He was let out of jail early in the morning.But they impounded his car because his well had become salty.The sun was arching through the sky, so he lay down in the park and slept.He woke in the evening and went back to work.They did not like his look so they fired him.Then the police came.They arrested him again.They charged him in a murder committed before he was born.

He was delivered into a tight room which smelled of bleach.The walls were tiled blue.There was no furniture.The light was dull and bright.There was an enormously fat man standing in the center of the floor.His face had not been shaven in days.When he opened his mouth, his breath came in intense strokes.He spoke calmly, without emotion; his voice was muffled by excessive flab.

They stood in the room alone, face-to-face, close enough to breath on each other.Their positions would not alter throughout the discussion.

“I am your interrogator today. What is your name?”

“No, what is your name?”

“You are not answering the question.What is your name?”“I don’t know what you want me to say.My name is Marvin.”

“That is not your name.You are the accused; therefore, your name is The Accused.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Your given name is the introduction to your role outside these walls.Within these walls you are The Accused.That is your role, that is your identity.Nothing else matters.”

Marvin was silent for sometime.He was confused and sweaty.The past couple of days had made no sense.It was as if everything had fallen from normal.The Interrogator stared at him impassively.He was afraid to move.He decided to try to play the part.

“So I am The Accused.”

“Where were you on the day of 24 July 19--?”

“That was before I was born.”

“Where were you on the day of 24 July 19--?”

“I told you, I hadn’t been born yet.”

Marvin was becoming fairly unhinged because his part did not fit properly.He was shaking uncomfortably, his feet hurt, and that man’s stench and the bleach made his roiling stomach ready to something.

“It is clear that you do not understand the situation.Whether you as the individual - Marvin - did not exist in that time is not relevant.In this place you are The Accused, that is who you are, there is no other identity.This interview has concluded.”

Marvin had been an unconvincing actor.

Marvin sat in his cell.He was alone.He told the people who were not there about the people he used to know and he cried.

The second interrogation is misty and there are large buttons being pressed all over the place so that nothing made any sense, so Marvin confusedly rambled senselessly:

“Alone.On Wednesday stood alone the meek weaklings in front of the building waiting to be mowed down.There was sand and paper in the street and naked nymphs flew through the air.They came to surround a girl with golden flowing hair.The nymphs flew mid-air and also came to stare.The mayor came out of the building to stare because he didn’t care that he was the mayor.He should have gotten the chair.But don’t you dare to care.That I couldn’t bare.”

He could not think who he was.

Marvin was let out of jail because they didn’t like his look.Now the invisible thing that he dreaded had arrived.It descended like a shadow on the landscape.It had come like a shadow, which could be felt but not perceived by the visual cortex.It was fabulous.Perhaps it had emanated from that distant nuclear explosion or that other one further off but closer too.Maybe it came from the falling meteor.

Marvin thought he saw a shadow pass across the frowning face of the sun, but that was merely his delusion.It was cloudy anyway.It was not the sun which pierced through his heart.It was nothing because he was not dead.It felt like something.It felt like everything was icy.

Marvin had on a heavy overcoat because the weather was warm.It was open and he clutched it tightly closed and moved swiftly down the sidewalk to the beat of the military marching drum in his head.Marvin had nowhere to go so he marched home to the boarding house.He couldn’t wait to be arrested again.That was all he lived for.For the first time in days, Marvin went to sleep.Late that night, early in the morning, the East River overflowed.Marvin unconsciously drank of the filth and the unwashed nymphs bore him up and out to the heart of Aphrodite’s shrine where they made magnificent love – Marvin hoped that he would never wake up, but he did.