I lie with lazy weariness and track the beetle’s course along the ceiling. It’s a winding path that to me makes but little sense. I can well understand its avoiding the hole before it, but what made it suddenly veer left just there? It did not eat anything, as far as I can see. But soon even this effort of attention saps me of strength, and I close my eyes.
Now without sight, but still needing to stay active, I monitor something new: a slow motion down the side of my waist, and a wet stickiness beneath me. Soon a hole, sister perhaps to the one in the ceiling, makes its presence known by the liquid’s dripping through it onto the floor below. In the emptiness of the deserted wreck of a hospital, my old home, it makes a fantastic echo. At least I’ve come back to my first stable living quarters, I think.
For now, I remember who I am. And suddenly I know about my other life, the one when I don the mask. It all makes sense, in its vapid, pointless way. My life has followed the beetle. But now, it’s over.