The night he comes, I am laying against the stones.  They are smoother where the island touches the wall than other places in the room, and so I can rest my back against them when my body gets too warm, and they cool me off.  I have my eyes closed when I hear the door open, but I do not hide, because I can smell the cloth he brings as soon as he steps into the room.  However, after a moment, I realize this is not Him, it is something new.

       I open my eyes.

       It is not dark dark yet, and so I have no trouble seeing him as he stands before me.  He  freezes for a moment, when he sees me for the first time.  He is as unlike Him as anything I can not imagine, which is still quite a few things.  I do not move, only watch him.  He drops noises from his mouth, but they are not heavy and pointed like His, they flit and whisper around the room; they remind me of the voices of the shadows, and for this and his strangeness I am wary.

       He comes closer and closer, very slowly - and this I can take.  If he is this slow, I can watch him, to make sure he will not collapse into a pillar of the red darkness that swallowed me just before he came;  I worry this is a new trick of the shadows.  Never before have they tried to walk to me, but never before had I seen them, or had they been so warm as that last time, and so I am a little worried.  Until an image washes in front of my eyes; this man, grabbing me with hands that dissolve into sticky heated shadows that slide over my skin and nails and then my eyes and into my mouth, and finally I am pulled into the darkness that has striven so long to devour me.  I try to flee, but there is no where behind me to go.  I scramble to hide in the corner, thinking to hide my mouth as long as I may.  As I flee, he raises a hand, causing another wave of fear to crash over me - as his motion draws a whine from me, I wonder if he is more like Him than I think.

       But I begin to doubt, as soon as I make a noise, that he is the shadows newest form; all it takes is one slip of a noise from me and he is off his feet;  he lands on his knees and sits there, staring at me.  Now I am not certain what he is, which may be more or less worrying than knowing he is from the shadows.  I watch him watch me, as his eyes travel over me.  Slowly, I begin to stop pressing so hard against the wall and, almost in response, he begins moving toward me once more.  One of his hands extends towards me, and I must struggle to remain calm;  I tell myself that if he starts to ooze or drip, I will scream.  It will earn me more stripes, but I know it is better than where the shadows want me, and it will be good that I will know their new trick.

       His hand presses against me, and it is hard.  I am wondering now what he is;  No shadow even felt so thick and hard.  He feels more like stone than even Him, when he doesn't want to stripe me.

       I watch him, wondering what he will do next, and then he opens his mouth, and more words slip out and wing about the room.  I train my attention on his eyes, looking from one to the other;  everything about him is red, red, red, just like the sticky shadows - what is more, he smells of the them, who had a smell where the dark shadows have none.  But the more I hear the sounds he tosses towards me, the more I know he is not theirs.  His words, while different from His, are not as airy and light as theirs.  They are much more still, while theirs dance and whirl alarmingly.  His float, but they are not threatening.

       Suddenly, the flow of sound stops.  Slowly, as he had done to me, I raise my hand, slowly resting my fingers on his face, his comfortably solid face.  I am scared, but also curious.  When it is safe, I explore The Room, but nothing in it ever changes, and so by now I know it all.  I have explored everything that passes into the room as much as I can, and now this new thing, this new thing which is like Him and I think a little like me, is here and letting me explore him.  I edge closer, watching to see if he will explode like He does, but he sits still.

       I try his face first, interested that he feels in some places just as I do, and in others very different from my skin.  I pause after a while;  I am worried about boundaries I do not understand.  I do not understand how long I am allowed to touch him, and so I pause.

       And he begins to return the touch.  This startles me almost more than any of the strangeness of this time;  the gentleness of his touch, where there is never any in His.  I feel like I am being shocked by the cloth on cold mornings, but it is pleasant now, and I close my eyes;  a loud, steady thud beats a time in my mind.  Reaching out, I find his wrist, and run my fingers across his reassuring hereness.  He is not shadows.  He is not Him.

       But he does not like this new touch.  He starts, looking over me again.  He breathes heavily, but no words come, and pulls some clothes higher up on me.  I continue my touch, wondering why he does not like the touching.  He watches me, still, for some time, and then catches my hand in his.  Soon, there is water on his face, and I am more perplexed than I have ever been; I know he has not been striped.  I lean forward, searching the droplets sliding down his face.  I wonder if they aren't salt, as I thought.  One drop catches my eyes, gleaming in the not-yet-dark-dark.  I move closer again, and place my lips around the drop, and taste salt.

       His hands are on my shoulder, and lightly push me away.  This is not a push that He would give me, and so I can not guess what is to come.  Once more, his mouth opens and words tumble out;  this time, they are less calm, and this time, also, they do not frighten me as they did.  He continues doing this but I am getting bored and I think I believe now that he will not hurt me, and so I move forward, trying to rest my ear against him, to see if there is a rhythm in him like the one sometimes I can feel or hear.

       He falls backwards, and I follow him, but I do not land with a thump.  I place one hand on either side of his face, and look for a moment at the way my black looks on his red.  I look at him a second more, and then lay myself across him, and hear him beat-beat, beat-beat, beat-beat-ing.  His arms find their way around me, and I begin running a finger over a line in his body.

       I close my eyes and drift away.