Saturday Evening, June 14th 1924: Romancing the Stone
In reply to novissimo (msg # 91):
Byron's second wind, while not enough to separate himself from his pursuer, is enough to maintain the distance between them. "Get back here you idiot! If you run any farther into the woods we're gonna get lost!" Thankfully the faint moonlight that drifts through the forest canopy is enough to light the path in front of Byron. Leaping over a fallen log, he seems to freeze in midair as a vision feels his mind's eye...
The man's heavy weight crushes Byron into the forest floor and his heels futilely scrabble for purchase. The man's hot breath, smelling of shitty tobacco and gin, seems to fill the world. The man's thick, ape-like fingers are wrapped around Byron's windpipe, strangling the life from the academic. As his vision begins to blur, his head is filled by a passage from Thoughts for the Times of War and Death by Freud.
It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death. Whenever we attempt to do so we can perceive that we are, in fact, still present as spectators. In fact, we could say that we assist at our own death, as if the one who dies in our imagination were a different person. We can't imagine how we would be like dead, without being able to think or see, for example. We can't accept our own death, as at the bottom no one believes in his own death. In the unconscious, every one of us is convinced of his own immortality. There is no sense of the passage of time; time does not work chronologically in our unconscious. This unconscious belief that nothing can happen to us may be seen as 'the secret of heroism'.
So much for being a hero...
As the last bit of consciousness begins to fade from Byron's mind, his murderer leans down and whispers in his ear. "Open. The box..." Almost as if of their own control, Byron's eyes shift to the box, lying in the leaves where he had dropped it. The carved reliefs on the box seen to dance in demonic glee, throwing their hands in the sky in supplication to an unseen deity. Slowly the lid swings open on silent hinges...
Thump Byron lands on the other side of the log, nearly losing his balance in the process. The box seems to grow heavier and heavier in his arms. Open. Me.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:21, Sun 05 Nov 2017.