For him, he couldn't help it, the oil burner had virtually lost its role of heating apparatus. It was, almost actually, a giant tower in whose bowels there roared a magic flame. And the hose was, almost actually, a quiescent viper, sleeping in giant, scarlet coils. The three-quarter wall beside the burner was a cliff face, the sands a terrible desert across whose hills crawled not a spider the size of a man's thumbnail, but a venomous monster almost as tall as he was.

Reality was relative. He was more forcefully aware of it with every passing day. In six days reality would be blotted out for him, not by death, but a hideously simple act of disappearance.

For what reality could there be at zero inches?

Yet he went on. Here he was scanning the sheer face of the refrigerator, wondering how he might get up there and reach the crackers.

A sudden roar made him jump and spin around, his heart thudding.

It was only the oil burner leaping into life again, the rumble of its mechanism making the floor beneath him tremble, sending numbing vibrations up his legs. He swallowed with effort. It was a jungle life he led, each sound a warning of potential death.

It was getting too dark. The cellar was a frightening place when it was dark. He hurried across the chilled expanse of it, shivering under the tentlike robe he had made by poking a head hole in a piece of cloth, then ripping the edges into dangling strips and tying them into knots. The clothes he had been wearing when he had first tumbled into the cellar now lay in dirty heaps beside the water heater. He had worn them as long as he could, rolling up sleeves and cuffs, tightening the waistband, keeping them on until their sagging volume hampered movement. Then he had made the robe. He was always cold now except when he was under the water heater.

He broke into a nervous, hopping walk, suddenly anxious to be off the darkening floor. His gaze flew for a moment to the cliff edge high above and he twitched again, thinking he saw the spider clambering over. He'd started to run before he saw that it was only a shadow. His run slowed again to the erratic, jerky walk. Adjust? he thought. Who could adjust to this?

When he was back under the heater, he dragged a box top over his bed and lay down to rest underneath its shelter.

He was still shivering. He could smell the dry, acrid odour of the cardboard close to his face, and it seemed as if he were being smothered. It was another illusion he suffered nightly.

He struggled to attain sleep. He'd worry about the crackers tomorrow, when it was light. Or maybe he would not worry about them at all. Maybe he'd just lie there and let hunger and thirst finish what he could not finish, despite all dismays.