I didn’t necessarily feel comfortable with stealing money from Clarence any more than I felt comfortable with the sacrifices he and the rest of the village were now understood to be making, but considering how horrible he was, and taking into account that the village hadn’t even given me enough money for my services to them, I can say with any definition of certainty that he very much deserved it.

Despite Clarence’s words, I ascended to the forest some time later, and I collapsed on my knees. From my mouth, I rent such a scream that the very heavens could be torn asunder. It went out across the entire world. Once again, the trauma came back to me and I wept. I wept for Charlie Raymond, I wept for the policeman, and most of all I wept for myself. I hoped lest anyone else should hear such a cry, of pain, of anguish, of misery, of despair. I felt like collapsing. I felt like just sitting there and letting them take me too, like they had done to everyone else. But then, no, I decided. I couldn’t just let them kill more people.