I am walking along a road with friends. We are escaping the oppressive country.

We come to a group of vultures and they become vulture people. They try to scratch us. We will die if we let them. Some transitional character—part vulture, part person—tells us that all we have to do is raise our hand, palm out, to the vultures to keep them off of us. It's a bit like the priest with his cross to keep off the vampires.

The vultures are antsy, but leave us alone.

We continue to walk until we are in the country. It is oppressively dark. All of my friends have fallen away except for one. He jumps in the river which is so dark that it absorbs light. The river is covered in wispy cottonwood seeds that remind me of fecundity and sex.

Here I try to write a dream-like story
The transitional character is really a vulture who is less stuck in being a vulture and is able to communicate better with us people. She walks with me. We face each other. I lose my fear. She raises her wings. I raise my arms. We mirror each other. We move closer. We walk into each other, we merge.

We each move further, through each other, but stop before we separate. Now I am her back, she is my back. She begins to fly. I am a passenger, united on her back.

We land and I walk. She is my passenger, united on my back. We are one.

Now I see that in the past when I have flown, I have always been alone. I didn't know that I am meant to fly with my Other. She is my Other.

I am restored.

They rip my two legs apart so that I split from the groin. The pull off my right leg at the knee. They peck at my eyeballs and at my asshole. They are devouring me, destroying me. With each dismemberment I feel shooting bursts of ecstasy.

I can't decide. Does it hurt? Is it ecstasy? I am dismembered and re-membered repeatedly.