What I Tell You In the Dark by John Samuel Page A

fire, being shaken in the grip of a delirium. I cannot think straight. Everything in me has been burnt down to a bottom ash of dry protests. I call out to Him, in the old way, crying for Him to take me under his wing.
    After that my dreams become a series of sweaty, tangled elisions. More visions than dreams really, acid-sharp in detail and all of them charged with the same regret – images of Jesus that lash and fork like plasma. On the last day, the deepest of them all is dislodged.
    It is from the later time, when I had haunted him down to near nothing. I watch it play out, eyes open, as if it is projected on the white wall in front of me. I am there, back on the stony ground of the desert. Christ’s legs painfully thin, the bones in his feet sharp against the sandal leather, but despite these difficulties I journey for days, battered by the sun and kept fromsleep by the frozen night. I fast, I thirst for as long as I can, until finally I collapse. That night, the night of my collapse, I wake with a start, a deep ache of cold in my bones. The sound that woke me is still there, whispering between the rocks, but I see nothing. The air is a swarming gloom. I search for a stone, something, anything I can use as a weapon. But there’s nothing. When I look up, it is beside me, silently watching, as big as a man. It is reared up and tensile, almost still, just its head moving very slightly from side to side, the way serpents do when they are ready to strike. I am so afraid that I begin to weep. That’s when it too begins to make noises, quietly at first, soft like my weeping, then louder, unnatural sounds.
    As I sprawl on my back, it moves on top of me, its appalling weight on my chest, its tongue tasting the air between us.
    The fever leaves me scoured down like whitened wood in the shoreline. My lips are salty and dry.
    I must have water.
    Bent in a slow walk, I take myself to the kitchen tap. I drink and drink, and then I drink some more. The water swishes painfully in my belly. It has, I realise, been days since I have eaten.
    I go to the fridge and heave open its door. It’s a picture of neglect but there are a few things that are still this side of rotten. There’s an open tin of spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce, there’s a block of dry and cracked cheddar. I also see some kebab meat in a grease-soaked wrapper, and a carton of grapes shrivelled on the stalk. I sink to the floor, not knowing where to begin, but my body does not wait to find out. It moves independently of all thought and volition, seizing what I need.
    I dip two fingers into the spaghetti hoops and shovel them into my cement mixer mouth of lamb and cheese. I add in a tomato I find lurking at the back of the shelf. It explodes betweenmy teeth, juice runs down my chin and drips on to the floor. I bend forward and suck up the little rusty pools, then I take four more huge bites of cheddar. Finally, and only when I absolutely have to, I get up and go over to the tap for more water, cradling my belly on the way, as if it’s a bomb that might go off.
    I continue like this for some time, stopping occasionally for my gut muscles to cramp and flutter beneath the strain. When I’ve finally had enough, I wander down the hallway to the bathroom, taking the grapes with me, vacuum popping them into my mouth like a tennis ball machine in reverse.
    I draw myself a hot bath and slip down among its crinkling bubbles. I let my thoughts rise away from me like the wisps of steam that curl off my arms as I hold them up in the pale afternoon light. And as I lie drowsing in my tub, it softens, this light, to the glow of evening. It is beautiful to watch, a little sad too, to hear the tap drip-dripping its count into the water at my feet. Time tugging at the edges of me, pulling me along. Every second is now being taken away, grain followed by grain. Moments I shall never have back.
    I haul myself out of the bath and stand steaming on the mat, pink