I was fleeing, not in that animal jolt instinct demands when death approaches, nor in that lucid tension still searching for an exit deep in the maze, but in a deeper movement, perhaps more cowardly, surely more human — a dull, visceral drive, incapable of stating a goal, a cause, a strategy; I was fleeing so I wouldn't hear anymore, so I wouldn't feel anymore, so I wouldn't be that body loaded with images, with faces, with screams I no longer wanted to carry; I was fleeing, not to save myself, not even to understand what I had become, but simply to cover the collapse under a veil of movement, to mask the shipwreck with an absurd run, so that if not redemption, there would at least be forgetting.
The contact of the Firstborn still burned on my skin, like an invisible but persistent mark, a thermal memory etched into my pores.
