Lee woke slowly, coming to consciousness from seemingly oceanic depths. Almost just a dream of waking, fluttering and knock-kneed. The room was quiet, as if waiting to accommodate him. He lay on the bed with his eyes closed behind quivering eyelids like a backyard golem, stiff and ancient.

When he was a child he would lie in bed at night afraid of something, afraid of everything, and try to breathe in such a way that whatever was out there wouldn’t notice him in the dark. Just shallow inhalations and exhalations. As if he could remain invisible to the phantoms that roamed the highways and byways of the night searching for children to devour. There was even a stage, when he was about fourteen, when he would awaken with the sensation that the entire night, having been torn from its hinge, was barrelling through space. When this happened his sister, Claire, would appear at his bedside, place a hand firmly on each of his shoulders and wait until he ceased his whimpering. She wouldn’t say a word. There was nothing, they both knew, to be said. Not after all that had happened.

And Lee tried now to remain as still as possible, to make himself small in the universe, convinced that the potential disturbance of his waking could ripple outwards and determine the manner in which this day would be lived. He would need to get it right. He remained still a little longer. Warm air murmured in his lungs. He licked his dry and flaking lips.

After some time he allowed himself to breathe more evenly and opened his eyes. The unfamiliar room had a bloodshot cast to it, of morning light filtered through a thin gauze curtain. Grimy yellow paint on the wall, aluminium window frames. A motel room, by the look of it.

His body felt constructed of material other than skin and bone, something altogether more industrial, like canvas and wire. Pieces of ill-fitting wood, things scrounged from beside the road and ragged ends of sticky tape. A low, grieving pain had taken up residence in his joints and he became aware of a space in his body where memory would normally reside, a solid persistence of sorts, but of what exactly he couldn’t tell.

He felt he had been here for a long time, lying on the bed wearing bloodstained clothes, waiting for his life to come back to him, waiting for his situation to make sense. Was it days or merely hours? Occasionally an elderly woman muttered about the room. She leaned over him and appeared to listen for his breath. Checking if he was still alive. She smelled of cigarettes and talcum powder.

Now alone, he stared at the ceiling. Waiting is laden with possibility but he was unsure if this was even waiting. He heard the hum of distant traffic, occasional voices talking nearby. A woman called out, as if to a dog. The curtain billowed out from the window, looming with the promise of life. Is this what it’s like to be as yet unborn? Everything was ruined. If it wasn’t before, it surely was now. He closed his burning eyes and stared into the darkness. Fuck.