my body 's still standing right there , eye to eye with it , be brave , it 's only a mind-trick , be brave , be true , stand , stand- ( thrusts ) roaring forward , slamming into a black and dripping tunnel lined with decaying , crumbling tiles that were fifty years old , a hundred , a thousand , a million-billion , who knew , rushing in deadly silence past intersections , some lit by that twisting green-yellow fire , some by glowing balloons full of a ghastly white skull-light , others dead black ; he was thrown at a speed of a thousand miles an hour past piles of bones , some human , some not , speeding like a rocket-powered dart in a wind-tunnel , now angling upward , but not toward light but toward dark , some titanic dark ( his fists ) and exploding outward into utter blackness , the blackness was everything , the blackness was the cosmos and the universe , and the floor of the blackness was hard , hard , it was like polished ebonite and he was skidding along on his chest and belly and thighs like a weight on a shuffleboard .