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A Day in the Dark Season - James Hopkin

And all this, just as I had begun to believe - due to a forceful new illusion or an administrative error - that life is worth living.

When the church-bells ring, the few who notice them think there must be some mistake. Or a marriage. Or a death. For the shops are still open. With their features patched up by receipts, the mutant forms now quicken their pace. They steer with their elbows through packed streets. I try to breathe through these swollen tubes. I try to find a space.

He could never understand people who complained about not having enough time. So much time for so few things – that’s what I have. This thought kept coming back to him all night, like the refrain of a song heard in passing that stays in one’s head, or like an echo in an empty room, whose presence we feel even when it dies away.

He was woken by the heat of the morning. It came in through the dark, heavy curtains. Stanka had spent days choosing the material for them. She had resembled a girl while she sewed those curtains – so cheerful, so lovely. That was Stanka: a girl in the ponderous body of a woman. Everything he could see in his watchman’s room had been put there by her. As if it was another room of their house.