Story: The rabbit hole

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So she was sick, but she was cranky and impossible to be with. When they passed a secluded chapel she asked her husband to stop the car. How efficient and precise, how athletic, how staccato each step she made. She pulled the door open and disappeared as into a rabbit hole. He sat in the car and felt terrible.

Be brief, my love. Get the job done and then say: that's that. Let us not get bogged down.

In the chapel was nothing. No seat, no altar, no decorations but the ghosts of decorations. She saw a spot on the wall where there had been a cross -- there was now a sort of fungal outline. In the center there was a piece of rusted iron sticking out like a hazard. She touched it and her hand buzzed. Later she found blood on the ball of her thumb, but not now.

What do I want? Why am I here? She closed her eyes and moved in a circle -- her posture became more malleable. You could hear a tiny snap. That was the initial resistance breaking.

I have no purpose being here. I would like just for once to have no plan. No structure, no furtive intent.

Make me available.

The chapel was vaguely circular and when she opened her eyes she wasn't sure which door was the one she'd used before. And she liked not being sure. She leaned on one of them -- not the same one, it couldn't have been -- and tried to wedge it open. Why did it resist so much?

There was a gravel path and many dying trees. The ground was curved and yet it went on forever. Her shoes were totally wrong for the ground.

She found herself further advanced on the path without having the memory of walking. That wasn't fair, wasn't right. She wanted to do the walking properly, that is, consciously -- otherwise how could she be positive she had really arrived?

There was no place to sit anywhere. She felt certain that if she just kept walking she would find a place to sit. The ground simply repelled one but it wasn't clear why.

Why am I always trying to be the tough guy? Well in part because when I act otherwise it doesn't seem to be me. The person I would wish God to shower with mercy is not my worldly persona or my lookalike, proud of all her earnest striving, but instead is simply me. And who might that be really? She found that the path went continually uphill. When she reached the landmark of a stunted oak she was sure that the path would now curve back to the chapel. It would surely be downhill. But no. It continued to rise instead.

This was not like some teenage thrill ride where kids stepped onto the ride, got scared, and then returned to earth as exactly the people they had been before the ride.

Traveling this felt equivalent to changing, it was a form of change. Up ahead she heard the sound of trickling water. There was an old man holding an old green hose and watering a bare pot of ground. He was wasting all the water. His face showed considerable irritation at her presence.

You are supposed to be here, he said. But not now. Not yet.

Hearing him the woman felt an old panic rise from her bowels to her throat. First it was the panic of recognition or rather of being recognized but soon enough it changed into an even less acceptable form, a sort of panic made out of panic itself and therefore needing no cause. She turned to go back the way she came but it was uphill too!

When she turned to look at the old man his eyes had softened. Maybe you will remember at least some small piece of this later, he said.

As if without moving he stood next to her with his hand on her shoulder. Close your eyes. It was as if he spun her and then she found herself back in the chapel, more or less facing the two doors. When one of them resisted her pushing she gave up quickly (that was not like her!) and transferred her attention to the other door. It led her right back to the car where her partner sat waiting. How was it? he asked and she didn't know what to say.

Later she asked him how long she'd been in the chapel. Less than a minute, he answered.

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