The Heart of the Leopard Children by Wilfried N'Sondé

the door. He must have got a whiff of the odor. I have to admit that this warm sensation is the one pleasant thing that has happened to me in these last hours. I better savor it before I have to deal with the discomfort of wet clothing on my skin and the nauseating stench drowning my nostrils.
    With all this fear and misunderstanding, I’m longing to put my anxieties to bed and accept whatever help I can get. I’m in severe pain, it’s so diffuse that I can’t quite pinpoint it. Every body part, every inch of my body, my skin, organs, all together are unleashing their own dose of torture, without the slightest interruption so that I can get a little bit of relief. The cell is ridiculously small. I can’t even stretch out my arms the width of the space. There isn’t even a ray of light, not a single sound around me. My body is basically drowning in oblivion. For about fifteen minutes, I started to distract myself by hiding under the wooden bed, but that just really irritated the shit out of the guard on his rounds. I’d robbed him of a couple seconds of daylight. Panicked, he was looking for me in every little nook and cranny. What difference is it to him whether I’m on or under the bed? Just for that he’d felt the need to bang me about, his way of exorcising the fright I’d given him by disappearing in my own dungeon. Today, he was supposed to have gone to the bank and picked up the dry-cleaning. Don’t lose your shit. Just relax. You’re all protected behind your double metal doors, bars, and your locks and bolts.
    I’m just letting the events of the past dance around in a frenzy. Many satellites are orbiting around me. They’d better keep their distance. I’m gladly hiding and pretending to be absent when they call my name. I’m just a spectator. Go ahead without me. I’m still watching. I need more time to fall in line. Excuse me. Can you cut me a little slack, please! Guilty or not, I’m the victim here. Me! A decision is going to be coming down from the captain by way of the ancestor, Mireille, and Drissa. I keep forgetting that I’m the only one who’s going to have to answer to my hands, to my legs, to my fucked-up state, to my joy, to my sadness. For the moment, there isthis peaceful distance between the world and me. Someone else is in charge of my fate. I can finally go to sleep without fear. Days will go by and with them beautiful images of both good times and failures. Give me the tranquilizer you give to the tamed animals. They don’t bite anymore; they just sit there staring at you, wisely waiting before their trough. Three meals per day, a walk so I don’t forget what fresh air is and bars to make it absolutely clear where the boundaries are.
    I get recurring visions of an irreparable catastrophe, I’m running, trying to get away, I stumble and then suddenly nosedive into a bottomless pit. The fall makes me really anxious and gives me a chill worse than this icebox prison cell. I keep trying to reassure myself when I finally regain my composure, only there is nothing, no right side, no flipside, no right, no wrong.
    I feel like screaming or crying when I realize that all the hours I’m in here rotting away, my poor little cat has been all alone in my room, the poor thing must be meowing, afraid, and dying of hungry. In the end, he’s not that different from me, sitting around waiting, no clue whatsoever about what’s going on.
    One can only hope all this is some terrible misunderstanding. The door could open at any given moment and a familiar face, perhaps the red confused face of the captain, would be standing right by me. I’ll accept his apology of course, no hard feelings man, a nice long shower and let’s forget all about it. One or two steps back into the past, leave behind Drissa, Mireille, the questions and all this sticky mess I got mired in on the left sidewalk, a complete one-eighty and