Elliot found Vance up ahead. Another four-way intersection. He closed in on the distance as Vance scratched his fingers into the surface of Sheila’s white, inner form.
Elliot reached out, Vance stop!
Vance turned mid-stride. You can’t understand! They crossed the intersection and Elliot pushed his hand into him, sinking into Vance’s darkness and the weight of everything, every thought, privilege and possession Vance had every wanted was right there at the surface of the black skin for Elliot’s experience. The subtleties of the touch, its suction on his hand, the pain of emptiness, betrayed the sequence of events leading back to Vance’s mid-twenties when the engine of his mind had collapsed his heart into a black hole of desire.
Vance staggered to his right.
Sheila flowed into the left passageway.
Elliot also propelled to the left as a diverging wind gusted Vance down the right passageway. Elliot turned to find Vance’s slender frame suspended against the sandstone wall of the right passageway’s dead end. His arms reaching forward, I can’t move! Wait. Help me! I can’t be the last one left behind in this, this trap! Everyone from Earth has already passed on, I know it! I can’t be the last one. I can’t be trapped here forever. Please!
The wind pulled the remaining two higher, howling a cry that flooded Elliot’s consciousness. They rose above the gray, sandstone walls and he saw the grooved passageways of the labyrinth extending in all directions. Straight above, he found the direction of their travel. The solitary pinprick hole shined violet light. The faint ceiling ended and they traveled up toward this distant light, seeming as a hole in an open black expanse. It grew slowly, then brilliant and enveloping with the wind calming to a faint breeze.