4338.205 · July 24, 2018 AD
Bodily Demands
Clivilius has already taken Paul's freedom, his phone, and his children. Now it takes his dignity. When nature makes demands the landscape cannot accommodate, Paul discovers that survival strips away every pretence civilisation ever taught him to maintain.
Paul Smith has spent thirty-five years learning to perform competence. Businessman. Father. Husband. Faithful member of a church he stopped believing in years ago. Every role came with its costume, its script, its careful choreography of dignity maintained.
Clivilius has no use for any of it.
When the body makes demands that cannot be delayed, Paul discovers what survival actually looks like—squatting in open desert with no leaves, no paper, and Jamie's silhouette visible against the distant tent. The humiliation is complete. The evidence lies exposed to an alien sky, mocking everything he thought he was.
But the river is waiting.
Its waters don't judge. They simply receive him—cold and warm simultaneously, washing away dust and sweat and the residue of shame with equal indifference. And somewhere in that impossible embrace, suspended in currents that ask nothing except his presence, Paul feels something loosen. Something that's been clenched since long before the portal. Something that might, against all reason, be the beginning of acceptance.
He emerges with wet feet, no towel, and a list that now includes toilet paper.
