penumbra of an advancing torment

The hot flashes had been the penumbra of an advancing torment. The idea was floated many times that, if I wanted to, I could turn the ship around. I could simply chose to look away from the other worlds I was seeing. That a smart, young, white man like myself really had no need to suffer. These were the assertions of my family. That I should stop acting crazy and just go back to college. That my outbursts were tolerated only out of love, but that no one believed I could really walk in two worlds. That when the tracks split in the woods, I could follow both sets of rails to opposite conclusions.

Eventually, in madness and in “love”, I got married. My wife to be was nearly a child bride. She was eighteen years old to my twenty-six. I assaulted her one night and she just never left, suggested that we should get married. I took her suggestion seriously, though not sincerely. I think that the part of me who walked in other worlds was aware that she was also in those other worlds, and infinitely more worlds, and that she had already known me, studied me, and beaten me before we met.

She found the tenderest parts of me and cherished them wholeheartedly. One night in Kansas, I shit in her hand and she cupped them beneath my steaming asshole like a penitent, laughing and giggling with joy. She made me t-shirts with pictures of her clitoral piercing and her excrement on them. I