THOME

The orphan. With a beautiful villa, and now he stands on the corner, just fifty meters divide him from his beloved office. He looks at the building into which he will disappear in a moment, to.

Thome shall never manage to finish this thought. On the entire exterior surface of his office building, which can also be used as an LED screen, which particularly at Christmas time elicits much enthusiasm from the populace, somewhat blurry images are being projected. Thome slows his pace. He recognizes: himself.

While killing his stepmother. He sees himself having a wank in front of Peter. He sees himself having a wank with other men in front of an underage girl. Passersby stop, bump into each other. What kind of advert is that, they seem to ask themselves; traffic grinds to a halt. In slow motion, the moment of his stepmother’s death. Thome stands, frozen. The light is still green. The light for vehicles is also green. Dodgy IT system. Thome stands in the street. He opens his rucksack and pulls out a switchblade knife that he carries in order to prepare his afternoon fruit plate.

Thome. Often wanted to kill himself. In theory. In practice what always caused it to be aborted was that he paused to think for just a few seconds too long, and then his will to live kicked in and the deal was done. Now Thome doesn’t think. Impulse, action. Over. With a slash he cuts open his throat. An electric transporter catches the rest. Thome’s skull bangs into the pillar of a lamppost—ha ha, a lamppost, you know. Thome has the moment that will change everything behind him.

“It’s good that everything changes,”

Says Ben to

DON

Who has stopped off at the Friends’ place before she returns to the factory hall. It’ll be a goodbye, if you wish to assign any significance to the packed crates. Don sits on the sofa, she considers what she should say to the others. “Hello, I’m back, I simply couldn’t stomach Hannah and Peter.” Or: “Hello, I’m back, I wanted to grind straight through a few things at the library.” Don looks at the Friends, yet another change, yet another case of people she has become accustomed to disappearing from her life in some way.