COHESION

The day is dying. Good.

It overstayed its welcome.

That violent orange is gasping its last across the horizon, surrendering to a dark that doesn't fall so much as it claims. This room drinks what's left of the light, splintering it against the glass shards on the floor. It didn't open willingly. It was forced.

Stagnant air. Air that has forgotten what wind feels like.

The room should be empty. It isn't.

Have a look at the wallpaper; jaundiced yellow, peeling back in long curls to show the rot beneath. Time has its teeth in this place. But the record player by the door is gleaming. Spotless. A few unwashed dishes in the sink-the fridge hums. Above, the fan blades are clean - not just maintained. Preserved.

Someone was here hours, no... minutes ago. Every window bolted. Every door is locked. The kind of effort that mistakes stillness for safety.

So much for that.

Something catches. An error in the geometry, or is it perspective?

The wall gives it away. That mountain print hangs wrong, I assume, not by accident but by correction. The peak dragged level is forced to be parallel to the floor. The artist captured a mountain collapsing, but the owner, fearing the scene, forced the frame to show a quiet, flat, and dishonest picture. Then why frame it in the first place?

One of us is fixed on that.

The other is just glad to be off the face of a hunter.

"Ignorance keeps things simple," until the doubt starts to tighten. Until the room stops agreeing with you.

A lie told to the cattle. That's how your kind have always moved forward. But what will you do when your own thoughts start to eat you from within? When do you give yourself the benefit of the doubt?

You. You. You.

Not you, but You. No "You."-

Something shifts where the light can't reach. Not a sound. Just a presence resolving.

The plan unraveled hours ago - paths closed, choices narrowed to one hole left to crawl into. The streets were cleared. Hunt concluded. Efficient. Necessary. Or so the hunter thinks.

Now he collapses. Bones heavy, trusting the walls to hold and the doors to matter. He thinks the running is over. He thinks this hollow shell is enough.

It isn't.

He thinks the day is over.

For the prey, the true meal is just beginning.

And then, the world finally breaks the silence.

The sirens are humming. Low thrumming through cracked glass.

But is that real? Of course it is.

They shout. They screech. They demand movement, demand gaze, and then fade, forgotten the moment the lights go off.

Move, they say.

Move.

And that is all they are. A momentary puncture in the silence, destined to be forgotten the second the lights fade. No one remembers a siren with fondness; they only pray for the moment it stops.

I find something almost pathetic in that: an object that commands absolute attention and leaves nothing behind.

But amidst the odds, the oddity stands before me.

They stole your rest, didn't they? a few hours of heavy but leaden sleep tucked between bloodstains and filth. Now the city demands its tithe.

The body gets up.

The light in here is dying. Dim, fluctuating. It bounces off skin as if afraid to touch it. The mirror doesn't flatter: ribcage pressing at the surface, skin the color of wet concrete, eyes that have been open too long. The sink smells. The floor is cold.

A gaze drops. A flicker of annoyance. Then back up.

Tired. Malnourished. Wrung out. Even the flickering bulb overhead looks more alive.

It doesn't matter.

Comfort was never the intent. This bond was built for purpose, and that purpose will be pressed until the lungs give out. Out there - into the smog, into the cycle - it continues.

March and stitch. Demand and supply.

One, and for One only. Take what was given. Take what was meant to be taken.

Now reach out.

As the air will get thin.