------------------------------------
Coty Hopson hadn’t meant to kill himself when he stepped through the door and into the tiny shop on the corner of Fate & 15th. One minute he was walking along, listening to some Crows on his ipod, not paying much attention to anything but the way the music sounded and what Adam Duritz was singing about. He heard an explosion and the next thing he knew, he was in a room--place? box? void?--completely saturated in darkness, unable to see anything.
At first he thought he’d gone blind. He’d had an aneurysm like his Uncle Trent and survived but was without sight. The longer he thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense. He could see tiny bursts of light out the corners of his eyes, and sometimes he thought he saw shadows moving in the dark. If he were blind, he doubted this would be the case.
He supposed, in retrospect, that had he realized the shadows were really moving that things might have turned out differently, probably not, but maybe, but that was moot now. He could still feel them ripping him to pieces, tearing his body apart day after day, and he guessed it would continue on for all of eternity, but for the life of him he couldn’t understand why.
