Limbus

Walking down the road in the morning, he began to feel old. His knees ached and his shoulder ached and his head was aching earlier but the pain of that had subsided, mostly. He knew nothing about Barometric pressure but he thought perhaps that was part of what ailed his joints today. “The air,” he thought, “does feel exceedingly tight on my body, as if I’m wrapped—parts of me wrapped— in sheets? No. Plastic?” He could not place the sensation, as he’d never felt it before. It was as if the air had taken a tight, knotted grip around his lower thigh, above the knee and also around the place where his arm and shoulder met, near the joint. Suddenly he awoke lying in the middle of a field where two men stood over him discussing futility. He did not know what kind of futility. That is, the futility of what. He felt his left shoulder with his right hand and the hand came away covered in blood. He looked down at his left leg, to his knee which had ached. The knee was gone, and all the rest of the leg below it. A man’s belt was cinched tightly around the leg and the pool of blood beneath it suggested it had bled for some time before subsiding to a slow pulsating stream. He was torn apart as a doll at the mercy of some sadistic child-god which had plucked pieces from him. He closed his eyes and grasped the sticky wet grass with his wet red hand. He felt hands grabbing, perhaps those of the futile men, grabbing as if trying to keep him whole. He retreated back to the unnamable, implacable road and walked, for he would much rather walk with an ache than stay in hell; would rather walk than lay half-dying on an expanse of half-dead field. The day was not cold, but suggested that the cold may come in the following days and weeks. As he walked down the road, he touched his shoulder with his right hand and the hand came away once again covered in blood. He looked about— no one near, no one for miles it seemed. He looked at his hand. “Strange,” he thought.