The Book of Josiah - Chapter 17

    Darkness dissolved into light.
    From nothingness all he could see was fire, fire burning hot and bright. And yet he was cold. And could not move.
    The light was fleeting, the warmth fading - the darkness more than real.
    Steel chains bound his arms and legs, rusted links wore at his wrists and ankles. The constant sound of dripping water played out a never-ending riff. Water swirled and danced around the stone cobbles and pooled around his feet, covered with the filth of eternity. And yet his mouth was dry beyond enduring. And the water was out of reach.
    If he felt anything, it was abject terror.
    He knew he was alone despite the darkness. No, it wasn’t dark. Fire burned in braziers, fixed at equal intervals along the wall, flickering like ghosts, more dead than alive. And the walls stretched beyond the end of the world, beyond the brink of forever.
    And then he was in the jungle, running, running. The unbearable green burnt his eyes, the cascading water plunged his hair to rivers, the undergrowth tore at his tattered clothes. But he was running, and nothing else mattered.
    He was a jaguar, fleet of foot, king of the jungle, deadly hunter. His claws were like steel vices, his teeth like industrial diamonds. And his prey was close. The infuriating stench of its sweat filled his mind with visions of death and blood, of red and green.
    The water did not matter, the thickness of the air he fought was irrelevant - the only thing in the world was his prey. He had to run.
    And then he was the prey and was still running, running, fighting the pain of a broken arm - he knew that a piece of metal was stuck in his flesh. Cold sweat mingled with the gushing water but there was no oblivion.
    His antlers caught a branch and he was slowed for an instant - the pause was deadly - the hunter was upon him.
    This is a dream, he thought, and smiled to himself. There is no pain and no water. With a leap he sailed high into the air and left the hunter far behind. This is a dream, and here I can fly.
    But he could not fly, and so he fell down with the rain, faster than teardrops, plummeting to the green earth and the dark ribbon of silver. The ribbon rushed to meet him, its waters closed over his head.
    This is a dream, he thought, and I can swim. And so he did. But he saw that fish too can swim, and they gathered around him, sunlight flashed off bared fangs. Then all around him, the water turned from green to red.
    He was the hunter, laughing at his folly.
    He was the hunted, crying into blood.
    He was the fish, extracting his pound of flesh.
    He is you, and you are me, and I am everyone.
    “You are not My people. And you are not forgiven.”

*  *  *

    “Well Mr Smith, this is a pleasant surprise.”

The Book of Josiah - Chapter 3 - JOS

The Book of Josiah, chapter 3, and this is where things get complicated. Remember that there are 3 parallel timelines, Josiah, Jos and Joe. Chapter 3 we meet Jos for the first time. To try to keep things clear, each chapter will be labelled with the name of the character in the heading, and will be given different colour and font wordles for images. Chapter one is here and chapter two is here.

    The dream sucked him in. He tried to fight it but could not - there was nothing to hold onto. Jos was pulled into it.

    When he next escaped the darkness, Jos stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling. Semi-conscious, he contemplated the dream. He knew where it was going - he had dreamt it before, many times. He did not want to see the end of it, not again. When he returned to sleep, he would dream of something else. Something nice.
    Having resolved the issue to his satisfaction, Jos rolled over, fell asleep once more, and returned to the nightmare.

    Jos’ eyes snapped open, a cry of terror forming in his throat. Then he stopped himself. Just another stupid dream, he thought, another stupid dream. Pushing aside the unfamiliar sheets and rough blankets, he sat up and looked around. The room was very dark, with only a trickle of light from under the door and the glitter of distant stars beyond the porthole.  A sudden and violent cough seized him and shook his body. Was the water in here drinkable? No matter, he had to drink something, quell the scratching in his throat. Jos swung his legs out of the too-soft bed and started to stand. A noise to his right stopped him dead - a soft moaning, a small rustle of the sheets.
    Eyes half-closed and burning with exhaustion, he could barely see a thing. With a gentle thought command, Jos brought the lights on to low. And had to stifle a cry of surprise. There was someone else in his bed. A woman. And it was not his wife.
    Half out of bed, Jos stopped, his mind simply grinding to a halt on a single question - what had he done?
    The very question betrayed himself. He knew what had happened and yet resolutely refused to move his thoughts back to the night before. Still, the harder Jos fought not to remember, the more the details flooded into his mind. The smell of her perfume, exotic and tantalising, like nothing Ammi ever wore. Snake skin shoes, daringly unethical. Long fingers caressing a flute of champagne in the bar, as everyone had gathered to watch the news. Her lips, so red, so intoxicating. A glorious body, wrapped in strange cloth that shifted from brown to gold, a neckline so low it was almost indecent.
    All evening they had been making eye-contact, her green eyes coy and smiling; they promised everything yet gave little. He had been drinking like a man who arrives at a party and finds he doesn’t know anybody there - drinking to fill a hole in his life. From the moment she walked in he had been enthralled but tried to deny it, to pass it off as nothing. So why did he offer to buy her a drink? He was so cold and she had said yes. He had never dreamed she would want him, not with his muscle turning to fat, his hair receding, becoming grey. But she had said yes, smiled, laughed, played with her silken hair. When she invited him back to her room, was it just the alcohol that made him go?
    And after that he had no memory. Had they had sex? That was the crucial question. Since he was naked in bed and his clothes were lying around the room in small heaps, he could only assume the worst. Had he at least enjoyed it, this betrayal? Why couldn’t he remember? All that was left a growing sensation of guilt and shame. What had he done?
    The only thing he could do now was run.
    As quickly and as quietly as he could manage, Jos gathered up his things. The cough returned a couple of times, seizing his body with tremors. He held them in as much as he could but the noise seemed unbearably loud in his ears. Each time he glanced furtively at the woman - he didn’t even know her name - to see if she was stirring but she never moved. All he wanted to do was to get back to his room, have a drink of water, and go back to sleep.
    He was dressed in under a minute and quickly searched for his keys, all the time trying to avoid looking at the bed. Eventually he found them, lying underneath her blouse in the corner of the room. He moved to the door.
    “Jos?”
    Damn, she was awake. What should he do?
    “Yes?” he answered quietly.
    No response came.
    Jos hardly moved, straining to hear any kind of noise.
    A moment later, a soft snoring told him that she was asleep once more. He turned off the lights and fled.