Eleven: An Unfortunate Setback

No sooner had I advanced several yards than I was arrested by a curious, radiating pronouncement through the left hemisphere of my body. Presently I cried out, and crumpled to the floor of the passage, ejecting the ice bucket from my grasp at a considerable velocity, and purposing in some way to cushion my fall--in this case with my shoulder and the better portion of an ear. There I would remain, corpse-like and immobile, until sensation saw fit to revisit itself upon my limbs, and life upon my cadaver.

With some effort I erected myself, taking careful inventory of my every extremity, lest some item should prove lost or impaired. Satisfied to this end, I sought to survey the corridor for any token of immediate approach. I discerned none. Could it be that the terms of my pursuit were wholly imagined? Surely I might easily have been overtaken in the course of my tribulation. Or perhaps the strangeness of my method struck bewilderment in the heart of my pursuer? Whatever the case may be, I could sense no immediate threat; nothing, that is, beyond the irregular ticking of my heart-valve.