Reaction
It's not hurt as he's ever experienced it, but it still resonates. Flesh for flesh, there is familiarity there as he unwillingly moves into the driver's seat. In reality he's sitting, late night, under a tree not far outside of town. He wanted a walk, needed a walk after getting a little too drunk and a little rejected.
The memory is so all-encompassing, the ache for belonging so familiar, that he thinks it might still be him. He was wandering in the woods, after all, when it took him. He was in among the trees. The transformation to another landscape happens so quickly that he almost doesn't notice it. It's as if he himself has walked into another world.
The heat, the belonging, the flow and beat of fervor, they all thrum through him with unfamiliar pleasure until the man bursts in. He doesn't know him - in the memory he is father. In life, the memory leaves him retching in the leaves. It brings up something old and brackish, brine in the lungs from drowning. That awful figure at the door, the judgement, that yank on a small arm. He is sick, but nothing comes out of him. He smokes, but there is no fire. He pities the child and breathes deeply until he can't feel the hand on his arm anymore.