I shook awake, rolled out of bed quickly and clattered through the mess of tins and bottles to the bathroom next door. Sticking my face into the toilet bowl just in time I vomited repeatedly for several minutes, followed by a short period of dry heaves. I jammed my finger down my throat, trying to gouge out any excess. Pausing to make sure I'd cleared my stomach, I wiped a towel across my chin, catching a fleeting glimpse of my jaundice skin in the mirror reflection. I stumbled hastily back through to the bedroom. Shaking furiously, I reached for a three-quarters full bottle of white wine I'd left in preparation on the bedside table, and aimed the nozzle into a dirty, smudged glass that was first to hand. Wine spurted in several directions as I struggled to maintain the flow into the glass. Eventually it began to spill over the rim and I slurped gratefully at the edge, wincing at the initial taste. Swallowing little amounts at first to go easy on my tender stomach, I persevered over the course of ten minutes to get through the first couple of glasses, to lessen the shakes.
I remain there for centuries; a thousand years. The container becomes my vessel, and in turn I grow to be a part of it. My body evolves to suit its surroundings. Skin grows over my unused, redundant eyes, and eventually over my mouth. My mind reaches a peak of exhaustion after endless cycles of continual terror, panic and guilt, and assumes a level of static frequency. Pulses vibrate through my consciousness, vast rhythmic stretches of shape punctuated by flickering images of a life I had many hundreds of years ago. I see fragments of people, family, friends and children, and sometimes I even see myself for split seconds, standing outside the container, running my hands over its wooden surface. But I am an old man at these times, and I know I belong in there. I keep telling myself that.
In the autumn, two months out, I went down to a field just outside of town to watch them burn the containers. It was raining heavily and it took a long time to set them all alight. Several officers were there, and there were other container people too; I recognised them from the court and from the rooms afterwards. But I didn't talk to anyone. My hands were still as I lit a cigarette, huddled under my umbrella and watched the flames lick the night sky.