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Description
I have been in isolation for four days now. I think.

The dark . . . So solid you could carve your hands through the stagnant air and feel as though you were parting folds of thick, dusty velvet, like the drapes at Grandmother's house. I spent the first day just trying not to choke, suffocating on my own circulating anxiety and the faint trickle of blood cleaving to my throat from a broken nose.

To pass the time I slept—slept and gasped and dreamed of Anna, my fingertips clawing out into the heavy emptiness to feel the velveteen of her skin one last time. After so many years of sleeping beside someone, it's difficult to quell the urge to embrace, and every failed attempt found me waking in a cold sweat, my heart fluttering like a cat's throat when it purrs with fear, struggling to comfort itself.

On the second day, I began to explore my cell. There was not much to find—walls so rough they had the intricate texture of a hardened fur, a slick concrete floor, a tin pan of unidentifiable food-mush. But in one corner, as I crept up knee by knee, I discovered a pool of something liquid and cool, with the the peculiar mineral scent of well-water. I pondered if some underground aquifer were leaking in through the ceiling. Perhaps, I thought, this little pool might come in useful later.

At night, the aquifer went percolating down the wall with such vehemence I could have sworn it was the sound of an animal being gutted in an abattoir.

The pool grew, over the course of a few hours, from a little dripping thing to a sticky mass lapping at the perimeter of my pant-leg. I huddled in the opposing corner and adhered the fibers of my shirt to the coarse wall like sellotape, wishing desperately that the earth would absorb me through her hardened pores and sweat me out into the arms of Anna at home.

This morning, though . . . Oh God, I could not escape that pool. It was everywhere. I could not reach my food-mush and so I licked at the octopus liquid instead, cleaning my arms and ankles like a kitten, and it tasted of old jellied fruit and beef consummé and bile. And somewhere along the way I figured if I could be intrepid enough to taste my tormentor, I may as well discover its source.

And so I crawled my sticky way across the room and edged up the corner, back to one wall, feet braced against another. I touched it hanging from the ceiling.

A face. A face with soft velveteen flesh, as though a peach had been skinned and sewn into a mask for a ceramic doll. Closed eyes, rubbery lips sending twitches through my fingertips with the unmistakable sense of familiarity.

And I thought to myself, At least I felt her skin one last time.

Description
I have been in isolation for four days now. I think.

The dark . . . So solid you could carve your hands through the stagnant air and feel as though you were parting folds of thick, dusty velvet, like the drapes at Grandmother's house. I spent the first day just trying not to choke, suffocating on my own circulating anxiety and the faint trickle of blood cleaving to my throat from a broken nose.

To pass the time I slept—slept and gasped and dreamed of Anna, my fingertips clawing out into the heavy emptiness to feel the velveteen of her skin one last time. After so many years of sleeping beside someone, it's difficult to quell the urge to embrace, and every failed attempt found me waking in a cold sweat, my heart fluttering like a cat's throat when it purrs with fear, struggling to comfort itself.

On the second day, I began to explore my cell. There was not much to find—walls so rough they had the intricate texture of a hardened fur, a slick concrete floor, a tin pan of unidentifiable food-mush. But in one corner, as I crept up knee by knee, I discovered a pool of something liquid and cool, with the the peculiar mineral scent of well-water. I pondered if some underground aquifer were leaking in through the ceiling. Perhaps, I thought, this little pool might come in useful later.

At night, the aquifer went percolating down the wall with such vehemence I could have sworn it was the sound of an animal being gutted in an abattoir.

The pool grew, over the course of a few hours, from a little dripping thing to a sticky mass lapping at the perimeter of my pant-leg. I huddled in the opposing corner and adhered the fibers of my shirt to the coarse wall like sellotape, wishing desperately that the earth would absorb me through her hardened pores and sweat me out into the arms of Anna at home.

This morning, though . . . Oh God, I could not escape that pool. It was everywhere. I could not reach my food-mush and so I licked at the octopus liquid instead, cleaning my arms and ankles like a kitten, and it tasted of old jellied fruit and beef consummé and bile. And somewhere along the way I figured if I could be intrepid enough to taste my tormentor, I may as well discover its source.

And so I crawled my sticky way across the room and edged up the corner, back to one wall, feet braced against another. I touched it hanging from the ceiling.

A face. A face with soft velveteen flesh, as though a peach had been skinned and sewn into a mask for a ceramic doll. Closed eyes, rubbery lips sending twitches through my fingertips with the unmistakable sense of familiarity.

And I thought to myself, At least I felt her skin one last time.