F*ck it, Allen thought. Next thing he knew, he was falling through brown clouds, startled to the point of being unable to scream. F*ck it, f*ck it, f*ck it, f*ck it, the words ran through his head, as his mind failed to correlate its contents. All he was doing was longing for a girl, all he was doing was trying to work up courage, and the moment his mind uttered that phrase, the moment he decided the venture was futile, the moment he made his failure without attempting to make success, he was falling through a dusty atmosphere. When he saw the earth below, Allen was in love.

When he hit the earth, Allen could love nothing more than the fact that he'd not felt pain, as if the rocks which had caught him were a mattress, but better than a mattress, a vacuum which required no motion of him.

The world around him was a muddy monochrome, it was twilit gloom; Allen hated twilight and sundowns. Gloom doesn't begin to cover it, he thought. He moved forward for a long time, feeling neither hunger nor thirst nor desire. He lost track of time, the monochrome took it from him. The scenery was a cartoonish loop, every rock repeated eventually, in every direction Allen went, Allen found only two dimensions. He didn't give up moving because he had no desire to stop, the very slight breeze on his figure comforted him.

The breeze stopped.

Allen stopped.

The wayward soul turned around, to find a tree growing from the rocks. Despite blending into the background, despite its ugliness, the tree struck Allen holy. He stood still, his gaze spoke for him, "this is holy" his eyes said, "this is God." The tree stood still and reached its roots through into a third dimension, breaking the sky's brown into black. "This is freedom."

Allen fell to his knees. "I want freedom."

The tree smiled with a familiar face.

"Too late."

Allen's mind got lodged at the foot of the tree.