What struck me was that I didn’t feel happy in any way at all when they walked me down the hall. I’d seen other prisoners whoop and cheer they were paraded through the doors and gates and checkpoints, nodding to friends or even foes as they made their final exit. I’d seen smirks and shit-eating grins and knowing smiles. But I didn’t feel like celebrating. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even imagine how. Maybe it was who was walking me out. The guard on my right I knew well, or at least I knew his baton, which I’d felt on my shoulder or cheek occasionally when I didn’t look at him the right way.

Dinner was special. The candles were miraculous, emanating a light that went oozing into pores, piercing into strands of hair, that found its way inside the thin glass of the champagne flutes, the rough, quartzy crystal of the punch bowl. Nothing glittered, nothing sparkled, nothing shone. Everything glowed, everything throbbed. The other guests did not smile, but they radiated pulses of tender heat in her direction, until her cheeks were mottled red. Each course in the banquet had an aura that hung heavily over the platter, like steam weighed down with rich globules of grease, thick particles of oily light.

It will be of little surprise to those who know me well that, as a boy, I was possessed by frequent night terrors. I do not like to speak of them now. It embarrasses me—even as it embarrassed my father once. I was a child: I saw as a child and I spoke as a child but my fears were not those of a child. There was a small window set into the north wall of my bedroom, and from this I would gaze out upon the constellations of lights that burst through the gloom: stories my father told me of heroes and monsters, there a dragon, there Hercules. To him these were figments, glimmering signs of a bygone age, but to me? I saw something more.

I sat in the park watching a couple who were, like all lovers, only intent on one another. The girl was a beauty ripe for harvest, her hair a golden sheaf. The boy’s desire was visible in the way he kissed her. I felt a pang. I, too, had been lovely once and loved. My hair made jealous noises in sympathy. A man walked by, and I could hear the furious beat that was piped straight into his ears. His curious gaze slid over my sunglasses and cap, then the sketches on my pad. I loved the park. It had appeared in my work many times.

The sky above is impossibly blue, striped with bright bands of clouds tinged pink and orange with the coming sunrise. There are a few stars still sparkling in the heavens, and the moon, bigger than it looks beyond the borders of this land, hangs low and near. The pack of spotted jackals is also near. Their baying is a goad. If we do not find some shelter, some escape, we are done for. The wind whips our scent into their long noses, maddening them. They will tear us to pieces if they catch us. I am not worried. I have no reason to be. Not yet.