Calibration 74: Chapter Forty-Nine

Photo by Raphael Bick on Unsplash

Calibration 74 is a serial novel experiment, posted raw and unedited as it is written. It is recommended you start at the beginning.

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Chapter Forty-Nine

All alone with no place to go. Nothing to guide me onward. No North Star. No Marcy. No numbers.

Just time.

And only myself for company.

If this is freedom, I have found it. Yet I do not feel complete. My being and this place remain separate. Oil and water. Vinegar and honey.

A tickle in my throat, something inside pleading for release. Sand and waves. Palm trees swaying in a warm island breeze. A tickle, a cough, a retch.

My soul rises up from my stomach, clambering through my esophagus. Tendrils in the pharynx. Eager to escape its fleshy prison. A string of mucus, flowing from my mouth. I clutch it in my hands, tugging and pulling it free from my insides.

I do not breathe. I do not panic. Inch by inch, mile by mile, it unspools on the sand, stretching like pale rubber.

I could stay here forever.

The pit inside me hollows, as all that is me separates from all that was me.

And the earth trembles. The sand shakes. The castles I’ve built come crashing to…