"Time is never time at all
You can never ever leave
Without leaving a piece of youth"

I back out of myself. I am stripped naked, and the cruel hooks which had held me so long glisten insubstantially in the sub-light. They pull at my skin, stretching it painfully taut, in their attempt to drag me every which way into the darkness. Their scars are still well apparent upon my own ethereal flesh, but already I know they will heal. I look into my eyes: the old sadness, the hint of anguish and helplessness I had once known, is still painfully discernible. His eyes stare at me imploringly, but I can only shake my head slowly and back off farther. The act of my release has caused some alteration in the vacuity of my existence. The hooks pull gradually tighter, his skin beginning to tear and rend in agonizingly slow motion, strangely dreamlike in its reposeful momentum. Curiously, his expression does not reflect the horror of his predicament. Rather, a visage of acceptance and resignation. For a moment, I try to reach out to him, my eyes welling with tears, but it is he who shakes his head now. Pulling into himself suddenly, the tension in the hooks exceeds, whipping them away into the darkness. Shattered, he briefly exposes his inner core of light before fading incorporeally in the void. I look down, lost in thought momentarily, raise an eyebrow, then turn and leave. There was nothing else I could do.