A fraction of the time waisted on meaningless screen activities would have been enough to build a smaller empire. Nearly a decade after graduating, Hunter were no closer to the life he had envisioned as a wide-eyed art student in the big city than he had been in the god-forsaken town in which he had grown up. Instead of gallery openings he had reality tv show premieres, a warehouse art studio with high ceiling and natural light shared with brilliant creatives was replaced by a claustrophobic studio flat with a sofa bed he rarely pulled out.

The many take away boxes on, and around, the sofa table - some attracting clusters of fruit flies - solidified Hunter’s defeat. The TV was always on, the content never important. The body on the sofa demonstrated years of indifference - red eyes, shallow breaths, dirty hair that had since long stopped growing and a violent lack of spirit. The incapacitation of Hunter’s essence had transpired gradually, in fact, he had yet to notice how his mind was held captive by abstract forces as he enjoyed the false promise of Stockholm Syndrome.

The knock on the door either didn’t reach him or didn’t face him, it would stop eventually. And it did. But instead of the roaring silence that normally followed, there was the unnmistakable rattling of a key in a lock and before Hunter was fully caught up with reality he heard himself gasp at the familiar frame now occupying the entrance to his self-inflicted penitentiary.