Lying on the table in the white room, clinging to consciousness as anesthesia had pumped through him, Kierk had heard clearly and loudly a man’s direct but gentle voice address him. It spoke as if from inside his skull—Don’t worry, remembering how to die is just like riding a bike. You’ll be fine. It’s just been a while since you’ve done this.

After waking up in the hospital with his throat re-cauterized, no one could say if it would ever reopen. Even now he can feel it, the raw spot in the back of his throat, a ticking biological time bomb. He thinks—at least Keats, by the time he was my age . . . It is my name which will truly be writ in water.

Standing outside the glass box of steam, one would see only his hands moving up and to the sides, as if seeking a way out, as if exploring the contours of this trap, the trap laid for him by passion and ontology—that his impossible muse existed only within the strictures of an environment he hated. To be cursed is to be drawn to something that vexes you to madness.

After some interminable time he manages to stand and turn off the shower. He doesn’t towel himself off but merely returns dripping wet to his bed and lies under the covers, his hair plastered to his forehead, naked and wet as if just birthed. Under the damp covers, he begins to slap himself in the face. Again and again the sound of flesh striking flesh. Tortured breathing from the rumpled mess as hands, one after another, hit with blinding speed at his cheeks, his eyes, his forehead—“I hate you. You weak, pathetic—I—Hate you—You are nothing—Stupid—Stupid—Stupid.” Over and over until his face aches and his hands burn and then, right at the climax of it, he pauses and his hand curls into a fist. He eyes it for a moment. A brief thought—this is ridiculous. And then in punishment for the detached irony of its tone he punches himself right in his eye as hard as he possibly can. The impact sets everything to white and yellow for a moment and he curls up, cursing, burning. He lets out a few sobs, buries his head in the pillows, groans. He stays there. The tension in him slowly unwinds, ebbing away along with the pain. Eventually he enters a state which is half dreaming, half waking, and there, amid the changing languages and settings, the props and actors, he is not himself, and he can watch the stirrings of memories play across a screen not his own . . .