*THIS IS NOT A FURRY-RELATED WORK AND THERE IS NO INTENTION FOR IT TO BE A FURRY-RELATED WORK*

Ok. So this is basically a rough draft of the final draft(confusing) of a novel I have been working on on and off for about a year. It's a metaphysical novel about an initially nameless man and his travels within a plane of existence called the fold. It is also a period piece set in the late 60's to late 70's mostly about the Vietnam war and the period following it. These stories are parallel and highly important to each other, but the connections between them aren't initially specified and because a lot of the book is supposed to be steeped in mystery, I don't want to initially state who is who and what relates to what.

If you like the works of David Mitchell and Phillip K. Dick and the movies of people like Darren Aronofsky and people like him, this is right down your alley. I am open to critiquing and by open, I mean rip the writing apart if you desire. I want the finished work to be a work of art and I don't think I can do that alone.


"Prologue

Consciousness regained. The man had clearly been asleep for an immeasurable amount of time. His body had begun to assume the form of a man who had gone impoverished for years. His hair had become willowy, threatening to pull away completely in protest of lack of care. His eyes made barely audible snapping sounds as they slowly but surely fought their way open against the forces of languidity, the glassy eyes beneath not unlike those of the newly dead or the catatonic. His tear ducts worked with great effort to clean out the layers of rheum that had accumulated from what had been tantamount to a full-blown coma. He was crying for the first time in what felt like thousands of years.

A long held breath of air quickly made its way up through his throat and out his lungs, the catalyst of serious bout of hyperventilation. It was as if he had been underwater for longer than any human could ever attest. Although he was respiring too quickly to take full note, he smelt an almost sulfur-like tinge of smell in the air. As the almost anaphylactic shock of his resurgence began to subside, he began to take further note of his current surroundings. His eyes were still adjusting, registering hazy impressions of bright light far off in the distance but still bright enough to hurt his newly young eyes. He tasted acidic vapor and at first, he thought it was some sort of deadly poison gas and attempted to once again stifle his breath in an attempt to save himself, but after realizing the futility of such an action with such a weakened state of being, he yielded to whatever threat the odorous vapor presented. Within minutes, he realized that the so-called poison wasn’t making him any more delirious than he already was.

A peculiarity of his newly rejuvenated existence that he had only just recently noted was the numbness he felt. Or rather, he could feel when he felt his own body, but couldn’t feel anything besides himself. There simply was nothing there. It was slightly disorienting. No, very disorienting. Was he falling? Was he going to die? His ears heard nothing but a peculiar ringing sound that was just short of deafening. His eyesight still wasn’t refined enough to give him any of the answers he sought; the lights were still painfully far away. Were they the campfires of men? Could these men help him figure out what was going on?

He placed his right hand on the left part of his chest and felt his heartbeat. It was beating at an unusually slow pace, but the familiar pounding sensation quelled his temporary lack of sensory stimulation beyond the unpleasant sounds, smells, and tastes. And then he remembered that he was capable of speech. He opened his mouth and began to form words with significant difficulty. If it wasn’t his glottis that he couldn’t properly articulate, it was his teeth that he couldn’t open and close with any deal of proper speed or his tongue that he couldn’t flex for any worth. Eventually, with practice he was able to produce words, although they were still poorly executed. The English language was bulky and almost alien on his tongue, a testament to his mental and physical fatigue if there ever was one. He managed to string together his first sentence in god knows how long.

“Where am I?” he said clumsily.

He didn’t expect to receive an answer. Even with his retarded sight, he was beginning to sense that he was the only one in this place. His vision now revealed those far away bright lights to be stars and galaxies and miscellaneous other stellar objects. He was in space. And while most of the stars were far away, he began to take note of a blurry, milky patch that was slowly making itself more prominent in his field of vision. As it gradually became larger and brighter, it also became sharper, whether by the closing of distance or by the gradual replenishment of his own vision he could say not. As it neared him, its immensity gradually become more and more clear to him. This patch folded about in innumerable places and lined the sky in a manner not unlike stitches or an unwounded bow. Just a bit closer and he could perceive what reminded him of ocean waves rocking this folded stripe of light so that it pulsated. The beauty of it all hit him with the impact of a charging horse, reducing his newly reconstituted mental state to rubble. He had started to cry for the second time, but he realized that it wasn’t solely the beauty of this object that had put him into such a mood. There was some lingering feeling of regret mixed with loneliness that had risen up in him, one which he could not readily explain. By now he knew that he wasn’t falling, but floating. More specifically, he was being drawn to the large stellar object, as if it were exhibiting a sort of weak gravitational pull upon him, strong enough to pull him to it at a surprising speed but slow enough for him to comfortably say he wasn’t going to hit the object hard, assuming he didn’t pass through it. And that was another thing: at this distance, he could just barely see stars on the other side of it.

It didn’t take long for him to realize that the periodic waves that coursed through the ribbon served as a means of propulsion. All the while that he’d been floating to it, the ribbon had been quickly snaking itself across the sky so that one end was finally visible to him. He estimated that he would probably touch down on the ribbon somewhere about the end of it assuming he wasn’t just falling and missed it completely. No, he’d make it. It was best not to worry. There was absolutely nothing he could do. He just had to let nature take its course. But what was the nature of this place. From memory, he recalled that he wasn’t supposed to be able to breathe in space. But then he couldn’t recall from where he knew that. In fact, he had no knowledge of the source of all of his own knowledge. He couldn’t remember practically anything from before his slumber. But somehow he just knew. He had instincts and knowledge kept on arriving into his head without warning.

His attention was drawn to a large knot in the ribbon close to the end of it. More than anywhere else, light streamed out from this edifice, illuminating it like a miniature sun. Suddenly he began to physically feel the progression from floating to falling. He let out a surprised yelp that continued on into a scream as his stomach turned inside out and his arms began to flail in a desperate attempt to grab on to things that simply weren’t there. Second by second, the sun began to grow inside as he fell to what most certainly must have been his doom. Before he knew it, he made contact with the ghostly inferno and simply fell through its membranous exterior and into the unknown."