It is night. I am young. It is very dark in the hallway. There is no moon and the stars are hidden by clouds. I can still see - very, very faintly. Every sound is magnified. The faint hum of the furnace two stories below me is the loudest noise I hear.

I am concentrating on moving very quietly. I am totally in the moment. Each step takes forever. Weight rests on the back foot as the front foot tests the noise made by the next floorboard as I alowly press downward. I am a boy in slow motion.

There is a coldness inside of me that has nothing to do with the ambient temperature. Need has reached the point where it has so subsumed everything that I no longer feel it. Instead there is just action: slow, cold deliberate action. Consequence is no longer considered. There are only a series of slow steps and a goal that will be reached.

(Something I remembered on the way home from watching "Sin City". Kind of leaves you hanging doesn't it? The initial images will always serve to recall the remainder for me, and the rest will remain inside my head where it belongs. Nothing particularly horrible, but nothing I want to put here. "Sin City" was a great movie by the way.)