We escaped the pits of hell and were spit out on some country road. We were headed to the next town to catch up with the kids. Miyamoto and I have been silent since I said I lost my eyes. A harsh wind moves a tree branch, breaking the sound of silence.

  “Are you sure?”

  “The hollow point in my skull answers that pretty fucking well.”

  Miyamoto pulled over the bike, and we both got off.

  “Let me see it.”

  I pulled my sunglasses off my face.

  They had shattered from explosions but reformed themselves.

  Thank you once more, Celeste.

  Miyamoto took a good, long look.

  “It's gone.”

  “A blind man can see that, which I’m now one half of!”

  “Calm down, V. You're going to increase the amount of blood lost if you keep this up. How did this even happen in the first place?”

  “When I pulled the grenade, the shrapnel may have led to a secondary injury… Or something.”

  I took a drag from the cigarette that fell from the heavens with me.

  “So… what now?”

  We stood there in silence, only the wind keeping us company.

  Miyamoto was patting himself down, trying to find something.

  After a few minutes he pulled a long piece of cloth out of his kimono sleeve.

  The object was navy dark, the same as Miyamoto's kimono.

  “What is that?”

  “A bandana.”

  “Is it clean?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Fine.”

  Miyamoto pulled out a bandana and started to tie it around the empty husk that once held my eye. I replaced my sunglasses and placed my hat back on my head.

  “How far are we from the next town?” I asked.

  “A few hours, I’ll say. We should be able to make it before daybreak.”

  “Should we take turns driving?”

  “V, you’re half dead.

  I’m not letting you drive.

  Just sleep on the back of the bike.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” I say while tripping over myself.

  “I’m not.

  I’m only thinking about my own survival.

  How shall we explain this to the kids?”

  “Let's hope they don’t realize.”

  “That's an awful idea.”

  “It’s the only one either of us has.”

  We got back on the bike, heading off to the unknown once more… Human vs Demon… What a simplistic view people must view these “wars”; if man is able to win, the tale will stay as such.

  My eyes began to grow weary.

  Sleep had crept in without me knowing.

  It felt like death was trying to take me without my knowledge.

  The bike's roaring was growing farther and farther away.

  I fell into a slumber.

  Darkness has surrounded me; has the end now consumed me just as it did with my eye?

  Floating in this abyss, there was no sound.

  No feeling.

  No mouth.

  Only my thoughts to keep me company.

  Thinking about my lost eye, wondering what it all meant.

  Thinking about how I’m now crippled in my combat abilities.

  I could try and train my other senses.

  Damn…

  What a fucking mess.

  A feminine voice echoes throughout this barren land, and the image of a woman appears. Her body glowed with a golden hue as if light were attached to her. She was wrapped in a white kimono that had drapes of gray. Her inner cloak bled with ruby red. A wooden pearl necklace hung across her neck, and a bloodstained belt was wrapped around her. Her eyes looked like little suns.

  “Oh, it's you, Amaterasu.

  Isn’t it a pain putting all that stuff on?”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “You get used to it after a few thousand years; the helpers also help.”

  “How’s it been?”

  “Much better than you.”

  “Anyone could say that, so why am I here?”

  “You almost became soup an hour ago, so I wanted to check up with the man who is making the world better.” This sly smile formed across Amaterasu’s face.

  I pulled a fake cig out of the cartridge inside my coat and lit one.

  “Do you get a vindictive kick out of screwing with me by calling me that?”

  “Maybe, so how are you?”

  “Kind of got betrayed, lost an eye, almost died, same old, same old. You got any hoodoo voodoo or whatever that can fix this?”

  “I can’t due to certain reasons… But there is a way. There's a pool of water in the mountains somewhere in the country of Yūgen. That should heal your wound.”

  “How incredibly vague of a response for a so-called god.”

  “It’s the whole economic backbone of the country; it won't be hard to find.”

  This all sounds too good to be true. This isn’t some fantasy book with easy fixes. But I might as well see where this road ends.

  “Do you know anything about a mad god?”

  “You’re just draining all the information you need out of me this time. A goddess is standing in front of you, and not even a single praise or a show of respect.”

  “I don’t believe in gods, and you're the one who pops up randomly in my abyss. If you want a normal conversation, tell me how to contact you, and then we can have some tea and talk about the weather.”

  “You know, most people would never talk to me like this.”

  “Well, I’m just the Devil.”

  “Rather mythological for the likes of you. A simpler killer dressing up like the King of Hell himself.”

  "Would you just answer my bloody question, Amaterasu?"

  “Tcg, tch. You just don't have any patience. His name is Konran, a real nasty bastard, as you know.”

  “Sure.”

  “He was kicked out of the realm of the gods, and so he runs rampant through this world.

  You’re pretty popular with madness, aren’t you?

  First a mad god, then having all the horrors of man in your skull, and finally seeing the King of all Demons—what’s next?”

  ”No matter what or who it is, if it gets in my way, I’m going to put a round in their head.”

  “Rather egotistical of you to believe you can battle the whole world with just your guns and wits.”

  “You'd be surprised how often that works. If it bleeds, it dies.”

  Amaterasu was becoming transparent.

  “It's time to go. Don’t get yourself killed, V. Remember to better yourself because hell is coming, and if you want to be the true Devil, you have to become stronger.”

  Everyone keeps saying that, like I would run straight into death's arms at the first opportunity.

  Amaterasu disappeared into the ether, just becoming dust in the wind.

  My only company once more was the endless darkness of the abyss and only the worst of humanity.

  Rewatching the greatest hit of man once more, not out of choice; it just always being played with this skull.

  I stumbled across a scene I must have seen before but could not recall.

  My skin was burning, and my eye was swollen with a stabbing pain.

  A man standing in the middle of a desert.

  A desert in New Mexico circa 1945.

  He stood in front of a pillar of fire.

  Behind him stood a town that looked like it was from the Wild West.

  He was muttered something; it was, “Now I have become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”

  An inky coat drew across his back.

  A cigarette lit his face.

  A shadowy hat shadowed his face from his god.

  The destroyer of worlds stood there, frozen in his gaze with death.

  My eye had became his.

  The sand started to disappear as the light of the atom bomb turned to a much kinder light. The dust-filled air of the desert turned into thick, book-smelling air.

  I was placed into another time and another place.

  A man sat writing a book.

  He wore a black coat with a white undershirt.

  Glasses covered his eyes, and an astounding walrus mustache lay on his face.

  I both looked down at what he was writing and was using the man’s eyes to see the phrase that was written.

  “Gott ist Tot.”

  "God is dead." I guess learning German was worth it.

  With this, I realized who this man was: Friedrich Nietzsche. He was working on The Gay Science. In the book, he shows how traditional religion and philosophy have become so separated from daily life that they have become useless. God is Dead, reflect on these statements. The Christian god was not dead, but the ideal was no longer believed. Nietzsche yelled, “Schei?e!” Irritation filled him, and pain filled his eyes. A man who looked years older than he should; maybe if we had met, we could have had a good, long drink.

  I read and reread his books when I was a younger man. I smoked a bit back then; I just wanted to die. When I just started working in Japan, I was just drifting through life.

  The abyss didn’t care about my existence.

  Neither does life.

  Nietzsche didn’t change my life, but they were interesting.

  The room changed once more into a courtroom. The room was filled with silence, and a man lay on the floor.

  The air was thick with dust.

  The man who was lying across the floor started to stand. The man was six feet tall and slim; he had a rather wiry face, and his eyes were those of a man with a mission. Another man who wore a dark coat. His hair was as white as snow, and his beard went down to his upper chest.

  “I have, may it please the Court, a few words to say. In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted—the design on my part to free the slave. I certainly intended to have made a clean thing of the matter, as I did last winter, when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side. moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again, on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion or to make insurrection."

  John Brown's final speech, and the words were coming from my mouth.

  “…Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, — I submit; So let it be done!”

  The setting moves outside with an army of soldiers standing around Brown. He/I stood on top of the gallows with a rope tied around him/I. Thinking about his last words, which were written on a piece upon paper. "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood."

  Brown/I dropped.

  The rope wrapped around my neck and burned around my neck.

  Choking on my spit and closed airways

  My eyes closed…

  Surroundings start to turn stygian once more in this vacant land.

  Then light starts to appear as I awake.

  I opened my eyes and found we had stopped.

  “You talk in your sleep.” Miyamoto said while squatting with his hand up to the fuel tanks, blue lights were being poured into the tank. The bleached moon lit up the ground, and the clouds were like an inkblot test. I could never see anything in those fucking things.

  “And you’re a hard pillow.

  Why did we stop?”

  “I had to fill the fuel tank with my magic.”

  “Can’t you do that while driving?”

  “It's a pain in the ass.

  Why don’t you have magic?”

  “Don’t know, maybe the gods locked it away.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in gods.”

  “I don’t, but who cares?”

  Miyamoto continues to fill the fuel tank, and I remember the words of the men I dreamed about.

  “Maybe we always have been damned.” I mumble to myself.

  Miyamoto looked up at me. “Did you say something?”

  I looked upon the starry night and said, “No.”

  The cigarette was almost at its filter now, the line of smoke floating through the night sky.

  Am I afraid of what I have become?

  My favorite song passed through my head like shōchū slashing throughout my mouth.

  “And if California slides into the ocean.

  Like the mystics and statistics say it will.

  I predict this motel will be standin' until I pay my bill.

  Hey!

  Don't the sun look angry through the trees?

  Don't the trees look like crucified thieves?

  Don't you feel like desperados under the eaves?

  Heaven help the one who leaves

  Still wakin' up in the mornings with shakin' hands

  And I'm tryin' to find a girl who understands me

  But except in dreams, you're never really free

  Don't the sun look angry at me?”

  Warren Zevon—Desperados Under the Eaves

  Miyamoto got the bike back up, and we returned to our journey to the next town.