The Eternal Return

[MethodicalSlacker]

And so,

[Cybil Price continued from Leaving The Other Half Undone.]

and so, and so, and so.

He was at the same house. It was a house he had never seen before. Blood he had seen spilled splattered the kitchen. Animal blood. Had he recognized it? He had not. Cybil saw nothing. The spot where Clay hit the ground was scuffed. Something made a scuff mark on the ground. He remembered piling boxes to make it to the roof of the building where he perched like a seagull and waited for others to pass by but he did not know why there were boxes laying in a toppled state that looked like someone had used them to climb to the top of the building. There were bullet holes in the ground that he did not recognize. He remembered the sound that they made.

What price had Price paid to get here? To make his eternal return to a place he had never seen before in his life?

Several minutes earlier he had spent several minutes spending several minutes rolling around in dirt for several minutes to get the blood off of him for several minutes, several minutes that had gone by in several minutes that were not just several minutes but several painful minutes indeed. He was covered in a thin layer of mud, as well as blood, as well as his own skin, and was wearing only rolled up waterlogged pants, though he had considered for several minutes what it would be like if he stripped naked. Probably cold, and probably very unpleasant.

He had been laughing for several blocks when he realized that he was really sobbing. Clay had not followed him, it seemed. He thought he heard a strange chopping noise in the air but disregarded it and kept walking, until he realized that he stank of death and wanted to get it off of himself so badly that he found the nearest yard, plopped down, and started rolling back and forth like a dog. Soon he started feeling the biting of ants into his skin. Were they ants? Subjective ants. Totally subjective ants.

Cybil Price knew God in those several minutes.

He didn't know how he got on the roof of the house but maybe it had to do with the stack of boxes that went up through the hole in the roof. Cybil stutter-stepped over to the center of the roof and looked around at all of the buildings surrounding the house, and smiled to himself. There's the window where the gunman was, where it would be incredibly convenient as a gunman to be, if there was ever a gunman there, if there was ever not a gunman already there occupying the space so that other gunmen could not sit there. There was no such thing as time, save for the concession that for there to exist a state in which time was not, one must know when time was, which requires time to exist, thereby debunking the argument.

Price scratched his ass and looked at his feet for a few seconds before turning his gaze skyward and spitting onto the ground a few inches away from his big toe. The sun was ducking just below the horizon, and the sky was turning to glass. He walked over to the edge of the roof and contemplated how many times he'd have to jump back down and walk back up again before he was dead, before his legs were broken, or both. It didn't look like too far down, but he still felt some vertigo as he gazed at the pavement. What was his plan? To leap from the top of the building onto anyone who somehow didn't see him from the street below, plunging his sword into their chest? A Pyrrhic victory?

There was that sound again. God would not shut up. He looked at the sky and shook his fist, before he lost his balance and fell off of the roof.

Tumbling over, he landed on his back, the wind knocked out of his chest. Cybil cried out in pain, and then covered his mouth. He wasn't sure why he did that. He was in pain, but he could still flail his legs around. They didn't feel broken, but he wasn't going to be using them anytime soon. Maybe he'd just lay here for a while.













His eyes open to the sky, he saw the origin of the chopping noise above him.

"How sick."

He found himself speaking.

"How sick, that they come now, and I cannot go to see them."

Price laughed. Blood came out of his mouth and splurts.

"How sick, how sad."

The sound of boots on pavement came rushing towards him.

He would not have to move.

[Cybil Price continued in ...And An Ending.]