The Typist spent a great deal of time wandering through the catacombs. It may have been two days since he had felt metropolitan daylight on his face, or it may have been two years. In any case, he chose to avoid thinking of time and its pressures. He designated himself to an unspoken form of discovery instead.

He walked down a very ruinous passageway running parallel to a hall he had explored for a number of hours. The area was ill-lit, with torches that lined the walls at intervals. When his eyes adjusted, he was able to discern the shapes of desiccated human bodies. Frightened by the sight, he ascended a tenuous ramp rather hurriedly and found that it led him to a decayed tapestry.

There was an inscription on it which denoted the purpose of the catacombs. Although the inscription specified fundamentally traditional use, the Typist was in search of an alternate explanation. He looked to his feet and saw the vestiges of a man: corroding gray bones littered beside a skull. He turned his attention back to the tapestry and saw that it was gone. In its place was a great aperture, about seven feet in height and five feet in width. Without hesitance or consideration, he proceeded into obscurity–

–twelve years old and he’s already been nearly choked to death, purple-faced clawing at his father’s forearms while whimpering and cursing sputters on kitchen linoleum. He’s resolute when he explodes from the screen door, clattering down the cul-de-sac trailing blood, patriarchal roars hammering his thoughts. He’s nonresponsive to the older kids surrounding him. A hockey stick arcs upward and swoops down to cleave his shin in half. He tightens his lips and retaliates with a smirk. His bone gleams in July sunlight while he limps to the dollar store to buy himself a comic book and candy

twenty years old and he’s scuffling behind a pickup truck with a still-burning cigarette teetering between the cracks of his fingerless glove. Two guys stand beside him, faceless guys who are untrustworthy but unafraid. They hiss insolence, pop mescaline, flick switchblades, slug foamy beer down razor-burned throats. The impostors find them and there’s a lot of bone-on-bone thudding. The familiar sound of punctured skin crunches through the din. Someone spews vomit or blood all over his arm. It extinguishes his cigarette; he can feel it soak through his glove and trickle down his palm

thirty-seven years old and the woman he just fucked is swatting at him with clumsily sweeping motions, screaming feverish nightmare delusions across the motel room. His face is craggy, the muscle in his arms has melted into colorless flab, shapeless folds push through his undershirt. He holds a glass of rye above his head, away from the assault. He waits for her rage to relent while welts rise on his neck and back; he watches her naked collapse before propositioning semi-conscious sex on crusty carpet–

The tapestry was a device like any other, with functions that served the narrative. The Typist descended the ramp very slowly and returned to the catacombs. There was much more of the area that he desired to explore.