Early March, 2009. Manchester, NH.

asphyxia -- n. [Greek., a stopping of the pulse < a-, not + sphyzein, to throb], loss of consciousness as a result of too little oxygen and too much carbon dioxide in the blood.

athanasia -- n. [Greek. < a-, not + thanatos, death], immortality.

atropine -- n. [... Greek ATROPOS + ine, from the one of the three Fates responsible for cutting the thread of life], a poisonous, crystalline alkaloid obtained from belladonna and similar plants...

12:02:03 AM : I lose sensation in my fingers and toes. The awful taste in my mouth is still there, but it's distant, like dust.

12:04:33 AM : The lights are very bright. I am no longer sure if I'm standing or sitting. Blurry things swim at the windows, but I cannot turn my head to see them.

12:06:53 AM : Stedman's doesn't begin to cover the sensation. Like a necklace whose string has just been cut, pearls sliding from their orderly ranks into dissolution. Just like that, my body slips away from me.

12:07:00 AM : Against my will, the Veil liquefies. The room deteriorates around me, telltale sepia-tone patina of the Underworld filling each object's rotting frame. I can feel my body aging and birthing itself around me, cellular functions living and dying all around me in this slack thing of skin and bone.

12:08:40 AM : I find myself confronting an image of the Oroborous, the snake swallowing its own tail. Recall of a fragment of a chemistry lecture -- the structure of the benzene ring is based on this glyph; Watson's reverie of the double helix as well. The snake travels both forward and back simultaneously; it is both created and destroyed in the same moment.

12:10:30 AM : The ghosts, drawn to my past and future blood, support me. I know so few of these, this city's lost souls. I move on where they cannot, acknowledging time and Fate.

12:10:50 AM : The poison continues to work in my body, atropine and scopolamine warring between themselves for possession of my cells. Visions swarm me now, swirling and moving like leaves in a high wind, but they have outlived their usefulness. In a moment of coherence, I reassess Chloe's list of plants. All narcotic or hallucinogenic, yes. But, most importantly, all poisons. The alkaloids in my system free me from the flesh over which they squabble, like Aurelius's barking dogs or wailing children.

12:12:14 AM : The poison creates in me a vast certainty. Reason fills me like wine in the wineskin of my body. Dimly, I see the ambulance arriving three minutes from now. In five minutes more, they will discover the note that I have left for them. Events circle one another like fibers of a rope; they twist like DNA. I know what I have to do.

12:00:00 AM : I dial 911.

- Skin's flushed, pupils dilated.

- How's his pulse?

- Pretty fast, but steady. He's sweating hard. What do you think he got into?

- With the dilated pupils, it's not heroin. Maybe a bad batch of speed. Just get that airway clear.

- Getting there ... hold him steady for me.

- Can you hear me? Come on, I know you can hear me. Help us out here. What did you get into?

- He's convulsing! Get that airway clear!

- Hold him down! I can't get this in unless you hold him down!

- Got it, got it. Come on, talk to me. What did you get into? You have to help us out here.

- There's something in his hand. What's this say?

3:02:19 AM : I am lying in a hospital bed, my stomach artificially emptied and filled with charcoal by means of a tube. My pulse is steady, and the last vestiges of the decoction are boiling themselves off in dreams I won't remember. In exactly a half-hour, I will regain consciousness.

3:32:19 AM : My flesh reaccepts me.

"As Epictetus said, thou art but a little soul bearing up a corpse."

- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_