Transport

They took him to a place underground.  That was all he knew until he met the doctor in a sterile room.

The doctor said, “This will be painless, and then you’ll feel better.  Much better.”

He said, “How many times do we have to go through this, Doctor?”

“What?  I’ve never seen you before.”

“No, Doctor.  We met in ancient Egypt, in Greece, Mesopotamia, in Spain during the purge, in Berlin.  Don’t you remember?  The trick is, I have many minds.  You dull one and I grow four more.  You block my capacity to think along one channel, I have a dozen others.  They run like rivers.  I set them in motion.  You can fuck with me, but you can’t change the basics.  Do you get it?  You’re a two-dimensional dupe, and I’m growing like weeds.  Our meetings have become a failed ritual.  You see?  I’m tapped in, you’re tapped out.”

The doctor turned into the front page of a newspaper, and blood tricked from the words.  He developed creases and folds and angles and fluttered in a breeze.  He collapsed on the floor and lay there, flat.

The man walked out of the room.

He flew over a massive city of towers and looked down at crowds struggling to ascend staircases to an empty sky.

He left them behind and went on his way…

Doom

O shroud

Lifted from silver shores

Quaking souls

Time is gone