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this holy experience

xii.

Larry Trainor is beginning to feel himself turn into a creature of wanting. Before the Spirit -- a creature of horror, something theatrical, a pieced-together false costume of a man. He is still this, now. He is still everything. He has to be everything. He is still this, but now he feels something pit inside of him, dark and consuming and

hungry.

He was always a creature of wanting. He wanted everything. He had to want everything — it was easy, to stretch himself out, to thin himself over humanity. He wanted love and he wanted safety but love is never safe; there is always some calculated overwhelming risk, and Larry was never strong enough to take it.

Now the Negative Spirit is in front of him, trapped within a chamber, its hand extended out to him, banging on their barrier. Help me. He is the one helping the Spirit now — he would be, if he were free. He prays. He closes his eyes behind his goggles and prays that Silas’ plan will come to fruition. He prays for the Negative Spirit, and when he opens his eyes again, its hand is still there.

He wants to touch it.

He would touch the Spirit if he wasn’t tied down. He would free the Spirit, if he was not tied down. Kept away. Forsythe — still alive, somehow — takes and takes and takes and he has taken the Negative Spirit from him too many times. If Larry were a stronger man, he would rip Charles Forysthe apart.

He is a creature of wanting, and creatures of wanting do not think sanely. They are fueled by their hunger, only hunger, only always hunger. Hunger and desire puppeteering, controlling each limb and neuron by string. He could reach out and touch it, when he is free. He will be free. He will make it out of this. He could grasp the Spirit’s hand like prayer, like becoming.

Before — before. Before his realization, he would have clawed at the Spirit in hatred. Anger. Miscommunication.

He wants it now -- to hold his hand to the Spirit’s, to mirror this action in reciprocation.

It is, after all, the only being he will ever be able to touch.

ii.

It is 196?, and Larry Trainor is caged within the Ant Farm. It’s — night? — and he is trying to sleep in cell 721, uncomfortably against the cold, sickening floor, in his suit. He hears wails and laughter and a continuing, endless shriek. At this point, the screaming does not even move him.

He’s become desensitized. It’s horrifying — he knows that it is horrifying — but after a few years, it all becomes minute, fading into background detail.

Larry hears — an alien rustle, feels something tingle and pool in his chest. His hand glows. It’s almost as if the being within him is trying to comfort him — to hold him in the only manner within its capability.

He wonders what it would feel like to touch it. It looked electrical on Forsythe’s screen; would it shock him, would it prick him?

Would it hurt? He would deserve that, wonders if the being would ever allow him to hurt himself against its frame. It probably would. It must hate him. It should hate him. It’s mutual — it ruined his life, but it stopped his torture. It created an eternal burning within Larry Trainor.

But — he wants to feel it. Does it ever touch him, when it is outside of Larry and he is unconscious? Would it do that?

Somehow, he knows: it wouldn’t. It, for some unknown reason, wants to protect Larry, and that is the worst action imaginable.

No one survives Larry Trainor.

xiii.

Larry peels his bloodied bandages away, unravels himself, his sick skin revealed slow in the mirror. He has so much to think about now. He thinks about the Negative Spirit; nowadays he is always thinking about the Negative Spirit.

And Larry Trainor is once again a victim of hunger, grows insatiable. He — he can’t parse it. Something has changed, has burst inside of him, into bloom. He is transforming.

He pulls his blanket over his shoulders. On his right side, he places his arms tight around each other — hugging himself. Embracing. He imagines embracing the Spirit, feeling its light and warmth around him. He imagines it as warm, as calming. Not shocking, not painful. Pure in every way.

The Spirit understands; it lets out a chest glow, white and void. Like: I am here. I have you.

xvi.

They’re trying a new chemical tomorrow, and supposedly his friends will soon be back to their normal sizes again. He does not have much faith in this.

“I’m starting to think we’re doomed,’ he says, to the Spirit, out loud to himself in admission. “What if we never get them back to normal? What if we have to live like this quite literally until the end of time?”

The Spirit gives a slight, fleeting flicker. Live in the present, not the future or the past. It is always there to remind him of the holy parts in life.

“I know,” he continues. “I can’t worry about that. I’m sure we’ll figure out something.”

Larry stares at himself in his bedroom mirror, studies every vein, every scar and every ridge. Imagines being touched, feeling fingers run over his scars in admiration. If he had what he used to have—

Don’t live in the past.

It’s time to end his curiosity.

“Release,” Larry breathes.

The Spirit exits his body, looks almost frightened floating in front of him. It waits for instructions. Confused, yet open, always open.

“Can you just,” Larry says, “hold me?”

It moves onto the floor, and embraces Larry gently, slow and cautious. Larry could shatter, fragment, if it makes the wrong move, chooses the wrong action. It knows this, it is the only being in the world who truly understands him, and thus it acts gentle. This is the most intimate experience Larry has had in a very long time.

It brushes against him. The Spirit feels—

The Spirit does not shock or elicit pain; instead it feels like touching a safe sun, like reaching out into space & its formations. It is - warm. When he closes his eyes, it is like the imagined feeling of placing touch upon pure light. Holiness tangible.

He never wants this to—