An official, a black-red, stood about 10 feet in front of me at the guard booth, his eyes craned against the darkness and fog. The red stripes of his uniform shone out, clear and crisp, like a tight row of tiny beacons. He had a gaunt, slightly weary expression as he caught my eye, his face so fixed into listlessness and lethargy that wrinkles had formed around the drooping of his mouth and his sunken cheeks. I handed him my pass mechanically. He flipped through the thin layers of paper.

"That seems to be in order." Every time, like a jammed recording, the same intonation, the same expression, the same cordial outline of a smile. He was paper-thin, without depth, without interest; I could learn nothing from him. He had become his job; he was never destined for anything more. He, like other people, held no mystery for me; the world held no mystery for me.

The streets were bathed in jaundiced light this side of the guard booth. I looked down at my hands and arms; they were like an image from an old photograph, faded and an off shade of yellow.

It was quiet on the streets that night. No people except the ubiquitous black-reds in the distance, pacing up and down the streets, their steps mechanical and regimented, their arms swinging stiffly and rhythmically by their sides.

I heard a crackle of voices, scratchy and raw, from the rps. I held it tentatively, pausing slightly before I pressed it to my ear. In the second between registering the voices and registering what they were saying, I imagined this call might be different, might be exciting, might be somehow extraordinary, might take away the sense of numbness and detachment that seemed to follow me whatever I did, as though I was watching a movie or a spectator in a dream I could never wake up from.

I knew what had happened even before I got there; it was almost as if it was warping the texture of the air, of the entire neighbourhood, as though the streets and the houses had changed to reflect the crime. I was so used to the banal catalogue of suburban woes and their obvious repercussions, cheating husbands and suicidal wives, that I had developed an instinct, an intuition, I could see the crime and the motive. That is my greatest weakness, the ability to understand everything, to see the underlying causes, the reasons, the lies everyone surrounds themselves with. I had long since dispensed with the notion of evil.

I heard the futile screams, and the little high pitched shrieks. I weaved my way though the broken glass. Domestic disturbance. She--the victim--was lying towards the left, limp and helpless, face expressionless, blonde hair submerged in a pool of blood. Quite a crowd had gathered. They watched nervously, pretending to want to help, turning to each other with curious expressions and making half-whispered comments. They'd seen it coming, they'd never have trusted a man like that, so loud and domineering, so eager with his fists.

In the house opposite, the front curtains twitched.

I turned towards the people. Raised my hands in an ancient gesture of authority and power.

"Nothing to see here."

And there wasn't.

Then the chase. Inevitable, banal, like a bad third act, too obvious, too easy, lacking in any interest whatsoever. I saw a flash of fleshy colour in the corner of my left eye; saw him stumbling along the street, arms flailing, hands grasping out at the still air. The street seemed to warp beneath me as I pounded my feet against the ground. He had run but I would find him, the murderer, the offender, my target. I always did.

And it went on, day turning inevitably into night, the moon and the sun rising and falling in the sky. I longed for the streets to transform, for order to suddenly, irrevocably break down, for logic to have no more meaning. I wanted disorder to erupt from the carefully built houses and the impeccably cemented streets. I wanted a storm, a distortion of space and time to rip everything apart. And I wanted to stand amongst the screaming and the panic and the loss of everything and weep. I wanted to remember every moment of it, every detail. I wanted to feel alive.

I was standing in a queue, a standard queue, next to Danny-boy. We'd spoken a few times.

"Luck with the case?"

I shrugged. He was just trying to be friendly, with his wide grin and deep, gravely voice, just trying to make conversation. He knew I always have luck with my cases.

I stood there, staring at the ugly orange wall with cheap paper covering the little crevices, the little imperfections. I saw the dirt smudged into the wall, into little, barely perceptible, swirls of grime. We didn't speak for a few moments.

"I..." I managed to sound nonchalant, off-hand, running my fingers down the side of a poster as we talked. I told him about it, about not feeling real, about everything being so distant and far away. He looked straight at me, for a moment, as though he understood.

Then his serious expression split into a smile.

"Go home and watch some nitze." He shook his head slightly. "That's what I'd do. "That's--" and he gestured around the oversized hall, "that's what all of us do."

So I went home and sat down in front of the overlarge screen, and watched the world explode into action, watched the violence and the blood and the naked female form fill every inch of the celluloid in a perfect fusion of absurdity and reason, in calculated, tailored chaos, catering to any desire or fantasy I could possibly have. But I'd been watching it for fifteen years. I felt nothing.

But then, something did change, something did interrupt the routine of work and nitze and sleep, of violence followed by violence followed by long haunting dreams I could not understand, me lost in a vast open plane, alone and yet running across the warm, desert sand.