The patterns seemed to alter their shape as he stared up at them from his bed, breaking and re-uniting, incessantly in search of form, pulsing with some vibrant energy. And beneath it all, the young man just lay there, broken. Wispy talons of curling smoke stung his eyes so he closed them, blindly stubbing out what was left of his cigarette in the full ashtray beside his bed. It was just six-thirty in the evening and the weariness that stalked him constantly had finally caught up with him. He had neither the instinct nor the will to resist. Will and Instinct, those two keystones of youth, had left him stranded. They had slipped away one winter’s evening to be replaced not even by bitterness or anger, but by a tedious ennui that had smothered him ever since. Ennui, that Baudelaire state that pounces upon you in the guise of self-pity and fits you oh so well. In the years since Little Norman, a routine had enforced itself upon Tom’s life but only recently had he succumbed to the force of its domination.
