He dreamt of heliotropic ruins and a troop of naked schoolboys who mocked him for being naked and a universal judge wearing rhino horn wig and wielding a jellied gavel. He woke stinking of fear and mad with hunger. Halfway through breakfast he decided to kill himself. He fetched the .32 revolver and the box of ammunition from the safe and put them both on the table beside his cereal. He was still dazed from sleep. In his fever he confused cereal with live round and filled the six chambers with high-fructose fake fruit pellets, so that when he shut his eyes and smashed his jaw tight and brought the gun to his head and hit the trigger nothing happened, and by the time he woke up and figured out what happened he was so embarrassed that he decided life was too good for him and that he'd suffer a while longer.