahaha! Human then! Would you prefer I say that? The soul of a human? You have such a sense of humor, Jack. At first, I found it annoying, but now, I’m starting to admire that about you.”

  In the dumb, mean joke, I find a little freedom. I have some forgiving to do. I have to forgive myself. I have to forgive a lot of people. Man and woman alike. We really don’t know what we’re doing, do we?

  “No, Dave. I have a man’s soul, and with a man’s soul comes a man’s responsibilities. I don’t even know what those are, if I’m being honest, but I’m going to start here: no matter what, even if my flesh becomes a more wretched and hideous monster than I already am, I’m going to be the best man I can possibly be. I’ll figure out the rest along the way, but just because I was a monster doesn’t mean I have to be one now. Just because I am a monster doesn’t mean I have to be one tomorrow. I’m not stepping down. I don’t have to win. I just have to keep fighting.”

  I stare at the golden seams, the massive stone doors. Doors to where? Is that something I get to decide? Have to decide?

  “I’m not ready to open this, am I?”

  “Can you even open it?”

  I give the door a little push with one tendril.

  “No. Don’t think so.”

  “You didn’t even try.”

  “I did try. It’s shut pretty tight. You can try if you want. I’m strapped for ideas. I think we should go find some other knots to untie.”

  “Fair enough. You might be right. You may have gotten all you’re going to get out of this one for now. Just try to hold the pieces together. We’ll see how it’s going the next time we come here. I’m sure it’ll open one day.”

  “Take me to something else, would you? I get the feeling I have a lot of house cleaning to do.”

  With that, Peter Pan flies straight on til morning with me shlooping behind.