the devil's thumbprint

He became sentient suddenly, conscious of the fact that moments before he had no thoughts, no awareness of his own existence.  He was not, and now he was.  Thus began thought and the emergence of understanding, yet he still failed to understand: what had come before, if he was before?

His vision was blurry and he felt suspended in liquid.  He could not make out the details of what was around him, swimming in soup.  He blinked rapidly, trying to get his sight in focus, an overwhelming feeling of loneliness yet of being surrounded at the same time.

Look out!

His reflection appeared to him suddenly, he flinched and changed directions.  Again!  No matter which way he turned - left, right, up, down - he found himself faced with himself.  With each alteration of course his reflections changed too, always out of the way, never colliding.  But the motion was not so much a mirror, it was delayed in its action.  He moved, the images moved.  Sometimes they moved first.  He dodged and ducked, always avoiding.  On what surface were these likenesses projected? His limited capacity offered only confusion, and the frantic darting caused exhaustion.

"You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it."

A voice in his head, but a language he did not understand.  Hearing it brought neither concern nor comfort - only more bewilderment.  As he continued to move within the multitudes of himself he began to slow and calm down.  Nothing to be frightened of.  He could not look in any direction that was not filled with his own form, but each was just him.  No threat, no danger.  Only in the way.

Floating at the center of a diamond: seeing the refraction from within.

He stopped and rested, studying himself from all directions.  Slim, ordinary and naked.  Unremarkable but for the large, oval-shaped bruises on each side, as if a giant hand had held him tightly.  The hand of the demon himself, he thought.  The struggle to escape would explain the soreness in his muscles, but the wounds themselves did not hurt.  They appeared a part of his flesh, as if the confrontation was an ancient one.  He took pride in the fact that he had apparently been the victor, but he wished to know what his victory had been.  Perhaps only existence, and perhaps that was enough.

"Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did."

Suddenly the mirror-ball collapsed.  The images surrounding him caved in, crushing against his frame, their all-too-real presence making itself known with a suffocating force.  He felt their conjoined mass propelled upward towards a blinding light that scorched their sight and charred their skin.  The air was expelled from his chest and consciousness was almost immediately lost, hanging on only long enough for him to comprehend that he was no longer in the soup.  A rasping gasp as his being quelled, he finally understood.

"That's no way to carry ice!  Where are your tongs?"