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you to say what madmen do or do not know? You’re a kept
animal, grazed and fattened, awaiting the slaughter. You’re
hardly qualified to reflect upon the world beyond the barn.”
“In fact,” I returned, “I am obliged to wonder, as much
as apples are compelled to fall from trees. After all, I owe
my existence to wander and wonder, despite what children’s
journals might say to the contrary. What eye ever glimpsed
a wall that the mind had not, rightly or wrongly, already
spied beyond? You see, mystery is the music to which our
imaginations dance. Thus, the unseen world demands our
imagination, if not our attention. I am both the barn and
the unknown that stirs beyond its crooked fences, and I
accomplish the latter by dreaming.”
“But what is a dream if not sequestered madness,
Vincent?” the voice questioned. “Surely, you must see that
dreams have never been more truthfully described since
William Dement stated, ‘Dreams permit each and every one
of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.’
We are closer than skin and bone, you and I. Far closer than
you and that pretty red woman, in fact. And yet you’ve never
once offered me so much as a backward glance. I’ve let you
wander and kill to your heart’s contentment, playing at being
an artist from another world, a calculated pink elephant if
ever I’ve ridden atop one. All the while, I’ve offered you
purest freedom, and yet here you are, talking back to me.
What a splendid boy, indeed! Mark my words, Vincent of
the Dead, you have been duped. You are not free, not yet.
And like it or not, you will come to me after this Game of
yours has ended. After you see her for true, you will have no
choice. And in that moment of reckoning, you too will be
revealed. Like the apples of the trees, you will be compelled
to fall. Have no worries, however, I will be there to catch
you—and eat you. You will have all the delightful freedom a
broken mind can know, Vincent, and you will have only me
to thank for it.”

308 | Mark Anzalone