Bo lay on the decrepit floor, which smelled of stale wood, dust, and mildew, listening to a night bird crying somewhere beyond the wall. The sound was sharp, lonely—as if ripped out of the silence—and yet too alien for this place, as though it should never have reached here.
He didn’t remember how long he’d been here.
Didn’t remember how he’d gotten in.
Didn’t remember where he’d been going.
It felt as if he had always been here.
He opened his eyes. Not at once. Not on the first try.
First, the stirring of his lids, a barely perceptible flutter—as if his body were testing whether it was even possible. Then another. His eyelids unsealed themselves heavily, as if they had fused together, and the motion seemed excessive, unnecessary.
As if he had been sleeping.
And sleeping.
And sleeping.
Too long to wake up.
When his vision finally returned, he slowly swept his gaze across the room. Empty, quiet, still. This place had no feeling of life, yet neither did it look ruined.
The windows were intact. The glass was murky but not broken. The door stood in its frame, slightly crooked but closed. The building looked abandoned—not for a year or two. And yet there were no signs that anyone had visited it since.
It had simply been left.
And forgotten.
A fat black fly buzzed past, annoyingly persistent.
Its sound was too loud for this silence. Almost irritating.
Bo waved a lazy hand without lifting his head. His arm moved on its own, without effort, as if this were the only action that still made any sense.
The fly disappeared.
But not a minute passed before it came back with company. They circled slowly, heavily, as if the air itself held them in place. Now and then they landed—on the floor, on his clothes, on his skin—and took off again.
Bo no longer tried to shoo them away.
It didn’t seem to matter.
His clothes were dusty. Thin.
Pants of an indeterminate color—gray, faded, the kind of color everything becomes if left motionless for too long.
A shirt that might once have been white.
The fabric sagged, lost its shape. Clung to his body where it should have moved.
And there were no shoes, for some reason.
He didn’t remember why. Not that it mattered.
He must have stunk.
The thought came, but provoked no reaction.
He couldn’t smell anything.
Couldn’t feel anything at all.
Not the cold of the floor.
Not the hardness of the planks.
Not the weight of his own body.
It was as if sensation had been severed. The body remained—but everything that filled it had been removed.
It felt as if he could lie here forever.
Without moving.
Without thought.
Without purpose.
Gradually dissolve into that smell of dust and mildew that he couldn’t even perceive. Spread across the boards, become part of this floor. First just rot, then a dirty stain, then something indistinguishable from the rest of the decay that had been here before him.
Sprout into fungi.
Crawl into moss.
Become part of what had already been here before him.
What would remain after.
And stay.
Forever.
The thought didn’t frighten him.
There was nothing in it at all.
But somewhere deep inside—where something still remained—an itch began.
Faint at first.
Like a mild irritation. Like the bite of an insect you could ignore at first.
Then stronger.
More insistent.
Almost like those flies.
Something demanded.
Not in words. Not in conscious thought.
It demanded action.
To sit up.
To rise.
To move.
To shift one foot, then the other.
He didn’t know where.
Didn’t know why.
He just had to move.
To go.
This inner demand felt more real than anything else. The only thing not blurred, not empty.
Bo stirred slowly.
His body responded with a delay—as if the signal were taking too long. As if he were not here but somewhere to the side, merely operating what lay on the floor.
He sat up.
The motion took longer than it should have.
The world swayed slightly.
The flies scattered for a second.
Then returned.
He raised his head.
Then himself.
He stepped outside.
In the nocturnal gloom, just beyond the house, stood a
horse.
Gray.
Too distinct against the darkness.
It wasn’t grazing.
Wasn’t shifting its weight.
Wasn’t tossing its head.
It wasn’t moving at all.
Just stood there.
Like a statue.
Like a stuffed animal.
Like something placed here and forgotten. As if it were part of the house itself.
Bo looked at it without blinking.
And at some point, a thought appeared.
Not formed. Not arrived.
Just emerged.
This is his horse.
He didn’t try to verify it. Didn’t compare. Didn’t seek confirmation.
How he had named that ugly horse, Nehemiah could not remember. Either the name never stuck, or he simply called it Idiot and Crocodile far too often. So often that, at the very least, the horse had started responding to the first one.
As for a real name… had there ever been one?
Maybe not.
Or maybe it had dissolved into memory, drowned in the same darkness — boundless and hollow as the blackness through which that horse had carried him on the day of their first meeting.
That darkness was not merely the absence of light. It had weight. It had a smell. It had a voice. Or even voices.
In the darkness, traces stretched out: handprints and footprints. Elongated, uneven, as if someone had crawled there on all fours, scraping skin against the ground, leaving behind not even a path… just the mark of an attempt to move. A desperate will not to freeze in place.
The traces led toward a dark chasm from which a whisper emanated. Not one voice — many. Too many to make out a single one. They repeated names in a discordant chorus, but distorted, chaotic, jumbled. So much so that nothing remained of what they had originally been.
The whisper did not call out.
It did not address anyone.
It did not even recite.
It simply existed.
As a fact.
Dozens. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. These names just were: they had been, they were, they would be. And no one would hear them. Truly hear them — no one.
From the blackness came a stench of filth. The smell of unwashed bodies, sweat, sickness. Rot that burrows into your skin and stays there forever, no matter how much you scrub afterward.
And death.
But above all — fear.
It was not sharp. It was not sudden. It was viscous. Slow. The kind that does not let go. That becomes background, part of your breathing, part of you.
From the blackness came a chill.
And despair.
A vicious, raging despair. The kind that does not let you fall, does not let you stop. That demands you fight. Sink your teeth into another’s throat, tear chunks of flesh from a body with bare hands. Do anything — as long as you do not give up.
And you do not give up.
At first.
But then one day, something breaks.
You still do not give up, but you simply stop seeing the point. You stop understanding what it’s all for.
And then the despair changes.
The raging turns predatory.
It no longer pushes you forward. It turns inward. It begins to devour you from the inside, gnawing out pieces, leaving behind voids — ragged, uneven holes that you later just try not to look at.
The holes multiply.
Their edges fuse, overlap, merge into one.
Until nothing remains.
Nothing but the same blackness.
Emptiness.
In it, there is no past.
No future.
No memories.
No dreams.
Not even thoughts.
Just emptiness.
It does not scream. Does not demand. Does not cause pain.
It simply exists.
And it consumes.
Until only a function remains.
A function has no desires.
No aspirations.
No regrets.
It is simply… a function.
It has no name either.
The name dissolves among dozens, hundreds, thousands of others — equally hollow, equally meaningless. They cease to be names, become mere sounds. Noise.
If you have no name — you are almost not a person.
If you have no name — you are almost just a thing.
A thing does not live and cannot die.
A thing has no feelings.
No fate.
Only a state.
And it needs no name.
Because a name is something to hold onto. Something through which you can subjugate. Control.
If there is no name — there is no real power.
Not for anyone.
Warm horse breath, smelling of earth and fresh grass, yanked Nehemiah from sleep sharply, almost roughly. Though the sleep did not recede at once — it still clung to him, a cold, damp film sticking to his skin, as if he could brush it off with his hands.
Idiot (or Crocodile) stood beside him and, wasting no time, immediately tried to chew on a lock of the young man's hair, but got a smack on the nose right away.
He pulled back.
Snorted.
And, strangely enough, that was enough.
The oppressive, heavy feeling inside receded, dissolved under the pressure of simple, tangible reality: breath, movement, irritating living insolence.
The world became the world again. The darkness retreated. At least for a while.
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