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Ridiculous, he thought. I, a human being, driven into a corner by some bugs. After all, they are not even poisonous. Nonetheless, he could not overcome his fastidiousness. These creatures always caused an insuperable loathing in him. Always? It seemed that one more remembrance broke out from his un
known past. But cockroaches, probably, were afraid of the man, too. Soon they spread out–some slipping from the room, some running under the curtain–but where the others went, he did not notice.

He raised his eyes from the floor and looked in the mirror over the washstand. It was dusty and dirty too, but in the middle there was an irregular oval seemingly of pure glass, as if someone had hastily wiped a window. The man looked at himself from a distance, then stepped closer, studying with displeasure the unfa
miliar sickly pale rumpled face with deep shadows under the eyes and dissheveled tufts of hair sticking out over a bandage. A bandage, yes. His head at forehead level had been sloppily bandaged by something like a used compress. No–he leaned into the mirror even more closely–it was not a gauze bandage with an open weave, but some continuous, dense yellowish-gray fabric with torn, fringed edges. And some bandages somehow stuck–probably dried on–and rags were on many other places of his body, on his neck, his right shoulder, his left forearm, the left side of his breast, his stomach. And scars were on his fingers like marks from rings.

It seemed that something began to clear up. He had been in an accident, received a head injury (not only a head injury), and therefore he could not remember anything. But in that case, where was he? In a hospital? The architecture of the building looked to be government issue. But if it were a hospital, it was closed and abandoned, maybe fifty years ago.

There was no blood on the bandages, nor any pain under them. He touched them, at first delicately, then more firmly. An attempt, however, to tear off at least the long rag crossing his abdomen from top down failed. At first he just simply pulled it, increasing the effort until he felt pain, then sharply jerked several times, each time producing a new impulse of pain. But the bandage held firmly–as if... as if it had grown into his body. No, that was nonsense, he told himself. It will be necessary simply to soak it off. There should be water somewhere around here.

He again lifted his eyes to the person reflected in the mir
ror and then suddenly recoiled. A huge cockroach ran up the mirror just centimeters from his eyes (it seemed to him–for just a moment–directly on his face). And now he had clearly seen that something was wrong with this insect. First, the cockroach was neither red nor black, but pale, sickeningly whitish. Second, it was too big for a household cockroach. And, more importantly–it had seven legs. Not six, as all other insects, and not even eight, as spiders do–but seven. There were three on the left side and four on the right.

The disgusting creature suddenly stopped in the middle of the mirror, as if to study itself to be convinced that this was no il
lusion. Overcoming his revulsion, the man looked at the insect for some time. No leg had been torn off. The limbs really grew asymmetrically and, apparently, were even of different lengths. The man helplessly looked around in search of anything with which to kill the freak, then angrily reminded himself that he had much more important problems. He turned to the bath. After all he had already seen, he had no real hope of a working shower, but he still drew aside the curtain.

And stopped dead. The wall over the bath was crossed by a wide inscription obviously made by a finger, generously dipped in something dark red. Only one word: "
DESPAIR
.”

From sloppy letters, long ago dried, the stains limped downwards. Involuntarily tracking their direction, he lowered his eyes to the bath–and for the first time truly wanted to cry.

At the bottom of the bath, reddened from the dried blood (yes, he could not cowardly convince himself anymore that it was not blood), a naked corpse lay face down. It was a man, not old and in rather good physical shape–though it had not saved him. There was no doubt that it was a corpse and not very fresh. The bluish-pale skin was covered with stains of a whitish mold. Yet there was no cadaverous stench for some reason. There also were no visible wounds on the back of the body. But the amnesiac had no doubt that severe wounds mutilated the front side of the body. It looked as if this unfortunate man literally drowned in his own blood since the drain had been stoppered. How much blood is in a human adult–is it some five liters? Not too much, but it is possible to choke even in a soup bowl. Or had he died from blood loss earlier? The wounds, however, from which so much blood had flowed out, could be deadly in themselves.

The absence of a stench, however, led him to think that the corpse might not be a real corpse but, for example, a dummy. And that all this in general was just an idiotic prank arranged by a bunch of wild friends. He might have been given something to drink that knocked him unconscious, brought to some abandoned house (but why would there be electricity in an abandoned house, and in what era were houses built without windows?), the things here smeared with paint, a doll put into a bath... But the mutant cockroaches? Are there, among his friends, experts in genetic en
gineering?

However, even all this would not explain the memory loss. A person who was drunk might not remember at all where and with whom he drank, but he does not forget all his previous exist
ence! Anyway,
did
he even drink at all in that life? Perhaps he was a committed nondrinker? He could not remember even that.

Nevertheless, he bent down and with uncertainty pushed at the recumbent body. The cold slippery skin, covered with fine hairs, moved slightly under his fingers. No, it was definitely not rubber or something similar! He fastidiously jerked back his hand and, after quickly looking around, wiped it on the curtain–which did not look at all clean.

After his push the right hand of the corpse had turned a little, and now it was clearly visible that its fingers were bloody, especially the index finger. But the fingers were not entirely covered in blood. Mainly just the fingertips were stained. Probably, clamped between the body's side and the bath wall, the hand had not bathed in the main bloody pool at the bottom. So what did it mean–this man dipped his fingers in his wounds? Dipped to make this inscription? If a dying person has a chance to leave a final message, at least in such a way, it would be more logical to write the name of the murderer or something to that effect.

The man dare not touch the corpse again, especially not to overturn it. It was all too clear what he would see: skin entirely covered with blood, terrible slash wounds–judging by the quantity of blood, the poor fellow was really mangled–and, probably, the viscera literally falling out through the openings. No, no! Whatever happened, he should get away from there as fast as pos
sible so he would not become the next one dead!

He jumped back into the room and jerked the handle of the door leading, he believed, to a corridor. A bloodcurdling thought flashed in his mind–what if the door were locked? And indeed, it had no inclination to open either out or in. But before the panic could completely engulf him, he looked at the door more attentively and understood that it simply should be slid to the right. His new attempt met with no difficulties. Behind the door there was indeed a corridor, barely lit by the same dim flick
ering lighting fixtures. There were no windows there, either.

At this moment he remembered that he was naked and de
cided to find some clothes. The choices were poor. He must try to fashion something from either the oilcloth off the cot or the curtain in the bathroom. The situation was complicated because he had no cutting tool and to tear synthetic material would not be easy. As he discovered, however, someone had already cut half of the oilcloth away. Could it have been for the same purpose? In any event, he rolled something like a skirt for himself from the remaining half. It would cover him unreliably. If he needed to run, it certainly would unwind and fall off. However, if he really had to run, he would have more serious problems than his naked ass.

He did already. He tried to drive this thought from his mind, but it only grew stronger.
It will come to no good no good it cannot come to any good...
"Despair." Despair, anxiety, and fear. Yes, the whole atmosphere here (where?) contributed to it. But there was still something besides the realization that he had awakened (regained consciousness!) devil knows where, remembering nothing, in the neighborhood of a dead person who had choked to death in his own blood. Having rummaged through the short scraps of his memory, he understood with surprise that the "something" was his previous thought about genetic engineering. It was as if... as if he had inadvertently touched a painful tooth which had now subsided and was having no effect. Why? Why does this thought generate such fear? Perhaps these bandages are the result not of an accident but of biological experiments? Some operations made against his will? Though, how does genetic engineering come into the picture? As much as he could remember, geneticists did not cut the victim, they operate at the microscopic level. Or not genetic engineering per se, but something related to it? Something that (no! no! don't do it!) he could not remember. He tried again, despite the fear that spread like a sticky cold. No. He could not recall. Emptiness.

He approached a little table which until now had escaped his attention and found out that it was not simply a table. Half of it was occupied by a built in screen and, maybe, some other devices. Had there been any communication facilities? Now it was already difficult to tell. Everything had been destroyed, broken out, and shattered with a wild frenzy. Only a lonely torn off optical path stuck out from the mess. Suddenly the man leaned forward and peered through the dim light. In the niche which remained from where the screen had been, among the frag
ments of electronics (photonics, broken out from the emptiness, "electronics" is an outdated term) something lay that did not resemble a circuitry element. He lifted this small object, rounded at one end, and brought it up to his eyes. In an instant he understood with disgust that he was examining a torn off human nail with flesh attached. Could the one who destroyed things here have done it with his own nails? And the intense pain of a nail and flesh being torn off had not stopped him?

The amnesiac hurled away his trophy and gloomily thought that having a weapon could not hurt. However, the harm
ful subconscious immediately replaced "could not hurt" with "would not help," but he tried to drive away this thought. At least a chair... after all, shouldn't there be a chair in this room? But alas, there was none.

Again he went to the corridor sunk in flickering twilight, only now realizing that the corridor was not straight, but smoothly bent, forming a large ring. Which direction to choose – left or right? Whichever direction he chooses, he could not see around the curve of the corridor. He listened. He listened. Neither from the left nor from the right came any sound. Only occasionally the oppressive silence was broken by the electric crackling of flicker
ing lamps. He went to the right. Underfoot there was the same dirty floor–for how many years was there no cleaning done here? However, he no longer regretted that he had to go barefoot, as it allowed him to move almost silently. The blank wall continued on the left and doors similar to those which he had left repeated on the right. Judging by distances between them, not all of the doors hid such small rooms. But he had no desire to enter and to come across... The devil only knows what it is possible to come across here. His goal was to get out of here as soon as possible, so he should go directly to the exit. Shouldn't there be an exit somewhere here?!

The dim shivering light was distorting his sense of reality, hindering his ability to orient himself, and giving the impression that all this was just a dreadful nightmare in which he would walk eternally in the dirty gloomy corridor that had neither beginning nor end. For a moment he was so assured of it that he began to pinch himself but without the desired result. However, as he remembered it now, actually pinching oneself to wake up is a myth, since painful sensations can be in a dream, too. While in dreams they are usually weaker than in reality but the sleeper does not realize it. A pinch is not very painful anyway. But if he were thinking so logically about a dream, then he probably was not sleeping. However, what if he indeed had already made a full circle through this corridor and had begun a new one? Immediately came more questions. What if the exit were behind one of these identical doors? Or perhaps the exit did not exist at all? No, that's delirium! But was not all that surrounded him since he came to his senses similar to delirium?

These thoughts entangled him with a sticky cold fear that he tried to expel in vain. Everything here should have a logical explanation. Everything here should have... Yes, certainly. But who guaranteed you that you will like it?

He shook his head. He had to somehow mark the door from which he had emerged and then he would know if he had made a full circle or not. To mark? With what? His own blood?

No way, he calmed himself from the hysterical thought which had rushed to his head. To leave the door open–what could be easier? And maybe he had actually done this? Did he close the door when he left the room? The first time–surely, would be a natural behavior for a person who knew that he was naked. But the second time... He couldn't remember.

A moment later, however, he was given proof that he had not completed a circle yet. On the next door on the right, all in the same manner, in brown-red with long stains (in blood, recognize it already, in blood), was written: "KILL YOURSELF NOW."