Jack woke up screaming. Cold sweat ran in rivulets down the contours of his body; still half dreaming he wiped the sleeve of his pyjamas over his face and looked at it, expecting to see a naked sunburnt arm, orange and grey with clay and face paint. In reality all he saw was a striped flannel sleeve, grey in the half light. He pressed both hands against the flimsy plaster walls to try to get a grip on his reality. He breathed. Deep breaths. Slowly. In and out. Jack clenched his fists to stop them shaking and lay down between the icy sheets. He did not sleep but stared wide eyed at the ceiling, making vines and creepers out of the shadows.
Ralph heard the scream through the wall. He didn't go to Jack; he knew he would not be wanted. Needed, yes, but not wanted. He crouched with his knees drawn up to his chin on the thin mattress, hearing Jack's shuddering breaths and finding himself copying them. I'm here, He wanted to say. I'm here. At the same time he wanted to say you deserve every second of pain you ever experience because you are responsible for everything that ever went wrong. I'm here. He heard the springs creak in the room next door- Jack was lying back down. Ralph sighed and continued his sleep as if uninterrupted.
Sam attempted to negotiate his way the three blocks from the pub to his council bungalow. It was difficult going because he was drunk and the street was poorly lit by the weak orange streetlights. He found himself in this position every night at closing time. He groped his way along a brick wall, staggering a little when it ended at a garden gate. He continued search the black air in front of his with his arms; finding a concrete fence post and hugging it. Sam reached out to the slats of the fence and brushed them with his fingertips. Immediately he recoiled. His drink fugged mind and felt the wood and assumed it to be the bark of a tree trunk. He drank to forget but that touch had made him remember.
Eric watched Angela sleep. She was lying with her head resting on his warm downy chest. He was lucky to have her and their children Frank and Kimberly but he wouldn't have them for long if things carried on the way they were going. He was a Stockbroker. A failed stockbroker. He had been fired from his job in a quite prestigious company a few months earlier, due to his frequent bouts of depression which he had to take off as paid medical leave. Since then he had spent every day sitting on a park bench in a suit with a briefcase full of newspaper cuttings. He hadn't told his family.
Roger stared at the night's sky through the barred window of the room he had slept in for twenty years. He could hardly remember why he was there, in a special institution, why the guards called him horrible names and hit him for no reason. He barely knew why he had to go on trips to the town with an armed escort to wave back the crowds of people yelling abuse in his face or to reassure those who didn't want him in their shops. The only clear thought in Roger's mind was that he hated them. He hated the whole bloody lot of them.
Percival added the last splatter of ochre paint to his latest canvas. He painted best at night and always been talented at it, earning a degree in art from Cambridge and selling quite a few canvasses. All his canvasses were the variations of the same picture, sand flying through the air towards the onlooker, sand blurred by tears.