Content: Suicide, Guilt and shame over suicidal thoughts

The man next door shot himself. In the years Arthur has lived in the building he'd seen him only a handful of times - ghosting over the threshold of the doorway, the crack between the door and the open well of his apartment barely wide enough for him to slip through. Arthur has a clearer image of his brains painting the walls and the stain of his corpse slumped in an armchair than of his physical appearance, his personality, his life.

Arthur has no memory of hearing the shot, though he must have been home, curled over his journal in the dark or laying with his forearm limp across his eyes. His mother insists she remembers it vividly despite being asleep.

No family or friends visited, no one cried in the hallway outside the sealed door. There were only accusatory, mocking voices and the occasional whisper of a neighbor: "such a shame, a shame," this unknown puzzle piece lifted from their living space.

Arthur feels deep shame and guilt over the contagion of his own thoughts poisoning another person; flipping a line of dominos that ended in a bullet piercing bone.