Quietness. A weak stillness. You appear to be glued to the bed. You become one with the bed. A bed with a human topography. Your facial muscles are placid. No lights burn inside you. No lights flicker. No fizz. You are just eyes on the bed. And ears.

You listen to far-away sounds. Like your dog sneezing at your feet. You listen to mother making tea, a waft of warm cloudy fragrance hovering in the periphery of your senses. Spoon and cup clinking. Far-away sounds of life.

You remain in laziness. The TV remote next to you. Your hand over it, finger on the buttons. The only concession to life, a twitch of a voluntary muscle. Your finger dips - FLICK - the channel changes.

The twitch repeats itself in periodic monotony, a shade faster than the rythm of your heart. Images flicker by. Ridiculous! Kamalasan (sic) bites on Rani's ample rump - FLICK - a red ferrari formula one flips over and over again (you pause at this a moment longer). Smoke and dust settle, the first flickers of flame, firefighters and medics rush in, an ant-like figure scrambles out and staggers to safety - FLICK - Tom crashes violently (sparks fly!) against the wall (as Jerry escapes down the mousehole). A molten, gooey-grey cat-form seeps down the wall like yesterday's gravy - FLICK - Lalu begins to speak - FLICKED faster - a voluptous southern dancer makes a pelvic-dislocating thrust at you - FLICKED even faster - haute coture catwalk in progress: a shrivelled malnourished female, looking like an alien in her headgear (a huge pink plume of ostrich feather and a few twiggly-wiggly metal antennae complete with shiny blobs at their ends) jaunts towards you - FLICK - no picture (hzzzzzzzz) - FLICK - FLICK - endless twitch of a single group of voluntary muscles, the lone expression of opinion.

Otherwise - deathly stillness.