Annie fell asleep reading in bed. At close to four in the morning, Baby woke. As she was feeding him, she heard the front door to the store rattle—the wind, perhaps. Moments later she heard the back door open and shut. Except for the office, she never bothered to lock the doors. Her whole body went numb with fear as someone began to ascend the creaking stairs to the apartment. With a rush of panic, she realized she should get up and lock her door, but it was too late. It opened. It was too dark near the entrance to make out more than a tall figure. She became aware that she had wrapped her arms around Baby, who was still feeding, and then realized she was bare-breasted. She wanted to scream, but nothing would come out of her throat. It was all she could do to pull the sheet up to cover herself.

As the figure approached, her worst fears materialized in the thin lozenge of moonlight from the window: a thickly bearded, filthy, and disheveled man. She could smell him now too—overwhelmingly rank. She still couldn’t make a sound or move, her limbs leaden. He sat heavily on the bed.

“They burned me,” he said.

“Lew?” She could see him a little more clearly now. “Lew.”

With a clawlike hand, his nails long and blackened, he drew the sheet down. Afraid for Baby, she quickly got out the other side of the bed.

“Where have you been?” she said.

“I thought it was me,” he said. “But they burned me. They separated my organs.” He made a shape with his hands. “Hard burned skin—rind—around my heart and my kidneys. My lungs have gone solid and I breathe in my brain now. My brain breathes. I can feel it. They left me for dead, but I put my pieces together. I took my windpipe and I threaded on my organs. I’m a breathing brain, like storm clouds. But it was never me they were after, except that I knew. It was him.” He indicated the child.

Annie put Baby back in the cot, since she felt he was safer out of sight, but he began to cry.

“You have to keep him quiet.” Lew seemed panicked. “He’s calling for them.”

“He’s not calling for anything. He’s just hungry.”

“You don’t understand. They think I’m dead. They don’t know I learned to breathe in my brain.”

Annie sat back on the bed and firmly took up his hands. He smelled so revolting she had to struggle to stop herself gagging. “Lew, do you know who I am?”

This seemed to frighten him. She had asked the question in the wrong way: She mustn’t create any space for his diseased imagination to inhabit.