As you straighten up, slowly, you can feel it. A presence behind your left ear, as certain as if Ben was standing there. The slightest pressure on your arm, the barest suggestion of breath.

 

You know the voice. “Remember what I told you.”

 

And you do. You remember being drunk, freshly fucked, sprawled over Ben’s bed, the first time. You asked him if he believed in God, and he laughed and turned over on his stomach.

 

“If there is a soul,” he said, “Then the only place it can possibly be stored is in art.” You agreed. Passions, sins, the sum of ourselves, it can only be in what we create.

 

“But what happens when we die?” you asked him.

 

“Yes,” the voice from behind your ear says. “What happens then?”

 

 

If you whisper, “We go to our creator,” turn to page 23.

If you whisper, “We return to the only place where our souls have ever left a mark,”
turn to page 24.