As once before now twice again he opened his eyes. This time was different, the feeling was different before it was peace, confusion and a hazy incoherence. Now the peace had twisted and corroded into horrid pain the confusion gave way to anger which only served to focus his anguished mind enough to bring into clarity the man to his right. "Hey fella" the stranger said punctuating it with a toothy grin revealing the crooked decayed teeth beneath his dark lips. "I'm samuel, don't fret none, your safe and probably got alot to ask, meet me outside when you feel up to it." With that he rose from his chair and strode out of the room, an uneasy walk wide stanced and offset by a limp. He rose quickly fueled by his frustration and guided by anger, eager to stop the stranger and demand answers but he was felled just as his foot touched the cold floor. A torrential wave of pain slammed against his skull so harshly it felt as if to etch into his soul, to forever leave its essence felt. His body shook and trembled as his torso tightened and contracted as he choked and coughed up water, torrents of water, the oceans salt stinging the corners of his mouth and cracking his lips as he writhed in pain while the puddle grew beyond reason. It wasnt until moments after the convulsions stopped that he noticed the clouds of blood forming in the water, the drops fell from his cheek running down from the back of his head. Tentatively he reached back to find the source, a 3 inch long gash reaching deep into bone even, but it didnt hurt, not really, it was a dull sensation more like the memory of pain. Memory, thats right, he had dashed his head on a rock, everything beyond that was blackness, maybe the first kindness in this storm of misfortune. His clambered to his feet only to see that man again at the doorway.

"drowning huh? thats a rough one, not all too bad here though, no real problems."

"What is this " he croaked, his voice hoarse and gravelly no doubt from the sea water.

"this place? oh its sort of the waiting room, what we are waiting for well, we haven't gotten that far yet, this." samuel said while gesturing to him and the puddle of cloudy water "Is your rejection."

"Rejection."

" yeah its something quarty came up with, says its our new bodies rejecting the old en' " his speech thick with a southern accent.

" listen you can lay here and think about all this as much you want, few of us did but ill tell you right now, it aint helpin no one, or you can come out here and meet the fellas, we all have to accept it sooner or later, but around here, laters got teeth." Once more he walked away, slowly this time, each step echoing the plea for him to follow and so he did, on trembling legs he stammered through the doorway and down the practical hallway thick with a silence that hung in the air like the plague. This looked like the same hospital, the same doorway which once held that thing, her, but now it was different ,completely empty and lifeless. He clung to the wall as his vision blurred in and out of focus, steadily continuing on determined not to lose his only tangible proof of his sanity, that this wasnt just his own machination as his body. His real body, lay somewhere clinging to life as his mind let loose with fantasy in its delirium. Was this this any different than the suffering he was already so intimately familiar with, was his attempt to escape that circle of hell merely the tumbling fall to the next one below, deeper into the abyss that only his mind knows? The idea unsettled him, grinding away at his rationality and festering in him with a dull ache. They reached the end of their journey, a pair of double doors with a glowing sign above reading "EXIT".

"Dont take that too literal friend, goddamned irony of some kinda joke" the stranger mumbled as he pushed open the door. His eyes were suddenly overwhelmed by the brightness, slowly subsided as he stood in the door way, a cold draft so forcefull it nearly toppled him back. As his vision returned he noticed the landscape before him, stretching out in the sort of endless way only dreams make real, driving him further into his fear for being trapped within himself. That still didnt answer what happened to him earlier though, he had no idea who that woman was, nor the man but they felt so familiar like a memory. He drew himself back to reality as it remained to be seen. Trash, discarded stuff and all things forgotten littered the world in front of him, piled in heaps along the sides of a path no doubt created by this man and his friends. An asphalt path winding down a short way, wire fence stickin out at ends and showing over the shorter piles, they weaved down the path until they found a large cleared space, with a few metal frame chairs, a toppled tree half petrified all circled around a fire burning brightly in a rusted metal drum.

"Ah and so here brought forth the truth which i do dread, that prison which was a world known, itself a hopeless machine has remained so unchanged as to bring us another to join the ranks of the Sacrifical. Welcome to our humble mortuary." "mortuary?" was his only response to this new man walking out from a group of tented tarps, the man had his arms out in a welcoming manner displaying in full sight his long matted white beard and his oddly clean robe which was set apart from both the time and setting, more fitting to ancient greece than a junkyard. "dammit quarty you get too damn excited about making a flashy entrance that you bury the lead every single time" Samuel sighed and turned away from quarty to look at him calmly "son, your dead you did it, but im sorry you didnt make it really anywhere youd wanna be, kinda like everything else here, we're sorta like spare parts."

"Vestigial remnants of another hellscape, disimiliar meerly in size each of us a tragedy at once tucked away and again re-read, such is our fate" chimed in the older man behind samuel

"what was that thing, that-" he blurted out but trailed off in the end unable to find the words for whatever it was, whoever. He could only turn his head and broadly gesture back toward the hospital they had just left, the double doors already beyond sight. Hidden by the heaps of trash.

"The reclaimers, we all have different names for 'em but thats the common one, they take us, any one of us and send us to suffer for them. Ya cant hide from em and you sure as hell cant fight it, its like being hunted but they move slow cuz they know we aint going nowhere, just spare parts for em."

"actors, we replay and live for them the harsh reality of which they cannot bear, upon the shoulders of the damned do the favored climb. Harsh and fixed, tormenting and yet so infallible, so says the damned" quarty said before taking a deep breath. "reclaim your sense and footing in mine tent, tomorrow, as much this world can know of time, we shall delve into your new world. First though, what is your name child?"

He opened his mouth to speak but found only hesitation and a short stopped breath as he realized he didnt know, as hard as he fought and as far back as he looked he could not remember his name. Nothing he was called or refered to as, the only thing he could remember was his katherine but it wasn clear to him whether that was part of his damnation or his only solace. "i dont know, why dont i know?" the unknown man asked, turning back and forth between quarty and samuel hoping for an answer.

"its just somethin that happens, none of us can remember our names, quarty says its cuz we are just blank slates for them things to use. We all kinda just chose our new names." samuel was the one who answered but both him and quarty nodded their heads in answer.

"Valentine, thatll be my new name" he said with quiet assuredness and solemnity, it was from a book he read when he was young, a human brought back to earth to learn to be human again. The poignant irony and similarity of it felt right when he thought back on what happened earlier. True he suffered and felt that womans harshest moments he even knew her memories, the sweetest ones of her life with that man and the happiness that came with it. It was a painful experience within her own paradise, more goddamned irony, but he learned something also, maybe something he was lacking in his own life, something he couldnt understand fully because he had not lived it as she had but this encircling confusion did not give way to clarity. Maybe it never would, but Valentine would find out soon enough.