2.

Joshua opened his eyes, and saw only darkness. It was a damp darkness, and water was rushing through some system of pipes, dripping here and there. Finally his eyes began to adjust, and he saw in the purple shadows bars, and concrete walls, and a little square window high up by the ceiling, through which purple moonlight came--he was in some cell, some prison.

He jumped when the white man spoke. He heard the voice say, "Ha!" before he'd seen the figure. "Ha!" the man said again. "I suppose you'd rather be in heaven living it up! Ha!"

"But I am in heaven," said Joshua. He wasn't controlling his voice, but experiencing it, as we do in dreams. Dreams are stories that are told to us with a character that is us--but we do not make decisions in dreams--we are told what happened and what we did.

"Ha!" said the man again. Joshua now saw in the shadows his gray, shirtless hunched back, his long hair bald at the crown, his long black beard.

"Are we in prison?" said Joshua.

"Ha!"

Joshua realized the man was insane, and crept away into a tight corner. Then he felt that should the man attack, he'd be cornered there. But now he thought--I'm in a cell, I'm cornered no matter where I go.

The man lumbered over to him in an apelike way. He moved on his haunches like a primitive. He'd already stuck the buck knife into the concrete of the floor, scraping at it and digging it in, before it quite hit Joshua--the man's got a knife.

"Do you know what comes next?" he said.

"I . . ."

"What comes next is--is--you kill me."

Joshua only stared at him.

"I don't want to kill you. I just want to find out--to find out--"

"Ha!"

The man leapt at Joshua and thrust the knife toward Joshua's belly. It clinked as its tip caught square in Joshua's belt buckle. Joshua rushed forward and got the man off balance, so that his head went back and hit the damp iron bars of the cell.

The man relaxed a moment, blood oozing out of his wound. Joshua retreated from him.

"Ha!" said the man now. "We aren't finished!" He sprang to his feet and came at Joshua again, the flesh of his fast arms damp and gray in the purple light.

Joshua did not hesitate, but swung a fist at his face, which the stranger dogged to the side; but luckily he dogged just where Joshua's other fist--the right one, was coming around. He hit him in the left ear, and the man cried out in pain; Joshua was able to rush him again into the bars, so that his head and back slammed into them, the arm with the knife twisted under him.

He looked to Joshua again.

"Told you," he said.

Joshua looked, and saw that the man was bleeding profusely. The knife had lodged into his side.

"Did you let me win?" asked Joshua.

"No," said the man; "but in this place we foresee everything--and wish to alter nothing."

"You didn't have to attack if you knew it--that you'd die," said Joshua.

"Ha!"

The man's eyes shut and he went silent. About five minutes later, as Joshua crept about the cell looking for some way, any way out, he noticed the man had stopped breathing. His blood spread out in a heavy asymmetrical pool over the cement floor.