A film of dust coats the floorboards of an unfurnished room. Slivers of light penetrate from the shutters over the window, the sun is setting. Pacing back and forth, I count my steps wall to wall. I have counted this route many times. It has become a meditation, a way to pass time. 8 steps wall to wall. 5 seconds each lap. 12 laps a minute. 120 an hour. My day is reduced to an equation. Time and movement merge together into a pointless symbiosis, and I am given something to do.

 

I am hit with a contortion of the stomach. Hunger pangs. With a gasp I clutch my belly and slide to the floor, back to the wall. The hunger pangs last 20 minutes, and subside for a couple of hours until the next 'pang'. The body doesn't condition itself. I have grown conditioned to all manner of things. Corpses in the street. Soldiers on the corners. Walls and barb wire and curfews. Even the fear of my imminent and unceremonious death have receded to a mere banality. Maybe I will eat today, maybe not. Perhaps it will rain, perhaps not. Possibly I will be shot through the head this week. My body remains tethered to its cycles however, its need for equilibrium. The body keeps me fixed within my context. It doesn't get used to things.

 

I can feel my bones against the floor. My spine grates raw against the wall. My legs splayed out in front of me, made unreal by the void of the senses. Pants hanging slack off the thigh bone. Unwashed blazer shining with dirt, hanging pitifully from my shoulders. I feel like a scarecrow, animated by habit, flailing impotently at the crows as they peck my eyes out. A marionette in thrall to some Darwinian puppeteer. The cramps are subsiding and the light is almost faded. The room is getting darker. Very soon, I will get up and light the oil lantern sitting by the door.

 

The cold seeps under my skin. I draw the thin blanket closer around my shoulders and lean closer to the lantern. No insulation. No buffer. I try to project myself out. Retreat into memory or imagination. I have nowhere to go. My body anchors my mind to my stomach. The chill flows from my bones to my brain. What I wouldn't give to simply go mad.

 

When will this end? There are many ways it could conclude. Maybe like the old man I saw last week. He refused to scrub the street with the women and the children. Remaining aloof through a stately and dignified manor. The bullet entered his brain and sprayed his dignity all over the pavement, and the women and children kept scrubbing. They demand total submission, and to them we are not even animals. We are parasites. The absurdity that we are reduced below the level of rodents whilst posing a threat great enough to destroy their nation.

 

I may freeze to death. I could starve. Starvation seems to be the current tactic. Men fighting in the streets over a crust of bread. Feeble blow after feeble blow, concluded by a third party claiming the prize whilst they are occupied in their sickly melee. Very likely disease will claim me as it has thousands of others. Tuberculosis, polio, some flux festering from a corpse the soldiers neglect to burn. I hear rumours of liquidation. Death camps. No matter. Mere detail.

 

For all my sins however, I am cursed with youth. It may not be so quick. The body fights on, and I am indifferent.

 

I am indifferent and nothing can touch me. My future has been annihilated. My fingers trail marks in the dust at my side. The room has taken on the aspect of a void. A small fire surrounded by a blackness that belays the closeness of the walls. I am on an island in a void. I feel like some primeval caveman. The lantern is my fire and the world has dissolved into infinity. The last man ending much as the first started. My eyes close and my mouth starts to laugh.

 

I wake with a start. Gunshots ring out through the street and a woman screams. Bang – Bang – Bang. Thee shots in rapid succession and some shouting. A car engine starts up and roars into the night. The lantern is still bright, so I must have only slept a few hours. My ears cock for more noise. After any incident, people lock down and keep dead quite to avoid drawing attention. People only scream when they know they can't hide any more. When they know their number is up.

 

Mama comes to mind. I don't know if she screamed. Slumped like a rag doll on the street in front of the apartment. She didn't look like a person. Thin limbs contorted around her head in some automatic protective spasm. Bullet hole through the hand. Eyes open and staring like dolls eyes, except for the blood welling up in the cornea, trickling down the nose, staining the front of her dress. I don't remember what I was doing that took me out of the apartment. Probably looking for food. I laughed like a mad man till tears came down my face, until a passing soldier knocked a couple of teeth out with his rifle butt.

 

Hunger pangs hit, stomach contorts in rhythmic pulses of pain. I curl up on the floor in a foetal position, staring blankly into the flame until the image burns into my vision and persists with each blink. Cheek down to the floor. Breathing slows. Focus on the flame and breath until it merges. Until it All. Becomes.. One... Thing....

 

My breath dislodges some of the dust from the floor. I can feel the particles enter my sinus and my lungs. My eyes tear up and I start to blink. I know that I will have to sneeze. It's suppressed for the moment, but the equation requires completion. Already I feel a tickle in my nose and a spasm in my diaphragm. The dust must be expelled. A sneeze is inevitable. A gunshot rings out. My ears hear a woman’s scream.