O

It took days sitting in front of the blankness, and still, the words were aborted one by one.

A week with spring is passing outside, and the enclosure collapses into a growing panic in the dark. There is a monstrous malignant disease, and some are more vulnerable to it than others. Late last night I had dinner with a friend who has swum through a nightmare, downstairs. He is putting away the routines, folding his hands, not checking for the dead. But the kind of creature he battles is a thing with its ice cold fingers wound tightly around and around and around.

They say that illnesses of the mind run in families. Disturbingly, even the coloration of sunlight changes when fear overtakes. And, it's the worst when not a heart is beating except a single, clammy one.