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Weathered skin, clinging to knuckles rising above coursing veins, full of the regret of years and waste, all clasping upon pen from which flows a truth bent on staining paper, prophesying past, patterns and broken hope. Seeing through dimly lit dust, light from a small window peaking upon his desk, finding his tired eyes, gray beard and hair, pain and performance, broadcasting futures, fear, and the way it's always been; he scribes frantically, praying to beat the pain, to push down the rising river that always seems to find him cold, lonely and naked. He's there upon his rickety, spent chair, pulled close to the desk, hunkered down, prodding, wading through the mud and pain. Melody and a violent relief and suffocating release comes with each pen stroke, each letter. Each phrase finds itself first hung sterile among the damp air, until heavy enough to gather, falling upon parchment, pooling into a menagerie of rampant thoughts, yet still unable to set him free. In the next room, in fact in every room, piled from floor to ceiling, suitcases full of collections of useless words. An Auto De Fay fades within each of their bindings.

Thirty-seven floors, thirty-seven rooms upon each, all filled except the one last room. Room thirty-seven on the thirty-seventh floor, where he and his desk occupy the southwest corner. He works frantically at a slowing pace, exhausted, selling his soul as his own slave to the highest bidder. He's been collecting consciousness. Soul brazen from so many sacrifices, he prays for a finish. He has yet to figure how he'll get out.