I will gather armies. The armies will dress for battle, dress for glamour, glory, dress to die. We will be an army without order; our priority only to fight. We will fight. We will rage and roar against them, you, each other, ourselves. And we will be decimated, one by one, until the last one is left. and he will fight and fail
and be rehabilitated.

His life is orderly. Set off by an alarm clock. In the kitchen there is cereal, each morning sleek crisp pleasure. Everything is quite all right. Charcoal suit to straighten his back. Long, heavy black coat to hold him comfortingly. The rain cannot touch you. There is not a girl at the moment but the temps at reception sometimes smile kindly and there is one in particular, not a receptionist but she works at the bakery, which he would never usually go inside but one day he was walking past and he saw her with her long fawn hair tied up in a swinging tail, she caught his eye through the rain-rivered windowpane, and he hurried on but on the wednesday he went in. Wednesdays are his lucky days, and he goes every week, succulent crumbles of pastry and tart sharp chocolate, the airy depth of cream, he is seduced, he is in love. He exits with his heart racing and he sits by the river and composes poems to her, except he does not really have any literary skill and he is acutely aware of that so he watches the birds and savours the sweetness and thinks about her skin. Her skin is like silk, he thinks. At the beginning of each month he attends sessions with his designated psychiatrist, an efficient woman, with very well-disciplined grey hair in mounds above her face, no attempt to deny time its due, he respects that. He is intimidated, and respects it the way he respected Mrs Nimney when he first began primary school. The psychiatrist asks him questions and they make him shake. He tells her he would really rather forget about the whole thing. She tells him she does not think he is very well adjusted. He has these dreams. He dreams about the time they were running over the cover of the covered footway between the HasselKoond Building and the Flaubern Business Halls and though it was four foot wide and concrete it felt like there was nothing between him and the breakneck cars with their headlights grabbing up into the sky towards them, and behind them the flames trickle and spin through the glass of the building. But in the dream he suddenly is, he is suddenly falling towards the black black ground so far below although he is covering that distance very fast, he is suddenly tremendously aware of the reality of gravity, my gosh, and the speed of the cars headlight white motion dark and how very alive it all is, even though they are not, the drivers are the ones who are alive, but that seems strange
here
that in the grey interior of these machines
is the living part
contained like the meat in an oyster shell
and the inky racing smooth shining rain-rushed speed is not sentient
not sentient at all
and he wonders which one will catch him

it is going to be this one, this white one with a roof like velvety white chocolate
and won't it crumple deliciously
and doesn't it just
and in the torn warm metal, biting stink of petrol, he takes hold of the sharp edges and they are burninghot and razorcutting so slickly and he is really remarkably whole, he thinks, considering how far and hard and fast he fell. he remembers the building and the others and looks up and sees them all, all the army, falling about him, they are all of them nothing more than bodies dropping as if let go by a puppeteer, and behind them is the building in all its fracturing fire-twisted beauty, sliding, falling as if it is sliding, down towards him, and he thinks this isn't how it was. and it is then he realises he is dreaming, but he doesn't wake, he is crippled by horror, he knows what happened, that the building is plummeting towards and towards him, and that if it reaches him he will wake up and the army has failed horribly in glorious decadence, except he hasn't, this building never veered so sharply towards the ground, he did fall, no velvet white car racing waiting along the highway deep below. There was the other side of the bridge and creeping down in the concrete surrounded streetlight night, no casualties, a very controlled demolition. And then nineteen other missions, but suddenly it was gone and he was being screamed at by Police in black polystyrene which was not polystyrene, and cells which were painted magnolia, which he was not expecting, it reminded him of his grandmother and he found that disconcerting. And eventually, although, for him, there, now, time seemed to pass with no respect for what clocks were doing, but eventually, hours of questioning from men who wanted to look like there was not flesh under their suits but solid starched iron and judges in wigs and now women with less unnatural and rather more intimidating suits were tapping their pens against their well-powdered cheeks and looking at him with flared nostrils.
"Well", said the women, "I think it's worth switching your medication, you don't seem to be relapsing but you do really need to be living a more open and active life. You must socialise with your contempories much more. I know it seems like a challenge, but really it is entirely possible for you to reach much higher levels of adjustment than you are currently attaining, Mr Dannell."

Mr Dannell does not tell her about the girl in the bakery and he does not tell her that under his mattress there is a small swiss army knife, even though he knows perfectly well that under the mattress is the first place they will search but it is the risk which makes it satisfying; he does not tell her that he has been grinding the medication up in his hand crafted stone pestle and mortar and feeding them to the rats whose presence the landlord refuses to acknowledge, and he does not tell her that in the lift the other day he took his keys and drew a long sharp line down through the reflection of his side parting, his shirt and tie, reached the top of his fly and off the edge of the glass.