Hunger and Thirst Read Online Free

going to happen? Hours in the room?
    Days?
    His mouth fell open. But there was no water and no food and he was hungry and thirsty. And his body, what about that? Already it was swelling with undischarged wastes. What was he to do?
    His throat contracted. It was so easy to go over the facts. So hard to accept and understand them. Paralyzed. It was an easy word to speak and to think. But what did it mean? It meant he couldn’t move. Did it mean he would never move again …?
    No!
    He heard the word shouted out in his mind and it echoed down the corridors.
    It was impossible that such a thing be true. He wouldn’t believe it. He couldn’t afford to believe it. He was just in a state of shocked exhaustion. How many times had he read about men in shock? They were like this too, their functions gave way, they couldn’t move.
    Well, that’s all it was. What he needed was rest and sleep and warmth. He couldn’t pull the blanket over himself true. He was right on top of it. But it wasn’t cold. The sun was coming up now and the window was only open a little and not much wind was coming in.
    Anyway, it was April.
    He closed his eyes. With all his will he refused to believe that he couldn’t move at all. Maybe for the moment, yes. But that was shock. That meant only that it was a matter of waiting a while until he was rested up. Until he’d gathered a little strength. That was all.
    “I’ll rest a while.”
    He said it to himself, casually, straining to believe it was all a thing of simple values.
    He turned his head and looked at the rose on the table.
    It was drying up. The petals were shriveling and moisture was leaving them. In the glass, the still water was filled with tiny bubbles that clung to the sides like minute glass balloons.
    There was something else on the table. He tried to see. Two things. One was a little higher than the other. He couldn’t make them out because he couldn’t focus out of the corners of his eyes.
    He turned his eyes back and listened to the traffic sounds.
    A car bellowed like a tone-deaf calf bawling. A truck ground up the block in first gear, its gears spinning faster and faster, the pitch of its driving engine rising until it sounded like a human groan. He listened intently until the truck switched into second gear.
    He wanted to listen intently to all sounds.
    It seemed as though he must be in complete tune with everything so that he could understand and thus adapt his state to the entire state of things and find the way to move again. There was only the trick of learning that held him back from motion.
    So he listened and tried to find the pattern behind all the noises so that they would fit into the puzzle and he could see how to rise up and walk.
    It didn’t make sense. The better part of his judgment knew it was senseless. But he went on with it anyway, like an intellectual with his religion, blindly devoted to those regimentations which he realizes are anathema to the slightest application of reason. Just a little more and you’ll find the key, he thought, and then you’ll rest and you’ll be fine, you’ll see.
    Through his lowered eyelids, he saw the increasing light of day. I wonder what time it is—he thought. And, automatically, tried to raise his left arm so he could look at his wrist watch. His hand stayed limp and still at his side.
    He drove down rising fear as one would drive a rising ant hill into sidewalk cracks with a rubbing stamp of ones sole. All right, all
right
, he told himself, shutting his eyes tightly. Never mind that, in a little while you’ll be out of this. Never mind what time it is, it doesn’t matter what time it is.
    Breathing heavily, he listened to the drunken man in the next room, snoring. He tried first to ignore, then to quell the insistent throbbing in his bladder. I wonder if it’s distending or anything, the annoying, grating portion of his brain asked.
    Think of something else! he yelled back defiantly.
    And forced repose on himself.
    Now