The other night, I lay in bed, turned by flat horror, while it stood there in the dark. I sensed it but could not see it—there, in the doorway. It spoke no words. I felt my heart plunge without recourse, deep and dark into the unknowable, thrown into a sea with no bearing, drowning in black, cold nothingness. I felt my heart tear, dropping to zero, and beneath. I felt it standing there, as if in the periphery of my being. I felt it was of significant breadth—a beast of rounded shape, with coarse fur that tickled the silent space around it. An unworded horror, one of number. A number has no physical form. A number goes up; a number goes down. This number was going down. The beast bore innumerable strings wrapped around my soul, pulling my essence into the deepest, darkest nothing.