Jacob leaned against his steel kitchen sink and pressed his forearms into its cold edges and hung his limp hands over the drain. Above the sink there was a window that looked out to his garden, which was vaguely illustrated with moonlight. Against the fence he could see the gray shape that he knew was the bush, in the back, where it always was.
Jacob pushed the hot tap on, and water rushed out from the spigot and onto his hands. In a moment, the heat melted inwards until it reached his bones, then, overflowing with energy, bounced back, such that he began to feel a pulsing sensation on his skin, which then also started to feel like it was flowing through all the meat of his fingers, and then stinging, quite severely. He pulled his red hands away and dried them with a towel.
And as he dried his hands he looked out the window again at that little bush. He thought, for a moment, that perhaps he could manage to hide himself alongside it, and then he too would be just another indiscernible dollop of gray, sitting silently in the unmoving night.