The Ritual

by Adam L.G. Nevill

Luke had never felt so beaten. Had not known it was possible to become so heavy in body and so listless.

It was impossible to speak in the gravity of terror that crushed them both against the rocks

But there was nothing inside him but a chaotic space with no room for anything beside the kind of terror that could disengage a mind from anything but imbecilic musings.

Knowing how quickly and suddenly and unexpectedly life could end, how irrelevant life was anyway to this universe of earth and sky and age, how indifferent it was to all of the people still in it, those who would come to it and those who had already left it, he felt freed. Alone, but free. Freed of it all. Free of them, free of everything. At least for a while. And that’s all anyone really had, he decided, a little while.