Twelve suns, twelve moons to mark the time.
Twelve times the pledge. Twelve times the sign.
Twelve trials beneath the foreign stars.
Twelve times you fail, then you are ours.
The last word jumps from the page and burns in your brain. Again, the train melts away. Your other senses fall dormant, leaving you only a grotesquely magnified charicature of touch. Your skin lights up, every nerve working beyond capacity. You feel every wrinkle of your clothes, every wisp of air. The conours of the carpet under your feet seem large as mountains. Your own heartbeat is like shotgun blasts to your chest.
The insane stimuli merge into noise, a single, cacophanous, unbearable sensation. Then, from the chaos, distinct tactile shapes form. Hands, or something like them. Dozens of hands. Small, large, smooth, clawed; some caressing, some stroking erotically, still others scratching and kneading ticklish places.
You collapse to a fetal position. Laughing, moaning, crying. Your hands try futilely to block the nonexistant touches. Your mind tries desperately to assimilate them, wants to experience them, to have them all, but can't take it all in.
Stop, stop! Please, I'll do anything!
Silence.
The sudden relative absense of sensation is like rapid decompression. For a minute, you feel numb. When your mind readjusts to normal levels of information, you become aware of a strange, light burning on your chest.
Facing the mirror again, you pull up your shirt to reveal a tattoo over your heart. A clock face, devoid of numbers, with the hands roughly at mignight. As you watch, the roman numeral "I" sears into place.
Twelve times the pledge. Twelve times the sign.
Whatever game you're playing, you just lost Round One.
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