53

So follow the finger. Follow the finger. He follows the finger. As he does, he mumbles, "Follow the finger; follow the finger," to himself. A ludicrous mantra. He is following the directions of a part of himself that has been severed and, at least within his quasi-hallucinatory awareness, been transformed into, of all things, a fish. Oh, the symbolism... This whole place is a great big smelly pit of symbolism. Stinking of fish (or of his hand...) A funny thought comes to him that, perhaps, this handfish has become a red-herring. Ha ha. Misguiding him. Throwing him off some path he is supposed to be pursuing. Throwing him from whatever hunt he is on that makes it proper that others in this realm should call him hunter. ...Or attracting whatever bugaboo it is that he is supposed to be either hunting or hiding from in sanctuary. And he knows, or feels it, as he feels everything he knows of late, that he is no longer in sanctuary. Or maybe that he has not yet reached sanctuary... for the priests who turned into the monster, a monster which cut off his hand in granting his desire to serve on a commitee -- they(it) were(was) hardly (a) character(s) acting as he imagines (a) character(s) acting who (is) are granting sanctuary to a weary and bewildered traveller. His mind is now thinking doubly. He finds it second nature to speak to himself of singular and plural things simultaneously. The finger continues to point, his hunger continues to grow, he continues to wonder about sanctuary. The finger takes him back into a forest, and eventually to a cave -- more of a hole carved out of a hilly slope rising out of the green, muddy tangles of the forest floor.