Match Maker by Alan Chin

Author:Alan Chin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: M/M Contemporary, Source: Amazon
ISBN: 9781615815876
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2010-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

A single nightmare punctured my sleep. I woke several times, drifting on the edge of consciousness for an hour or so, only to sink back into the same ordeal.

In my dream, I crawled on my belly through blackness dense as chowder, groping along an uneven tunnel that seemed to zigzag through the base of a mountain. At least it felt like the weight of a mountain pressing on me. I slithered over damp, jagged stones without any idea of where I crawled. I knew that I had to keep moving. Heat, rising from what must have been an underground lava stream deep under the mountain, bathed me in sweat, but I shivered anyway. The cave began to ascend. I heard the sound of water dripping into a pool slowly, one drop at a time. I inched toward it. As the sound grew louder, I began to smell the stench of dampness and excrement and rotting flesh. That's when I realized that I was lost in Grandfather Lin's WWII cave.

I stopped, panting. My fingers found a pool of liquid, and I wanted to drink, but fear turned me away. It felt like water, but it had the sour reek of stagnant blood. I had to find Grandfather Lin. He alone could lead me out. Was I going the right way, or did this direction take me deeper under the mountain? I had no idea. I kept going. To lie still was to die. This, then, was my path. I realized that there are no choices in life, only the illusion of choice, and beyond the illusion, there is destiny.

I heard a whisper begging for food, for water. I inched toward the sound. As I edged over sweaty rock, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I saw shadowy images solidify into human bodies. Around me lay rotting corpses with maggots crawling under their skin, frothing their open wounds, burrowing into their flesh. Their bodies looked like phantoms staring wide-eyed into the void.

I crept closer and saw movement in their eyes, and I thought that they were still alive, but I realized that the movement was maggots swarming in the corpses' eye-sockets. I heard them, heard the minuscule chomping sound of gorging maggots. I stifled the bile rising in my throat, forced myself to crawl toward the voice. My skin burned as I slithered over the bodies.

The path climbed upwards as I drew closer to the voice. It belonged to Grandfather Lin, his boy voice, but he spoke in a fatherly way. Then I saw him: flesh melted away, colorless skin stretched over bone, huge eyes protruding from his skull like a nocturnal animal. His body lay still, but his eyes moved relentlessly as he babbled. He repeated over and over that he had no choice. He begged for forgiveness. I crawled by him, beyond the putrid stench of death and beyond the madness that shrouded him like a cocoon.

The cave tunnel split, one side continuing to ascend and the other leveling off.

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