Black Light by Talbot Mundy — Read

Moments of dim lucidity, shot through with something that was either color--or frozen light--or white-hot pain. Eternities of darkness, haunted by twilight just beyond reach. Consciousness of concrete nothing, in which the ayah's face leered at some one who was not Joe but the Joe whom Joe knew--mixed up with the New York office, the Chicago office and the San Francisco office, picked up with all their clerks on a vellum trust deed and poured into India down rays of amber moonlight--only the amber was yellow-green and blood-red, and not amber at all, except that the Yogi called it amber. Cymbal-sounds within a skull that was where his head should be; but he knew where his head was, it was in his hands, so that was some one else's skull and the pain was some one else's pain. Darkness again, in which no light could be, or ever was. He recognized it; it was the darkness of his mother's black skirt. It rustled. He was a small boy, hiding from her. And the Maharajah said it was a good pig; but the pig was Rita; and his mother went after the pig with a knife that stabbed between the shoulder-blades, so that Joe felt white-hot fire go through him. He knew it was Joe who felt that, and he was sorry for Joe in a way, although he knew he should not be.

There was a man from Jupiter who looked on, and who was Rita's friend, or so the Yogi said. He was jealous and took the knife to ride him down on horseback; but he could not see him when he tried to kill him. Muldoon threw a whisky bottle at him, so the horse fell and the spear went in between his shoulders with an agonizing stab that made somebody scream; he knew it was some one else who screamed, because he heard it. Silence, blood-red; but the red was really black and mauve, and he was lying in an oven being burned to death. He and the pig were being burned together, and the pig was thirsty.