I listened to the wall during the long night, trying to put a face to the cries for help. Sleep was a fugitive son in my life, absconding over the wall between us. The voice in the next room babbled incessantly, repetitively and incoherently. Each time I drifted off, his ranting would jerk me awake like a fish hook in my mind. I remember splashing along a creek almost asleep, and the wall called me back.

In the half light I began to notice that the cracked plaster was swelling outwards, although it may have been an enlargement of my imagination. His muttering felt closer all the time, like white ants chewing through the woodwork and his unshaven face was pressing at my consciousness, leaning into existence on my side of the fence.

It occurred to me that I might be in an old folk’s home, the penultimate room before the infirmary. It was bound to happen at some stage so perhaps it would be good to get it over with. I curled up into a ball as the faces and hands clutched at me from the other side.

Night was more than the absence of day, like a rough blanket around my shoulders. I was tired of me but there was no one else. My last thought before sleep seized me was that I was that lunatic in the next room and he was me.