Two months after the accident, James Llewellyn still could not sleep for the anxious fevers that consumed him and the irregular palpitations of his heart that kept him awake long into the deep reaches of the night. He became convinced that his unease would spread to the walls of the house around him, cause a violent shaking and shattering of all windows and beams, and finally shudder until the entire structure collapsed on him and he would finally be freed of it all, perishing in the demise he himself had created. It was an idea that appealed to him not during the brief stretches of lucid, controlled daily life, but only during the anxious terror he experienced at night. His condition manifested itself as soon as he lay in his bed to go to sleep; to hear him tell of it, his first contact with sheets and pillows triggered a bout of the most intense anxious panic that any doctor had ever heard described, and no prescribed solution could cure his fretful insomnia. The differentiation between day and night for him became the means of measuring all things. Day became all that was good, night became all that was wrong. He decorated his bedroom with all manner of artwork depicting rising suns and shunned anything related to stars or moons.

His mind seemed unhinged, he thought, and he saw the patterns of his failures stretching out like a massive grid of repetitive circuitry weaving its way across the fabric of the chairs and tables and curtains around him. He could not move past his anxiety even during the day because as soon as he had achieved a moment of peace in which things again seemed possible, one nagging doubt would creep into the shadows of his mind and the entirety of his uncertainty would again take over. Driving became difficult because as soon as he left his driveway, he could not remember his destination and even if he did, he second-guessed himself into believing it was somewhere else. He rarely got where he needed to be and as such, relied on his friends for transport. They obliged without complaint because they could not bear to see James in such a condition, but their own guilty consciences were secretly thankful it was him and not them with such problems.

As time went on, his health did not seem to be improving despite all the care and attention of his devoted friends. His regular lack of sleep left him looking pale and gaunt and he had taken to eating sparingly, only when the meals coincided with the schedule of his daily baths during which he would lay in the tub and eat whatever was prepared for him. His friends took it upon themselves to subtly suggest to him that he would be better off to get out of his house and let someone else look after his

affairs until he was capable of resuming everyday life. Their motivation was partially self-

ish, for they were all growing tired of receiving panicked phone calls every night asking them to rush over to help him close up the giant hole that had opened in the wall above the bed. Rest homes and retreat centers that would take him in as a permanent resident were researched, and each time they found one they considered worthy of his consideration, they would secretly drop off a brochure at his house with the evening mail so he would be sure to see it. He amassed such a collection that he joked he could build another house just out of pamphlets and booklets and move in there, though he never knew why he got so many or from where they came.

James had a notebook in which he kept the entire spectrum of his impassioned, obsessive ravings, and often resorted to scribbling frantically in the small hours of the night when his thoughts threatened to overturn him and the demons which plagued his mind held sleep at a distance. He often read it in the mornings, when he woke from the hour or two of agitated sleep that he could muster, to find that he did not remember any of the words on the page. It seemed as if some foreigner had crept into his room and, in a handwriting that was not his own, written their own words around, next to, and amongst his own. He called his friends in the morning, screaming accusations of trespassing and forgery and charging each one with attempting to impersonate him. Each would admit to the counterfeit in turn until he became so confused as to the identity of the perpetrator that he would forget about it entirely and lapse into another fit of anxiety.

Six months after the accident, James could no longer recognize his own face and the periods of lucidity that had once sustained him during the day had faded into consistent, delirious rage. The maze of his anxiety had overtaken him completely. The notebook was tattered and shredded beyond recognition, but James still filled every empty space with incoherent words and phrases, the unintelligible overflow that his tortured mind could no longer handle.

On the morning of the anniversary of the accident, James awoke to find an envelope containing a key resting on his kitchen table. It contained no other directions or markings other than a hand-drawn arrow pointing in the direction of the driveway. He exited into the morning sunlight to discover a black sedan with tinted windows parked in his garage. He was not confused, but approached the car as if he had owned it his entire life. He removed the key from the envelope, unlocked the passenger side door, and disappeared. He did not notice the cars parked farther down the street, nor did he see the windows slowly roll down as he entered the car. He did not see them get out of their cars, and he did not watch them walk down the street and enter his house. He did not see his windows go dark as shades were pulled and he did not see his front door slammed closed and locked. He was never seen or heard from again.