I am floating. Not in any ethereal, angelic manner, but like how bits of stick and Styrofoam float in Class Five rapids. I jostle things and fight not to fall over. Ahead of me, not that I can see anything around me, is the end of this ridiculous log flume, but I am afraid to get there. There is a man standing there, a man with weirdly deformed legs and a back that looks hard and cold as bone. His hair is short and that no-color that thin blond hair becomes after about fifty years, but looking at him keeps me from concentrating, and I slip under.
Under is death, I am sure of it. There are things drifting there, spined things with waxy, thick faces and features worn away like driftwood. They have cold-looking limbs; twisted and fluorescent. Candlewood, or cactus--that's what they remind me of.
I twitch. One of them has seized me, is dragging me down with a blank look of purpose that is terribly real. I open my mouth to scream, and water flows down my throat, only it is not water. It is living, feels like a thousand worms, or maggots coursing down me and oozing into my lungs. One of them is huge--I can feel it blindly twisting in my stomach, slowly pulling itself deeper. There is pain.
Millions of feet have passed. I feel myself begin to disintegrate, to become part of this river. And then, just as suddenly, there is air. I've surfaced, somehow, and I am sitting mere feet from the figure I had seen before. His dull hair looks like his scalp has been grated.
The thing in my stomach is still working its way through me, and I am being torn apart. And then the figure twists around and I forget about everything else.