But he was filled with good fellowship and, as he waited for his order, he saw a discarded glass with some whisky still in it; surreptitiously, he drank it down before turning to his friends with a broad grin.
The more he drank that evening, the more he talked; he took everything that was said with a terrible seriousness, and interrupted other conversations continually. 'Let me explain,' he was saying, 'Try and see it my way for once.' Certain thoughts and phrases which had occurred to him in the past, but which he had kept to himself, now acquired real significance and he shouted them out in astonishment even as he faintly sensed the incredulity and horror which he would later feel at his own behaviour. But this did not matter if at last he was about to create a vivid impression upon the others: and that need became all the more desperate when he was no longer able to distinguish their faces, and they had become moons which encircled him. And he left his own body in order to howl at them from a distance: 'I shouldn't be here,' he was saying, 'I shouldn't be telling you this. I stole money. I stole it from the firm -you know when she puts the wages in the packets? I stole a lot, and they never found out.
Never. You know I was in prison for stealing once?' He looked around as if he were being hunted. 'It's terrible there, in a cell. I shouldn't be here. I'm a professional thief.' He took hold of a glass, but it slipped out of his grasp and shattered as it hit the floor; then he got up from his stool and swung blindly towards the door.
It was early morning when he woke up, fully clothed, on his bed and found himself staring at the ceiling with his arms rigid by his sides. At first he felt quite serene, since he was being borne aloft by the grey light approaching him in neat squares from the window, but then the memory of the previous evening struck him and, staring wildly around, he sprang up from the bed. He gnawed at his right hand as he tried to recall each event in order but he saw only an image of himself as blood red, his face contorted with rage, his body veering from side to side, and his voice magnified as if all the time he had been sitting alone in a darkened room. He concentrated on that darkness and was able to glimpse the faces of the others, but they were stamped with horror or detestation. And then he remembered what he had said about theft, and about prison. He got up and looked into the mirror, noticing for the first time that he had two large hairs growing between his eyebrows. Then he was sick in the small basin. Who was it that had spoken last night?
He was walking around in circles, the smell of the old furniture suddenly very distinct. There was a newspaper in his hand and he started reading it, paying particular attention to the headlines which seemed to be floating towards him so that now a band of black print encircled his forehead. He was curled upon the bed, hugging his knees, when the next horror came upon him: those who heard him last night would now have to report his theft, and his employer would call the police. He saw how the policeman took the telephone call at the station; how his name and address were spoken out loud; how he looked down at the floor as they led him away; how he was in the dock, forced to answer questions about himself, and now he was in a cell and had lost control of his own body. He was staring out of the window at the passing clouds when it occurred to him that he should write to his employer, explaining his drunkenness and confessing that he invented the story of theft; but who would believe him? It was always said that in drink there was truth, and perhaps it was true that he was a convicted thief. He began to sing, One fine day in the middle of the night, Two dead men got up to fight and then he knew what was meant by madness.
The terror began now: he heard a noise in the street outside his window, but when he stood up he turned his face to the wall.
Everything in his life seemed to have led him towards this morning, and he had been foolish not to see the pattern taking shape ahead of him; he went to his wardrobe and inspected his clothes with interest, as if they belonged to some other person. And it was while he was sitting in his faded armchair, trying to remember how his mother had bent forward to caress him, that he realised he was late for work; but of course he could not go there again. (In fact his colleagues had realised that night how drunk he had become, and paid little or no attention to his conversation: his remarks about theft and prison were thought to be an example of a strange sense of humour which he had never revealed to them before.) At some hour his clock sounded its alarm and he stared at it in horror: 'My God!' he said aloud, 'My God! My God!'. And so the first day passed.
On the second day he opened his window and looked about with curiosity; he realised that he had never properly noticed his street before, and he wanted to discover exactly what it was like. But it was like nothing, and he saw faces staring up at him. He shut the window quietly, waiting for his panic to subside. That night he talked in his sleep, finding the words for his bewilderment which he would never hear. And the second day passed. On the third day he found a letter which had been pushed under his door: he made a point of not looking at it but then, in exasperation, he placed it under the mattress of his bed. It occurred to him now to draw the curtains as well, so that no one should suspect he was indoors. Then he heard scuffling noises outside his room and he shrank back in terror: a large dog, or some other animal, was trying to get in. But the noises stopped. On the fourth day he woke up realising that he had been forgotten: he was free of the whole world, and the relief dazed him. He dressed quickly and went out into the street, pausing only to glance up at his own window before entering a pub where an old tramp with matted hair watched him intently. In his distress he picked up a paper, and saw that he was reading an account of a robbery. He stood up quickly, overturning the small table at which he had been sitting, and walked out. Then he returned to his small room and addressed the furniture which smelled now like his parents. And the fourth day passed: that night, he peered into the darkness but could see nothing and it seemed to him that his room, with all its familiar objects, had at last disappeared. The darkness had no beginning and no end; this is like death, he thought just before falling asleep, but the disease affecting me is one I cannot see.
His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himself to remember the details of what he had said and done so that his fears returned, redoubled. His previous life, which had been without fear, he now dismissed as an illusion since he had come to believe that only in fear could the truth be found. When he woke from sleep without anxiety, he asked himself, What is wrong? What is missing? And then his door opened slowly, and a child put its head around and gazed at him: there are wheels, Ned thought, wheels within wheels. The curtains were now always closed, for the sun horrified him: he was reminded of a film he had seen some time before, and how the brightness of the noonday light had struck the water where a man, in danger of drowning, was struggling for his life.
He now sometimes dressed in the middle of the night, and took off his clothes in the late afternoon; he was no longer aware that he put on oddly matched shoes, or that he wore a jacket without a shirt beneath it. One morning he left his room early and, to avoid being seen by the police (who he believed to be watching him), went out by the back entrance of the building. He found a shop several streets away, where he bought a small wristwatch, but on his return he became confused and lost his way. He arrived at his own street only by accident and as he entered his room he said out loud, Time flies when you're having fun'. But everything seemed quite different to him now: by approaching his room from another direction, Ned at last realised that it had an independent existence and that it no longer belonged to him.