The Danger of Being Me Read Online Free PDF

irritably.  "Can we get the fuck out of here?"
    I looked at Ben, saw him squinting at the tallest stone.  From my other side, Phil said more to himself than to us, "What the hell was he looking for out here?"
    "Who the fuck knows," Ben spat.  He watched that pockmarked chunk of soapstone, his face tight like he couldn't quite fight off a migraine.  "He's dead."
    That gritty ache made my eyes feel full of hot sand.  I squinted at the boulder in front of me, cocked my head, blinked against the boulder's phantom glare.  Those gouges stood out like uncountable scars, and as the heat blossomed inside my brain, I saw the pattern.
    I took a step toward the stones, and then another.  Ben called to me from miles away, "What are you doing?"  He reached out and grabbed the sleeve of my shirt before I got any closer, and I spun toward him, disoriented.
    Phil took a step closer, inspecting the random scatter of dents.  I turned back to the stone, pulled my sleeve out of Ben's grip, inched in close toward the Second Brother.  I reached out for a hunched crop of weeds crawling up the base of the stone, pulled it free, backed away.
    I looked at him and laughed.  "Saiph."
    "From what?" he demanded, blinking at me.
    I stared at him, shook my head.  "Not safe ." I pointed to the uncovered area of the stone, where one indentation sank deeper than those around it.  "Saiph.  The right foot of Orion."  Ben looked, and I indicated the rest of the points in the pattern.  That unmistakable pattern.  "Betelgeuse, Rigel.  Bellatrix."  I pointed three fingers toward the center of the stone, a mad grin on my face.  I blinked.  "And that cluster right there across the middle.  Orion's Belt."
    I heard Phil speak faintly.  "That would mean—"
    "It doesn't mean shit," Ben said.  "Those are bullet holes.  May's Raiders shot this place to shit back in the day."
    I squinted at the stone, then took a step closer.  Now that I saw them, I couldn't believe that those dents could have been anything other than the three points of Orion's Belt.  And there below the center indentation, I found another line of three pits pointing groundward.  The sword of the Hunter, with Hatsya at its point.
    Phil backed away to my left.  I heard him distantly as I reached out toward the pearly surface.  "Mike, you —"
    Then his words faded behind an electrostatic buzzing inside my ears.  My fingers never reached the rock, never got closer than two feet.  They got close enough.
    Every hair on my body stood out.  Thirty-thousand amps sizzled through my blood, and the bitter stench of bleach flooded my lungs.  For one glorious moment, I felt the elusive texture of eternity as the voice of the universe brushed against my mind.  I laughed, and the sound made me think of black ice.  Then noise and heat and light detonated inside my skull like a nuclear blast.
    I gasped.  A swarm of raging hornets scattered inside my chest.  A massive expanse of dented sheet metal hung in front of me.  A steel strap tightened around my gut.  Something firm pressed against my back.  My body jostled, and then I saw Phil's face in front of me.
    His mouth moved, but no words came out.
    The taste of brimstone and cordite burned the back of my throat.  I blinked, and turned my head to see high grass beside me.  My mind pivoted wildly before squeezing itself back into the cramped precincts of my skull.
    I pushed myself up off my back onto my elbows, and ignored the hot throbbing in my brain.  Wind rushed in my ears as Phil and Ben crouched at either side of me.  I shook my head.  Dark sparkles of pain perforated my mind, and I closed my eyes, gasping at the shrill whine in my head.
    Minutes lumbered by before I could hear again, and then every sound reached me through a watery filter.  That scorching band around my chest loosened, but never fell away.  Each breath felt like swallowing flame.  I struggled to get my feet under me, and with Ben at my right and Phil at