Grimaulkin: “Facets” (continued)

“Who the hell are you?” Grimaulkin growled.

His ferocity did not have the desired effect. It did not echo back from the distant, unseen walls of this place to express his anger.

“And where the hell is am I?” His snappish tone sounded plaintive and weak even to his own ears.

“It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” the voice continued, seeming to ignore Grimaulkin’s demands, “how individuals have such interesting depths to their personalities. Like layers of an onion . . . or the facets of a gem.”

Grimaulkin’s head turned to survey the space around him again, seeking the source of the voice.

“If you say so,” he snarled, his voice once again falling flat.

“What do you say we explore yours?” the voice asked. There was something both faintly mocking and yet inviting in its tone.

“Screw you.”

“Shall we begin?”

There was subtle shift in . . . the something that surrounded him. Grimauklin’s eyes darted around, but he found no new sources of light, no changes in the blank emptiness. There came a faint tingling from somewhere inside his body, but could not locate either the exact location or its source.

He felt as though an insect were trapped within him, darting from place to place almost instantaneously: an elbow, a toe, an eyelid . . . He wanted to thrash about, to evict the thing from his body. It was like a vague itch that did not persist long enough for its source to be scratched.

“Our pasts make us so much of what we are,” the voice seemed to muse aloud. “Don’t you agree?”

Soft light, filled with many floating and shifting hues, enveloped Grimaulkin. It covered and flowed through him, filling his vision as the empty darkness had before. This time, there was a definite sensation of motion, although he was not certain that he could have found words to describe it if asked.

The light faded from him. Grimaulkin blinked. He was somewhere else.