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## now it's not a cancer ward (we're sleeping in the morgue)

|| The Negative Spirit thinks about death, and about humanity.

It’s hard, combing through Larry’s memories, moving their fingers through the fine, grating sands of Larry’s mind, fragments of fragments of memory sifting through palms, their transparent solidity. Ripping through the energy of their form, microscopic slicing. They can feel it, the depths of his memories like predator talons, gripping the Spirit with lurid intent, when they are carried into his visions and consumed consumed—

It’s difficult. They want to be good for him here, to connect him to love again, to push him into the waters of purpose.

John Bowers is dying. They have known this for a very long time; they are connected to every aspect of Larry Trainor, and this extends out, branches into everyone that he has ever loved. His children. John. His wife, in some manner. They watch every soul from Larry’s past fade into the scenery, into ash and light. They watch the creation flicker out. They watch.

Sometimes the Spirit tries to comfort them.

When Sheryl died, they entered her mind briefly—-right before her passing, before the force was stolen from her—-and spoke inaudibly, their words radiating in the pure way through the boundaries of her mind as the room was stripped of completion in a gradual rhythm. At first it was their old house; the wallpaper replaced with bone-white.

She was terrified. They felt each pulse of pain burrow underneath her skin, the fear sprouting from flesh. They had forgotten that their appearance is frightening; the others at the manor had become accustomed to them, but to Sheryl they were monstrous. The furniture in the house faded into piles of dust on the floor, past lives being unearthed.

“Are you here to take me to hell?” she asked, and the pain burst from Sheryl’s chest — from the cancerous tumors — and cut them open over the thorax, transplanting suffering into new suffering, into the one being that has become the personification of agony---the horseman representing ultimate, eventual sin.

They shook their head. Even in death, human beings are afraid. The Spirit imagined the end of life as a comfort upon merging with Larry—- harmony was never feasible—- a strong belief in the beauty of nothingness and void.

Humans feared punishment.

The Spirit couldn’t understand this. In their own world, their concept of religion involved no punishment; instead there was encouragement and hope, the emphasis on virtuous action. To Sheryl Trainor, they represented failure. The house became bare, mere bones of wood, and the Spirit knew that they were running out of time.

“Are you an angel?”

They did not respond. It was best for her to draw her own conclusions, to find some last comfort if she could.

They held her hand. The lights in the house faded, the sensation of skin against theirs following immediate, and then darkness, simple darkness and silence. The first silence that the Spirit had been able to achieve on this planet. The—

But Larry needs them now. They create a light in the mind of John Bowers, a portal to the past in the present, and John kisses Larry—-embraces Larry as they watch from their own vision, from the edges of his memory, and imagine being closer. Closer. To humanity.

To Larry.