Like black fangs, pines reach toward a blue-black sky dusted with glittering stars. Larches and firs tower beside them like incisors in the mouth of the wild beast named nature. I tremble at the idea that this mouth could come snapping shut at any moment.

  “Hello?” I call out with a wince. My gut churns. “Anyone here?” My aching brain screams like a bobcat with his gentleman caught in a snare, a feeling I know as well as the bottom of a bottle of rye. The headache, not the snare. “Of course no one’s here. I’m in a forest. Middle of nowhere.”

  I’m hungover? My stomach somersaults as if to nod. How the hell am I hungover? There’s no liquor in space … is there?

  I wiggle around and examine my slippery tendrils with my innumerable eyes. There’s no way it was all just a dream. Surreality strikes me like the hands of a clock striking midnight: I am the unimaginable doing the unimagined.

  Try to remember, Jack. What happened? How did you get here? Think. Christ have mercy. My head is killing me. Close your eyes. Relax your brain. Think.

  A red memory rushes through my mind like a hurricane gale rushing through a trailer park.

  I was dying. At least, I was close enough to dying. My brain balks at being put to work. The pain distracts me enough that I have to stop. I take a deep breath. I wait. I start again once the throbbing stops.

  Where was I? The stars, the void: they turned red. Like my eyes were filled with blood. That can’t be it; my blood is green now. I remember that detail at least … and that’s not how that works.

  I cling to the facts like they’re the solid edge of a raging river trying to drown me.

  Green blood. I remember that. I remember losing control and racing through space. Racing towards something like a trireme with its drums beaten in rapid fury as it speeds forward in hellish abandon, the song of sirens pulling it in to the rocky reef.

  The ache in my head grabs hold again, churning my stomach. I answer with a few more deep breaths, relaxing, letting my tendrils sprawl out. I run them across the cool ground, appreciating the rough touch of sticks, pine needles, and stones.

  Damn it. It’s useless.

  The ground sure feels nice, though. It’s nice to feel something again.

  It’d be even nicer to have hands.

  C’mon, Jack. You’re not quitting. Remember.

  Something was drawing me in. What? Why? Focus, Jack. Maybe something around here will jog my memory. Someone even.

  “Anyone there? Any thing there?” I call out, still in vain, again paying the terrible toll to my aching brain. I am alone, but I am closer. Closer to something. Or someone. What? I don’t know. But…

  Gritting my teeth, I fight to recall more from the red gale, the hazy memory.

  …I was on the move. After a while, I slowed down. I was tired, and … I fell asleep again.

  “Whatever. I’m just going forward.”

  ‘Forward to what?’ asks a voice in my head. Or is it echoing across the black forest? Uncertain, my purple flesh goes goosy like I’m being watched. Hunted. A quiet, lost mouse in the eyes of a ravenous, feral cat.

  Who knows. My answer is innocuous. I’m too tired to be scared. In too much pain to worry. Forward to something’s better than nowhere to nothing.

  The cold autumn wind blows. The treetops sway beneath the blue-black sky and whisper. I remember the black hole and the frost biting my skin. I shiver and decide to forget. Again.

  Pines. Those are firs. And that’s a larch. I really am in Washington again, aren’t I? I really am. I’m home. Some form of me, at least.

  That’s what I tell myself. It gets me by.

  For a moment, the hot wires buzzing and burning in my brain cool with relief. My stomach stills its somersaulting churn as my heart drifts with joy along a sea of madness, unbothered by the horrors yet to breach the whelms of mania.

  I open my eyes. All of them. I look around in the darkness and let them adjust.

  Hey. I can see all around. Neat. The forest sure is dark, though.

  A shiver of trepidation overtakes me.

  Is that laughter? No, I’m imagining things.

  Something’s not right, though. The colors are different. All the trees are gray and silver. Is that just how my tentacle eyes work?

  I shloop over to one of the trunks and give it a feel. They’re real. So far as I can tell. So far as anything can be real to man turned into an unimaginable abomination and cast into the immeasurable void between stars.

  What a stupid thing to happen to a guy. Maybe it’s almost over. Maybe I can find my way back. Maybe I’m near the cabin: maybe finding it is the way out of this occult nightmare spell.

  ‘Hahaha!’

  I look around for the source of the sinister laugh.

  ‘You’re trying to go back? I thought you wanted to go forward, Jackie.’

  “Where are you? Just come out and talk to me. Quit playing these games! I know you’re there!”

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  I double over like a grenade went off in my head.

  There’s no one there, Jack. You’re imagining things. You’re back in Washington. You’re in the mountains. In the woods. Everything’s normal. Except me. But everything around you’s normal. You just have to find the cabin and get a clue for becoming a man again.

  The colors, though. The colors of the trees. That’s weird. It’s gotta just be my tentacle eyes adjusting to the dark, or maybe that’s just the way these things see.

  Hey. What are those?

  Golden berries glitter on the silver branches, glowing jewels set amongst the wreaths of purple needles and scales.

  Reminds me of those fireflies I saw dancing around as a kid. That was on a trip. To where?

  I reel; my head splits with hot agony again. I wretch as if my stomach wants to roll up my throat, across my tongue, and out of my mouth to say hello.

  Agh… No point in trying to remember. I lay there trying to pull myself together. Better get a move on, Jack. No time to reminisce.

  Refusing to stop, I crawl forward until I come to a rocky trail wide enough to drive a car up. I can’t help but grin.

  Now, we’re getting somewhere.

  As I crawl, the rocks scrape against my purple hide. I relish in it. It’s unpleasant, but it’s real. And then I realize:

  I’m glad to be alive.

  I don’t know how authentic the thought is, but it keeps me going. Keeps me crawling, and as I crawl, my mind cools. My stomach straightens up. I start feeling the slightest tinge of confidence. Finally, I make it to a fork.

  So, which way, tentacle monster?

  ‘Forward, Jackie! I’m waiting for you. Always waiting, no matter which way you go. We are inevitable.’

  “Shut up!”

  I’m going psycho out here.

  Taking a moment to breathe, I look down both roads. My gut tells me to go right.

  I go right.

  Let’s see where this takes me.

  Another shiver or perhaps a laugh runs out of my brain and down through my tendrils. Dauntless, I stay the course.

  Getting a feel for my new form, I shloop along like an octopus riding a scooter board. The kind they give to gimps and kids.

  Shlooping around like this kind of reminds me of paddling a canoe. Summers with Uncle Ernest, splashing around his houseboat on the lake. I should have bought a houseboat back in ‘45. Should have stayed away from the city. Could have lived on the Mississippi like a modern Huckleberry Finn.

  Maybe that’s what Twain was really trying to tell us all along: stay away from the city. Stay away from the grime.

  Every beacon of civilization Huck Finn ever stops at, all he finds are people with trouble and trouble with people.

  Get yourself a good friend, maybe a man who’s a little different from you. Go on an adventure.

  Now, I’m out of the city. Guess I didn’t need that boathouse after all.

  I shut the door on adventure a long time ago. Damn bastard just kept knocking, didn’t he.

  Leafy ferns brush against my purple hide. All of my eyes dart to the forest. Silver trees stare back at me like strangers in a crowd. Behind them, their brothers loom, shrouded in the black of night.

  There’s nothing there, Jack. You’ve found home. Don’t lose your mind along the way.

  I get back to shlooping, unable to shake the sense that I’m being watched.

  [ IN A LONELY PLACE ]

  Once I let her in my head, she overstays her welcome.

  I’m not doing this again. Not without a cigarette.

  Same as always. I’m still staring straight into those killer, warm blue eyes.

  I’m not doing this again.

  ‘You lost your chance, Jackie. You lost everything.’

  Go to Hell.

  ‘She’s the only woman who ever loved you.’

  She hated me.

  ‘She loved you, and you sent her packing with a few good bruises.’

  “Liar! I never touched her!” I yell. “Not like that…”

  ‘Of course not, Jackie. You’re a saint. Is that what you think of yourself?’

  My wallet empty, I quit paying heed to the heckler. I just look at the road in front of me.

  ‘Listen, Jackie,’ he whispers in the dark corners at the back of my brain, ‘there is no whiskey, there are no cigarettes, and there is no dull drone of the ceiling fan. There’s nothing to distract you now. Nothing to hide behind. Face what you are.’

  “Hoo! Hoo!”

  The owl’s hoot rattles me like mortar’s near miss. I look at him to my right. He stares back at me with his cold, inquisitive black eyes.

  “Hoo!”

  Barred owl. Can’t remember the last time I saw one of those.

  “What’s the matter? Never seen an alien horror before?”

  “Hoo!”

  He takes off in front of me and lands in a fir on the side of the trail up ahead. He turns and looks back.

  “Guess I’ll follow you. You seem to know where you’re going.”

  “Hoo!”

  “Keep talking. I like it. You’re keeping my mind off of things.”

  I wish I’d never met her.

  The war had kept my mind off of things. One last adventure. That’s how I’d always thought of it, and it had given me a real fill for the stuff.

  Coming home, I’d been like a kid who’s had too much candy, just as tired and sick to my stomach, but nowhere near as fat and happy. Quite the opposite.

  “Hoo! Hoo!”

  The owl flies up ahead of me again. I follow him down the trail.

  “You know, you’re the best company I’ve had in a long time, pal. Remind me to buy you a drink when we get into town.”

  The Army had fattened me up and made me healthy before I ever set foot back in the States. Uncle Sam’s fat cats in D.C. didn’t want American loved ones, cherished patriots, to see us as we were: gaunt, beaten, and haunted wrecks of war. We were heroes. We needed to look like it.

  What loved ones? I’d asked myself when they told us what was going on. There in the darkness of the forest, I found myself repeating the question. What loved ones, Jack?

  I look up from the swirl of my thoughts. The owl’s gone. Silent as a dream, he’s taken off into the night. I go on, shlooping down the trail.

  “Hawooo!”