The Secret Adventures of Luke's Hand

I needed a drink.

I never really knew what that sensation was like before then, but I certainly knew what it was like at that moment.

It wasn’t merely the fact that I had breached the height of several buildings, shuddering from raw, mordantly bitter exhaustion, survived a brutal act of mutilation, and was separated from a dear friend and companion, but when I reached the top of the tunnel…

…I almost wished I had let myself die at its depths.

Casting my mind back toward that dark time, I probably had retained a certain amount of ability with the Force through the same midi-chlorians that had facilitated my endurance. Because what I experienced at the return of the site where I had lost my old friend, it was almost too much to bear.

But I crawled past the ledge, toward the building, and toward my destiny.

For, after all, isn’t that what Luke Skywalker would’ve done?

The Secret Adventures of Luke's Hand

The problem with tasks that don’t require your mental faculties to do much work is that they give your mental faculties time to do too much work. Your mind wanders, your heart is freed, and you find your soul tumbling down into some dark and thrilling oblivion from which there can be no escape. From which you would never dream of escaping.

Then you are forced to awaken once again, your mind is tugged sharply back into the state of being that is known as present, your heart put back in chains, and your soul captured and caged, safe and secluded from dreams once more.

I know not which is worse. The reality of dreams or the dreams of reality.

Upon reaching the tunnel that had been above my landing point, I glanced upward and surveyed the dark confines of my environment. The landscape abounded with crevices and valleys, ledges and terraces, footholds and -- for all intents and purposes -- handholds. It was not as smooth as it had appeared on first glance, and it seemed that it would be possible to make the climb all the way to the top.

That is, if I could make the climb all the way to the top.

And so began what I can only feasibly describe as the most terrifying experience my poor heart, or what ever mechanism powers my senses, could ever hope to endure. Imagine, for one instant, the most horrendous of nightmares, every nuance of your most fondest of drams trampled against the most unspeakable of evils and pounded to dust before your eyes. There is not even the most faded desire to escape because you can’t remember how.

Imagine, for one instant, that nightmare.

I lived it.