I'll always remember my time on Pandora, and I think that in some part, that was who I was now. Ni'awtu, Hilton and the forest did have some effect on my personality, that was for sure. Yet I'm still not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. Of course, my lazy days with Hilton, Ni'awtu and sometimes Leyra were great, no doubt about it, but Deibel had had some effect on me as well. That happens when a man tries to kill you. And that's what happens when someone saves your life.

I was going home. The feeling was so strange and alien to me. After being in Prison for many years, I couldn't quite believe that I was free. I could go into a store and buy something I wanted, I could go to sleep when I want, and get up when I want. I licked my lips, feeling scared as the weight of the world dawned on me. I was alone. Apart from Lawrence, literally no one on Earth knew what I had been through. To them, I was just another guy taking a cab ride home. The pine cone scent, while at first appealing, was now sickly. The cramped, hard seats, which started out as something good, quickly turned into something bad. The shoebox lay on my lap, and I was merciful that the cab driver didn't attempt any small talk. I stared out the window at the night. It was too garishly bright after seeing the gentle bioluminescence of Pandora. Advertisements were everywhere, for clothes, for Tv shows that I'd never heard of, even for the RDA. The cab ride was like that for the duration. When we arrived at my house at the top of the hills, I thanked the man and gave him a twenty-dollar note from the roll. I shuffled out of the car and watched the cab's light turn on and zoom off to find another fare.

Looking at my home, I wasn't sure what to feel. The big, 2-story house overlooking the city seemed bigger than what I remembered. On the one hand, I was ecstatic that I was actually here, on Earth at my home. On the other, I felt bad for feeling happy, and cast my memory back to the forest and the Na'vi. The two feelings sort of balanced each other out so I was left feeling numb. I had expected my return to be a glorious, majestic time when I would run into my home and jump on the bed, happy that I was finally away from it all. It wasn't. I ascended the steps to my house, and swiped the card in the door. To my surprise, it still worked and the door opened slowly, like it knew I'd been gone for a long time. I walked in, my tattered shoebox still held in my hands. The door closed smoothly behind me. When I saw the spiral stairs to my right, and the kitchen laid out before me, I sighed.

I remembered the time when I'd come home from the gym or from the mind numbing office job that I eventually quit to go into boxing full time, and Emma would be standing there, waiting for me to come through the door so she could throw her arms around me and ask me how my day went. Or how she'd call me up when I was coming home and ask me to pick up whatever she was craving for. I remember feeling the baby kick, then looking up at Emma and just feeling complete and utter love for her and the baby growing in her womb.

That was all gone now. When I entered the house there was just silence, a ringing, deafening silence. I put my shoebox on a counter, took out the money and put it in my pocket, then looked in the fridge. Everything in there was rotten. I got a black bag from a drawer, shoved everything in it, tied it up, and took it outside. I closed the door and wrote a reminder to pick up some more food. I saw one post-it note on the fridge which just said: 'Go get 'em tiger.' I left it on there. I moved from the kitchen into the living room. The Tv was still there, the sofa was still there, everything was where it has been before. The lights had turned themselves on automatically. I sat down for a second before immediately getting up and going upstairs to our master bedroom.

Nothing relating to the crime was in the house. No blood, no signs of struggle, nothing out of the ordinary. Even the bed covers were made nicely. I made another sweep of my house. Nothing. I didn't check the mailbox outside.

Back in the bedroom, I tried to cast my mind back to the event. I remembered sleeping right in this bed, then hearing noises. Everything after that was a blur. It was very frustrating. Trying to remember the event was a waste of time. I'd done it countless times in jail, going over and over what happened. What was doing it now going to change? I picked up a photo of me and Emma, the one that Deibel had ripped up. I held it tightly in my hands, looking back to a time when everything was simple and we were happy. I'm surprised to say that I didn't cry that night. Like I said, I felt numb, and however much my brain wanted me to cry, my body just wasn't having any of it.

I was at a loss. I didn't know what to do. Everything in my house was the same except for years of dust. It was monumentally depressing.

Now I'm going to talk about something that some of you might not like hearing, so I'll try to be as polite as possible. One of the things I was thinking about, and I'm sort of ashamed to admit it, was sex.

Well, not really sex, but intimacy. I wanted nothing more right now than to just spend a night with Emma, even if it was just for one more time. Failing that, a day in the forest with Leyra and Ni'awtu. Not very intimate but still, it would help me a lot. Just one of them, and I think I would be able to make it.

But I knew that neither of those things were going to happen. Not now, not ever again. And it hurt me to realize that, no matter how long I mourned, no matter how hard that I pined for it, it would never happen. Not knowing what else to do, I fell to sleep on the bed, the photo still clutched in my hands.

I had nightmares that night. Hilton was there, and we were running away from something, but I didn't know what it was. I called out for Ni'awtu to come with her Ikran but nothing came. I wanted to stop running but I couldn't. It went on like that until Hilton just disappeared, and it was me, on my own, in the forest, running relentlessly away from the thing.

I woke up in a sweat, about twenty minutes after I'd fallen asleep. I looked at the photo I as still holding to find that I'd cracked the frame. I put it back on the table and since I had nothing to do, I decided to go out.

So I walked out into the night. The city was somewhat crowded even at this time of night, and nobody paid attention to me. If they did, it's because I was just wearing a shirt on a freezing night. I walked and walked, the sensation feeling strange. The air felt oppressive but the world felt open. It's just like Lawrence said. I'd have to find him sometime, if only for something to do. It didn't surprise me that everything had changed. There were adverts for things I'd never heard of, shops and bars I'd never seen, and even new streets. The cars had become different, the people, the general feel of the city had changed.

On a whim, I crossed the street, nearly getting run over in the process and found myself at the nearest liquor store. I supposed it's what people do in these sort of situations, isn't it? Turn to drink? I went inside and awkwardly nodded at the owner, who didn't nod back. I looked at the various drinks on display. Even this was overwhelming. I'd never been much of a drinker, and didn't know the various brands and sorts of alcohol really. So I picked up a random bottle and paid for it. The man put it in a brown bag and scowled at the paper money. Maybe it was all done by electronics now. I thanked him and went home. I was by my sink, staring at this bottle of whatever it was. I thought of my trainer.

You don't want to be drinking, Dwight. It makes you sloppy, puts you off your objective. You don't want that, do you?

I ended up pouring the drink down the drain. In the bathroom, I found myself staring at my reflection in the mirror. I had a full beard and rather long hair. I knew I hadn't shaved for a while, but this just looked ridiculous. My eyes were sunken and red, and the beard and hair were devoid of any sort of organization or style.

I opened the cupboard, took out a razor, and carefully shaved everything off. All my body hair, I shaved it off. If Pandora was my identity, it was gone now. I had to remember who I was. First and foremost, I asked myself: What are you?

A husband

Not any more

A wash-up

Don't be pathetic

A boxer

Yes. I was a boxer. So I shaved all of my body hair off, we did that because it improved speed in the ring by just a tiny amount, but a tiny amount could be the difference between a win and a loss. I looked better in the mirror now, but that's not to say I looked good. I looked better.

A boxer. That's who I was.

A boxer.