New arrival
Who: Gabriel Chambers and whoever wants an eyeful
What: Being naked by a tree. At least on Gabriel's part.
When: 5 March
Where: the Rowan tree
Gabriel didn't run in Central Park anymore. Not since Cho had disappeared, since they'd found her clothes--
It was all right. Well, not for her, because she was dead, wasn't she? It was all right for him. He was alive. He kept other people alive. He slept, because it was nice to feel nothing for eight hours, and he ate his steamed broccoli and six ounces of lean chicken breast, and he went to work and saved lives on the days that he was good enough. On the days that he wasn't good enough -- and there were many -- he ran. He ran on a treadmill in his apartment, in a small room with blank white walls and no windows, and, about the time he hit the third mile, he was able to think of nothing at all. He ran until he couldn’t run anymore, and then he went to bed. Usually it was enough to keep the nightmares away.
Tonight, apparently, it was not.
Nightmare was a generous term, really. He was not in bed. He was not asleep. He was standing on the floor next to the treadmill, staring at the tree where a doorway used to be. So it was actually more of a hallucination. Dementia? Focal epilepsy? Parkinson’s? Dementia seemed the most likely, the most textbook. Too much stress. He’d finally cracked. His brain would be the first to give out. Wonderful show of irony. If only he could get out of the room, he could grab a drill and have a go at himself on the kitchen table.
Or he could touch the tree and, after a brief but horrible lurching sensation, find himself on a small island, naked and somewhere in the neighborhood of spectacularly hungover.
Definitely dementia. He was going to make somebody a marvelous case study.
What: Being naked by a tree. At least on Gabriel's part.
When: 5 March
Where: the Rowan tree
Gabriel didn't run in Central Park anymore. Not since Cho had disappeared, since they'd found her clothes--
It was all right. Well, not for her, because she was dead, wasn't she? It was all right for him. He was alive. He kept other people alive. He slept, because it was nice to feel nothing for eight hours, and he ate his steamed broccoli and six ounces of lean chicken breast, and he went to work and saved lives on the days that he was good enough. On the days that he wasn't good enough -- and there were many -- he ran. He ran on a treadmill in his apartment, in a small room with blank white walls and no windows, and, about the time he hit the third mile, he was able to think of nothing at all. He ran until he couldn’t run anymore, and then he went to bed. Usually it was enough to keep the nightmares away.
Tonight, apparently, it was not.
Nightmare was a generous term, really. He was not in bed. He was not asleep. He was standing on the floor next to the treadmill, staring at the tree where a doorway used to be. So it was actually more of a hallucination. Dementia? Focal epilepsy? Parkinson’s? Dementia seemed the most likely, the most textbook. Too much stress. He’d finally cracked. His brain would be the first to give out. Wonderful show of irony. If only he could get out of the room, he could grab a drill and have a go at himself on the kitchen table.
Or he could touch the tree and, after a brief but horrible lurching sensation, find himself on a small island, naked and somewhere in the neighborhood of spectacularly hungover.
Definitely dementia. He was going to make somebody a marvelous case study.