And sideways

The boat stops. For a moment you cannot detect the changes, but then it rocks dangerously as people step out onto the shore. The girl disappears from your limits of your vision. Hands lift you, carrying you, dragging you. Images of a jungle hacked back to create a clearing. And in the clearing, alien in their civilisation, are the green lawn and cool house you walked during your agony.
No delirium this. You are hauled inside. A voice tells your handlers to clean you up before presenting you. So maybe things are getting better.

Down

You are on a boat, rotting in the shallow-but-stinking bilgewater in the bottom, tied hand and foot, going up a river without end. And no, you don’t have a paddle. The flies and mosquitoes leave you swollen and red, skin cracking and ulcerating. You can see your disintegration reflected on the face of the girl in the bow. Each time she leans forward to swat away the insects, it takes her more to overcome her disgust. Your insides have eaten themselves from hunger and your head slowly, slowly breaks into blazing fragments.
And the river has no end.

Up

The present is all there is. The past is a fiction you have written. The future is not even waiting. The present is all there is….

The present is all there is. The sun sways permanently at its zenith, reluctant to relinquish the position of torture. Dreams have slipped into memories of what may be. The girl is in the garden and the garden is cool. She leans over you, touches you, and you can feel her touch spread through you like seismic waves. Her touch fills you. You take the girl like she takes you. You burn under her touch and the world vignettes. You explode.
At the height of the explosion, you realise why she can have no name.
And you realise why you have no name.

Up and down

In the experience of hell, we can have the vision of heaven. In the days that follow, the adventurer’s suffering blurs all perception. There is nothing to be seen, apart from the chaos of the sky that passes over his face haloed in the burning flare of the sun. The only relief is the occasional sight of the girl leaning over him to brush the flies from his eyes and mouth. But not often. He feels she is watched, not free. Is disapproved of. But by whom?
He retreats into his own personal present. A cool house, sun-and-shadow dappled lawn. Somewhere near there is a small stream. The birdsong competes gently with the breeze to soothe.