HALOWELL.

              A Halowell was a hypothesized topological anomaly that would fundamentally act as a "tunnel" or “shortcut” through the subterranean reach of the continents, allowing for both inadvertent and intended travel between stratas of the Hereafter.  The passageway was not believed to be naturally-occurring, but could be produced by the meeting of opposing currents within the undertow of time.  Given the appropriate conditions (cataclysmic or centrifugal), it may have been possible to convert this free vortex into a portal device.
          Potential for transport by Halowell relied upon the traversable-whirlpool interpretation of continental mechanics, which asserted that since every outcome of every event defines or exists in its own “whirlpool” or “history”, a very large—perhaps infinite—number of  whirlpools may exist, and every outcome that could possibly have happened upon the continents, but did not, may be accessed by a canal that connects these currents to locations in the Hereafter.
          When considering the constraints of semiclassical cartography, the difficulties of intentional Halowell construction and transit become readily apparent.  For example, if certain chronological inequalities conjectured by Nyx physicists hold true, then the energy requirements needed to sustain a portal device may be unfeasibly massive as well as negative.  Others have speculated that at the event horizon of the Halowell, a complete rotation of objects and experience in the inertial reference frame may take place, creating a misperception of psychophysical orientation and inducing nausea, cognitive decoherence and causal neglect.  In order to circumvent these effects, the mouths of the whirlpools would have to be arranged in such a way that allowed the Halowell to swallow whole every moment that once was lost, so that the body may begin again within a history that was born in hiding, hardly worn, forever hungry for a form or figure to follow on it’s own.

  Before the morning, my stepfather introduced us to a mythology of his own. He built a tower hide, attached wing tags, cast his nets over clouds and sky.
  We lived under a three tiered sky of cartilage, hollow limb and common bone. There were birds as big as bathtubs and birds with bellows in their throats. The wind was thick with them, twenty four to every eye, fits and flocks of them.
Birds of now and birds of then, he said. Both would be blacked out at the Halowell.

When the cloud cover was clear, we watched him turn on on his anesthesia machine. The sound of opposing currents came through off course, over motorized, brackish, cold. Covered in oil at the undertone, old lies backed far behind a boiling point.
It wasn’t denial at first of course, just another way to exist further and further from myself. Jillison told me had to leave us for a while. I believed him in halves and quarters, until the summer I couldn’t help but believe him all at once.
Not near sky or sleep, I saw my stepfather outside again, filling sacks with fallen leaves, covering echoes in circular rain, confirming the failed results. I could read the swears worsening on his lips. I wondered how a face could end up looking like that. A landscape for rot and nothing else. Jowls and bone and eyes barely any shapes at all. Every time he looked at me and I was exhausted, red handed, or else the inevitable was never far from where we stopped following along. Jillison called me the upcoming hopeless and we tried to laugh about it as long as we could Seven weeks I waited in our pop-up trailer. Jillison was a ghost born again. I played duck and shutter, pane and palm print, draw card and rook exchange. I practiced disassociation strategies until we were waking strangers, until we were too young to guess what was coming again. Hours began appearing briefly or repeatedly, as if each duplicate was undercut into something lesser. I listened for the recoil of commas and halts of breaths, never more than single tones, pauses before the rest. As if I didn’t notice, he was opening a nowhere out of me.
My stepfather watched us with one infected orbital. He recited another empty vision under his breath. He went back in to check on the anesthesia machine. His eyes were controlled by bruises to come. Daylight became the only delay for the decay to dry. He used both hours until I was naked enough to live through, like there was nothing was wrong with it. Like he shouldn’t have to even worry about getting caught. I could feel his anesthesia machine overheating, sweating heavily. Steam seeped out of the wall behind us. I remember it was wet and it hurt. I remember every word he used. A whirlpool’s edge felt like it was made of hands and teeth. Jillison was right when she said critical parts were missing. Blood-soaked, empty veined, a kind of sky made from shadows of flesh. She was right when she said, if the afterlife ever started, it was starting then. A Halowell for only just the both of us. A history of hollow birds buried through the ground. Left my eyelids there, left my pulse there, left my body as an echo chamber, left for anywhere but there. My throat was numb from vomit and spit swallowed back and spit up and swallowed back. Jillison told me it didn't matter now. She wasn't letting anyone do that to me ever again. We weren’t going to write about him. Not here or then. She made it simple: Hide the knives under our pillow. Wait until he comes the right night. Kill the bastard already.