Time rolled on, the cold burned his open back, he hooked the tips of his fingers between his thighs and calves to keep them from going numb. The nothing man continued contributing nothing to the world around him, until at length he pushed himself to his feet and ambled off toward the river. Gilbert followed in as inexact a manner as was prudent, pausing to do nothing several times and blend in. He followed the other down toward the water and the rocks, and privacy. He swarmed up and plunged his good fingers into the man’s throat from behind, high up where the neck met the jaw, and then wrenched the man’s head sideways, flinging him off his feet. A moment later, atop him, his good hand clenched tight around the man’s apple so that he could make no noise. The man’s eyes were wide and black and red and bulged as Gilbert squeezed.

The familiar rush warmed him, a thousand pinpricks across his flesh. Not too fast, now, let it last. He released his grip, enough that the man could gasp quick broken gulps of air. Gilbert placed the tip of his knife just under the man’s nipple. The nobody’s hands flailed at Gilbert, so he plucked one from the air and slid his knife through it, high near the wrist, between the bones, all the way through. The man would have screamed but Gilbert covered its mouth again, and watched as the blood came, beautiful and dark, out of the wound and down the skin, coating it, staining it. Black at first, and crimson when it thinned, and hot over Gilbert’s fingers. He let it flow down onto his palm, dripping beautiful down his own arm. Its eyes were tight and wet now. Gilbert breathed in deeply, then exhaled and pushed the knife down into the soft of the neck, down toward the heart, and was welcomed by a red spring that leapt at his command, cascading down both sides of the body with godlike orchestration. It pooled in the pores of the skin and the rock, and disappeared into the earth. Gilbert shuddered, lightly at first and then uncontrollably, his body heaving, his extremities going numb and then limp, and finally his mind dripped empty, so wonderfully blank, into milk.

In the endless amount of time before he would need to move again, Gilbert was small and safe and warm. His bones couldn’t itch because he didn’t have any bones. Even the constant torture of his left hand disappeared into the red milky nothing.