A crack of sound.
The sharp bang of wood against stone. His fragile body jolted as if struck. His chest seized, his limbs flailed. He cried without meaning to—thin, broken, pitiful. His own voice disgusted him.
Why am I like this?
But no answer came.
The noise passed. He was still trembling when rough cloth brushed across his skin. Wetness. A hand cleaning him. The touch was not cruel, not careless—but it stripped him. His legs kicked weakly in protest, but the hands only worked faster.
He felt the warmth of urine still clinging to him, the shame of it. I cannot even control myself.
The hands turned him, lifted him, wrapped him in new cloth. He lay still, humiliated by his own body. The warmth of the cloth was comforting, but it was not his choice. Nothing was his choice.
Time blurred again.
Hunger. Hunger that twisted and burned until his mouth screamed open. Hunger that made him beg in the voice of an animal. The woman answered, pressing him close, feeding him with the warmth of her body. He swallowed, hating the way relief flooded him, hating that he was nothing more than a mouth, a stomach, a tiny thing that could only take.
Later came the dark.
Alone in the cradle, shadows pressed against him like hands. The fire had gone low, its glow weak. His chest rose and fell too quickly, too loudly, as if the dark itself would hear him.
He remembered another dark—returning from work to his empty apartment, gray walls lit by the pale glow of a screen. He had hated that silence. Yet this was worse. This was silence that devoured him.
A sudden sound tore through it: the bark of a dog outside. Harsh, violent, alien. His body seized in terror. He could not run. Could not cover his ears. Could not escape. He could only scream, useless, until someone came to lift him from the cradle.
Even in her arms, he shook, his tiny hands clawing at her clothes, desperate for safety. She whispered something, her voice soft, but the words were meaningless to him—just noise. Warm noise. He buried his face against her chest, humiliated by how deeply he needed it.
When sleep came, it was no escape. He dreamed of the office again, faint flickers of memory—monitors glowing, voices murmuring, his manager's sigh. But even those dreams were fading, stripped of detail, dissolving into gray. He tried to hold onto them, to hold onto himself. But his grip was too weak. Always too weak.
He woke with wetness against his cheek. Drool. His own.
His body betrayed him again and again.
And as another day began in this fragile prison, he thought with despair:
I was nothing before. I am less than nothing now.