Free Second Chance by Chet Williamson Page B

cold, and closed his eyes and let the little smoke that had not entered him drift out like remnants of a dream. He wondered for what seemed like hours if he should say her name, and then he did, without even being conscious of it.
    "Tracy," he said.
    "Tracy," the others whispered, and he felt the joint being taken from his hand, and he sat on the floor, watching the others.
    Slowly they celebrated their strange communion, sharing the bread and wine of their youth, speaking names of those gone away:
    "Keith," said Sharla , and the glowing ember moved on, and Woody's ears were filled with a sound of flame, as if the burning end of the joint was starting to set the world on fire, and the flame seemed so much brighter now, and the name of Keith sang with a crackle of fire.
    "Dale," Eddie said, and Dale , they all breathed, the sound reverberating in the air, becoming one with the music, the song of lighting fires, and the fire burned now, it was blinding, and he could not see who bore it, what new Prometheus was passing its wisdom on.
    Another name, another voice. Was it Diane? He couldn't tell, because his voice and the voice of the others all chanting, praying, singing the name engulfed his memory, until the name and the flame filled the world.
    Other names were spoken, and he repeated them, not recognizing them now, and the fire song had stopped, and another song was being sung again, the song about breaking through, and when Woody peered through the glare of the fire, it seemed to him that his friends' faces were as they had been years before, that time had rolled backward, that the great white flame shone on bright, unlined flesh, glimmered on dark, ungrayed hair, and their eyes looked at him in the same way, filled with wonder and delight, and they came together, slowly, deliciously, as through water they could breathe.
    Hands touched, arms embraced, and he thought what they all thought, that they were here now and here then and would be here forever, that they were pure and ideal and immortal, and that all their ideals, their hopes and dreams still blazed inside them, never dead, never dead, but sleeping, and reawakened now, set on fire once more by the night, the music, by each other, by love and peace and freedom and happiness, and they were one, thinking with one mind, speaking with one voice, linked by flesh and soul, a human mandala that spun around and around, until all the faces blurred into one, and he was Diane who was Frank who was Eddie and round and round and Sharla and Curly and round and Judy and Alan and round and round and Tracy . . .
    She was alive and in them and of them and everything dead was alive again, dead lover, dead friends, dead dreams, and he moaned and laughed and howled and wept and prayed to God, who was himself and all of them, the living and the dead, all immortal, eternal, ageless, infinitely wise—
    until the fire began to diminish, its song to fade in his, their, its ears, fragmenting the holy consciousness of what they had become, the senses of God dulling, the universe leaking through the void so that stars, nebulae, self grew cold, silent, black.
    Black.

Chapter 8

    His eyes were closed.
    That was why it was dark, why it was so black. It was like the joke, wasn't it? I can't see . . . so open your eyes.
    He did.
    They were on the floor, all of them, shoulder against shoulder, hands holding arms holding hands, legs touching, knee rubbing knee, eight of them in a closed circle of flesh. All of them appeared as dazed as Woody, their eyes blinking as if confused, heads shaking in an effort to bring their thoughts back to reality and the present. There was something else too, something Woody couldn't immediately define, a change of some kind.
    Woody's left hand was holding Sharla's right, and his right wrist was wrapped by Eddie's long fingers. Slowly they released their holds on each other. Woody's fingers felt stiff as he rubbed the red marks Eddie's grip had made.
    "What the hell