In the weeks and months that followed, the man would go to movies by himself late at night and sit in the back. Whenever the darkness set in, he would happily submit and the shouting of “Deviance!” would ruin many a movie experience. It was a glorious, freeing defiance, but one night it came to an end. As he was leaving the theater, a big muscular smiling man chucked a cup full of ice at his head and called him a jackass. A very beautiful woman was at his side. The muscular smiling man put his arm around the beautiful woman and they walked off into the night and street musicians played in the distance. That was the last time the man shouted in a movie theater.

He went to a doctor the next day and explained his problem. The doctor did not understand it but prescribed him medicine anyway. The medicine dulled the greens of the trees and the blues of the sky and muted the songs of the birds, but every day he took it. And gradually, painfully, he learned to control the darkness. But knowing what he did and keeping it in, it was never easy to sleep at night.

…gradually, painfully, he learned to control the darkness. But knowing what he did and keeping it in, it was never easy to sleep at night.

The man flushed those dead pieces of himself and rose to his feet. He looked in the mirror. A muted, undeserving man stood before him. He almost spat at him. Then he grabbed his medicine bottle and his hand trembled as he opened it. He dipped into the pills and held one, and his eyes tried to crush it with their hate. And then, for whatever reason — perhaps it was catching his neighbor’s beautiful wife in his mirror’s reflection, running out in her bathrobe to get the day’s paper, or the gentle breeze blowing through the window whispering the word of God — whatever it was, the man put the pill back into the bottle and replaced the cap. For some unknown reason, on that day this man closed that bottle without taking his medicine.

It was a bright spring day and the smells of the world weren’t hiding. As the man opened his car door, he took a large breath and wondered if this oxygen business weren’t all just a fabulously convenient lie to keep him in the atmosphere.

In his office, he printed papers, checked them thoroughly, licked envelopes, placed the papers in the envelopes. Print, check, lick, place. He listened closely for one of his co-workers to fart loudly, but no one ever did. Fears were multiplying within him, and he had to do something to break the monotony or surely he would have gone mad. The man made paper airplanes and began sending them across his office, carefully ducking behind his cubicle as each met its intended target. At first he heard surprised noises, alarmed noises, disapproving groans from his co-workers, but these soon subsided as they learned to accept the onslaught of airplanes as yet another inexplicable oddity in their day-to-day reality. They continued typing, or counting, or charting, or doing whatever it is they did, and the man smiled to himself and thought, the fools.

One unfortunate plane had veered into the Boss’ toupee, and a three-hundred-fifty-pound hulk of a man stood — not without difficulty — demanding the identity of the perpetrator. Six fingers betrayed the man, and the Boss stomped his way through the maze of cubicles and loomed over him. His fat shadow created an impressive light-killing radius. Not without effort, he spoke.

“What the hell is this?” The Boss removed the paper plane from his head. “You think this is funny? That you have time to make this junk on my clo —”

And then the words just blended together, and the imaginary air and the imaginary sounds coming out of his Boss’ mouth made the man think of pop-up books in another tongue. The man rose and stared into his Boss’ reddening face, and he watched the muscles around his jaw tense up and then release, tighten and then let go, fabulous theatrics crafting the illusion of communication. The man watched how the ever-thickening drops of moisture flying from the Boss’ mouth changed the geometry of the office. There were so many thoughts racing through his head; he wanted to do so much to this angry fat man that the world would never allow.