Proper Introductions

Two ways to look at it, really:

[ONE\] I'm inside the back of a car, inside the trunk, and I've been struggling for seventy-odd years to get the hell out of these cable holders. My wrists are raw and my feet are bound with duct tape. I push and twist and pull and hurt myself over and over and over again. I bang my head, my feet, my body against every inch of the trunk, hoping against hope somebody from the outside can hear me. I do this over and over, until I'm so tired I have difficulty breathing.

Each breath becomes precious, as I realize my time is running out. But then I catch a singular shaft of sunlight streaming through a crack in the trunk. It must be daytime outside. That vibrant string occupies my entire consciousness, stamping out any stray thought, blocking out any stimuli that was less than impending, and I think, with the conviction of a fast-dissipating soul, "It is not going to get any better than this." And I am, for all intents and purposes, right.

or

[TWO\] I'd have difficulty describing this sea of infinite possibility in a way that can properly impress your visual armory. There are mythical creatures here: human beings with extra appendages erupting from their spines, human beings that hardly look like human beings, but part great big birds and great big cats and great big primal entities covered in beast fur, scales, or sugar-coated puff things.

There are time-fucked places over here: the multiplicity of living many lives, a profiler for the satanic brigade, a soldier with the eyes and nose of an unstoppable, unidentifiable serial killer, a stalker bent on remaining unknown but in his wake, a stream of inspired paintings and heart-rending installations about the object of affection. To live these lives in glorious, singing parallels, and to switch and jump between one and the other and to not know how and when and why.

The thing is, there are monsters, too. It killed a friend yesterday. Again.