I tried talking to the hooded man once, many cycles ago when he came to replenish my wood supply. He always comes from behind, slow and icy as a glacier, silent as the Mariana Trench. That day, I felt his merciless chill slink up beside me.

“Why am I here?” I asked him, gazing at his misty figure. His cloak was even blacker than the sea of darkness that surrounded us. Where his face should be was only a clouded opening, its mist opaque but tantalizingly fluid. Behind the cloud of his face I sensed the answer to my question. The hooded man paused for less than a moment, before dropping the wood and turning to leave.

“Who are you? How long do I have to do this?” I begged him to answer.

“The answers lie in the head,” his oily voice surpassed my eardrums and seeped deep into my brain, as if controlled by a sense beyond my comprehension. I grasped at my skull, crazed by the vitriol beneath his words. I knew the terrible power his voice had, for I’d heard it once before, but the extent of its pain and wickedness had faded in my memory.

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I have no concept of time, besides his visits and the time it takes for a log to be reduced to ashes, both of which I’d lost count of long ago. I could have been here two months, two years, two decades, or two centuries; I suspect the latter options.

The sand beneath my feet is soft and fluid as an ocean swell; perhaps it is responsible for the sound of waves crashing in the distance. No stars grace the sky, nor does a moon or a sun provide any light. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, wherever here is.

I stoke the fire dutifully, log upon log upon log, as I’ve been commanded. That memory seems the only one tethered to this unreality, when the hooded man spoke—if you can call it speaking—“if the fire dies, so does your wife.” His slimy intonation seared into my brain that first day, and its purpose drove me through this depraved existence. But lately I’ve been questioning.

He told me the answers lie in the head, but all that’s in my head are memories, and every day these disappear in droves. Soon, I suspect, nothing will remain but the hooded man and the fire.