For me, the problem was never the pain.
Nor the stillness.
Not even the neck.
That would be too simple.
The problem is that I keep thinking about it.
Not the Owner.
Not exactly.
I keep thinking about the moment before.
The precise instant when I still could have moved my head and didn’t.
I have been returning to that point for hours.
Maybe days.
The memory changes every time I revisit it.
Sometimes I think I chose to remain still.
Other times I am certain the decision had already been made by something I cannot name.
There is a mark on the wall in front of me.
A tiny scrape.
I noticed it a long time ago.
Now I cannot stop looking at it.
It means nothing.
It does not seem to be a sign.
It is not even an interesting shape.
Yet I keep returning to it.
Again and again.
I look at it.
Look away.
Look back.
It is still there.
I am beginning to suspect that the scrape is looking back at me.
It is absurd.
I know that.
But I also know I have spent several minutes thinking exactly the same thing.
The laboratory is quiet.
Too quiet.
Not a solemn silence.
A domestic silence.
The kind that exists in a house when someone has just left a room and a trace of their presence still seems suspended in the air.
I hear the fan.
Then I stop hearing it.
Then I hear it again.
I do not know whether it changed speed.
I do not know whether I changed.
I try to focus on something else.
Anything.
My breathing.
The floor.
The temperature of my hands.
But I always return to the same place.
The same instant.
The same thought.
I need to move my neck.
Not to escape.
Not to prove anything.
Just to make sure I still can.
And the more I think about it, the less certain I am that I want to find out.
