He was however stood and looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, embedded in the Spanish tiles in this rented slice of Mexican architecture, expecting a sense of lack of recognition. If the feeling had changed, will the response to the image change? It was still him but the purpose for any of his physicality didn’t seem to be there.

His hands moved objectively over his face, as if the face had no feeling.

Why were they needed, the mouth, the eyes, all of it? The breakdown of these component parts was becoming unnecessary.

They didn’t have a function if he didn’t have a function.

So that was an interesting way to face the next years of his life.

Different at least with these dulled animal desires.

His shoulders dropped as his hands left his face; he slumped and felt like his tongue looked. He promised himself to stop analysing the lingual papillae, with the bacteria and debris that was lodged on their fungiform crags.

He knew it all from the very beginning – the soul bit.

How do you live a life without a soul, because it had never come back? Or had it? How would he know if he had a soul if he’d never had a soul?

‘Stop, please stop.’

This he voiced, head hanging down, staring at the basin, relieved that he had nothing to throw up.

His hands threw water at his face.

‘Stop.’

This was not a birth and mother issue.

No, get to the present.

He stood there, inhaled a big one, a chest full of air, now bearing the medals of victory in this mental skirmish.

Ever had fended off the dawn attack, well not dawn, but he had fended.

The change that has brought about this ascension into a higher dimension of sensibility is a tragedy. No longer a reptile. No longer requiring to be succoured and satisfied; life seemed to present another distinct emotion.

The feeling of loss.

And pain.

His father had died, and he loved his father and he always thought and felt that his father loved him. But could his father really have loved him, when he had removed himself from his son’s life without even saying so much as why or goodbye?

But if it wasn’t his father’s fault; a pause in his thought – was death a blame issue?

The toilet flush escorted him out of the bathroom.

He had thought of nothing else since his father’s life had ended.

Appearing as an accident but in an emotional condition that could have implied purpose.