I woke up again. He was gently slapping my face till I awoke. It was the shadow and had 3 small leather bags filled with rolled-up mats of different colored moss, each glowing brightly. I looked to the sky again, full dark with no stars. The glowing moss on the walls of the cave danced in patterns I was sure no human hand could replicate. How long did I lie there in agony? I have no way to know for sure; it can''t be more than a week.


    It picked the remaining pieces of cloth out of my burn, then washed away the dirt and sweat and took a piece of the red moss that glowed so brightly and laid it on my wound. It turned black almost instantly. The Shadow silently washed away the dead moss. Then it took out a section of blue moss, a blue like the blue of the deep ocean. The blue moss glowed so brightly it was like looking at the sun, and then it too died.


    With crestfallen eyes, it washed the second failure away. Reluctantly, it pulled a piece of yellow moss that glowed like an incandescent light bulb ; I could feel my hair stand up as it was brought closer. Then it zapped me like a static shock, first once, then again, and then faster as it got closer until it was a steady sting that burned. The moss quickly dimmed and turned black before it even touched me.


    It hunkered down and rocked slowly back and forth, its arms on its knees, its head held between its hands. in concentration or desperation, I don''t know. The colors on the walls fade to blue, and then green creeps up from the floor; they swirl together, dancing and intermingling until all that''s left is a cyan. It glows brighter and brighter; the shadow person opens its eyes and raises its hands in wonder. It says something and then stands up, arms still raised. It walks to the wall and touches it, leaving a dead and black handprint in an instant. When its hand is pulled away, the color rushes into the handprint; it flows and concentrates, forming a thick, hand-shaped mat of blue-green moss; it glows with a painful light.


    The shadow looked at me. Asked a question, it waited expecting an answer, and when I said nothing, it used a piece of bark to collect the glowing handprint and set it on my arm.


    I lay there shivering in pain; the glow dimmed, and the shadow touched my head; his cold palm against my skin made me shiver. He said something in the still undecipherable language and walked out of the chamber. There was an itching sensation that spread from my arm to the rest of my body, and I passed out.


    “You will live,” a young female voice with an accent, her S’s long and drawn out, said. “But there are consequences.”


    I opened my eyes and vomited. A sickly brownish-red sludge


    “You should not be here.” The voice again spoke, and the world turned gray, and blue-green lights danced in front of my eyes.


    “We must work together,” the voice said. And the motes of light swirl together and turn into the shape of my high school biology teacher; he sits and looks at me. “Symbiosis can save you, but at a price,” the childlike female voice says out of my middle-aged male teacher’s body.


    “You will die if I don''t have control,” the teacher changes into the kid who sat next to me in middle school. His glasses never stayed in place; he had sat next to me in 3 classes, but I never learned his name. My mind wanders and thinks about him, what he is doing, and what his normal life looks like. I feel my mind fading, bits of myself shutting down.


    “Just let go,” the childish voice whispers in my ear. I look around; the teacher is gone. The world fades to cyan. I feel like I am floating in a glowing sea, and then with one last breath, I slip under, falling deeper into the inky blackness.


    As I fall, I feel a hand on my shoulder and the same voice that told me to fight when I was still on fire. The confident and demanding voice of my mother: “You must not surrender to this thing.”


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    I mumble “mother” as the world grows darker and darker. I fall from the bench and lie on the cold stone floor.


    . “Fight, Hercules, fight, find balance,” she demanded. “You''re out of time; fight now!” She cried out…


    “Let me take control," the voice of the little girl whispers. She appears in front of me; she looks like someone I only half remember. She smiles with a mouth filled with too many teeth. She moved so close I should have been able to smell her breath. Her face and a sea of blackness was my whole world.


    My mother forms on the edge of my vision and swims at the thing pretending to be a girl. She wraps her hands around its neck and starts to strangle it; bubbles of air escape its lips. “Fight it! You can’t give in; you must fight.”


    I struggle and mentally swim to the surface. The pair are still fighting below in the depths. My vision returns, and I look down at my arm. The pain returns in a wave. But I could see the burned flesh turning black and falling off, exposing veins and arteries long dead now regrowing. The rebuilt sections glowed with a soft green light. My heart was racing. I can see the moss spreading, infecting the half-dead musculature. And as I watched, it covered the wound, forming a thin protective crust.


    Then, with a burning feeling in my chest, the blood poured into the rebuilt arm, and it glowed brighter and brighter. I feared and hoped it would turn black and go away, but it kept glowing brighter until I had to look away, and then when I thought my heart couldn''t take any more, it dimmed, and my heart slowed.


    I screamed as nerves were reconnected. For the first time since the fire, I could feel my fingers. I lifted my arm and flexed my fingers. I laughed. I had just witnessed a miracle or magic. One infection had killed another, and now it could focus on fighting me.


    The thing fighting my mother grabbed my foot and pulled me back under. Back into the unconscious world, and now it was stronger. Its form had changed to a creature with 4 arms projecting from its center, its 8 feet kicking and propelling it through the water.


    One hand was wrapped around my leg, and the other was wrapped around the throat of my first girlfriend, Sarah. I heard her voice yelling out, “Fight, damn it!” We were young when we met; her parents moved down the street from mine. It was a weird summer love that turned ugly before it ended. I felt the sting of her slap. “You don''t even know how to swim, and you''re choosing sailing over me?” She had said,


    The monstrosity dragging me deeper was smiling. I didn''t know what to do, but reminiscing was letting it win. I focused my energy on the here and now.


    I was fighting a battle taking place inside a hallucination, telling myself to fight, but how do you fight an infection? It''s not like I had soup.


    The monster bit my childhood girlfriend in half and turned and looked at me. “You can’t win,” it said, laughing. “Give in; it would be so easy. Together we can reopen the portal and go home.”


    I mumbled, “Home.” I focused my mind on going home to the small house, to my bedroom, to my parents, to a life without boats.


    In an instant I was there with my family; my mom was pouring my cereal, and Dad was turning into a monster. “Just relax, son; let me take care of everything.”


    My mother turned and grabbed a butter knife and stabbed my father; she kept stabbing, yelling, “Fight dirty; do what it takes to win.”


    The creature opens its mouth impossibly wide and eats her. I saw her look at me defiantly, stabbing till she disappeared.


    “Give in, human; it’s easy,” it says with a hiss.


    I stood up and smashed the creature who was pretending to be my father with my childhood dining room table chair and watched it splinter and crumble, and the chair had an effect; the hallucination was broken; it slowly faded away. “I won''t give up,” I said and vomited the water I had drunk and passed out.


    When the shadow returned, it picked me up and sat me on the bench again. It stoked the fire one more time, examined my arm, and spoke in surprised and delighted terms. It clapped its hands 3 times and left.


    I soon fell asleep in a fully restful sleep.


    In my dream, a creature made of bone and moss that did not speak stared at me like a dog on a leash ready to pounce, waiting for the leash to break; it hungered to consume all of me.