The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett

is moving towards the stable or away from it, and
     not greatly caring either way. The question, among others, of how such things are possible had long since ceased to preoccupy me. This touching picture of my situation I found
     by no means unattractive and as I recall it I find myself wondering again if I was
     not in fact the creature revolving in that yard, as Mahood assured me. Well supplied
     with pain-killers I drew upon them freely, without however permitting myself the lethal
     dose that would have cut short my functions, whatever they may have been. Having somehow
     or other remarked the habitation and even admitted to myself that I had perhaps seen
     it before, I gave it no further thought, nor to the near and dear ones that filled
     it to overflowing , in a mounting fever of impatience. Though now close at hand, as the crow flies,
     to my goal, I did not quicken my step. I could have no doubt, but I had to husband
     my strength, if I was ever to arrive. I had no wish to arrive, but I had to do my
     utmost, in order to arrive. A desirable goal, no, I never had time to dwell on that.
     To go on, I still call that on, to go on and get on has been my only care, if not
     always in a straight line, at least in obedience to the figure assigned to me, there
     was never any room in my life for anything else. Still Mahood speaking. Never once
     have I stopped. My halts do not count. Their purpose was to enable me to go on. I
     did not use them to brood on my lot, but to rub myself as best I might with Elliman’s
     Embrocation, for example, or to give myself an injection of laudanum, no easy matters
     for a man with only one leg. Often the cry went up, He’s down! But in reality I had
     sunk to the ground of my own free will, in order to be rid of my crutches and have
     both hands available to minister to myself in peace and comfort. Admittedlyit is difficult, for a man with but one leg, to sink to earth in the full force of
     the expression, particularly when he is weak in the head and the sole surviving leg
     flaccid for want of exercise, or from excess of it. The simplest thing then is to
     fling away the crutches and collapse. That is what I did. They were therefore right
     in saying I had fallen, they were not far wrong. Oh I have also been known to fall
     involuntarily, but not often, an old warrior like me, you can imagine. But have it
     any way you like. Up or down, taking my anodynes, waiting for the pain to abate, panting
     to be on my way again, I stopped, if you insist, but not in the sense they meant when
     they said, He’s down again, he’ll never reach us. When I penetrate into that house,
     if I ever do, it will be to go on turning, faster and faster, more and more convulsive,
     like a constipated dog, or one suffering from worms, overturning the furniture, in
     the midst of my family all trying to embrace me at once, until by virtue of a supreme
     spasm I am catapulted in the opposite direction and gradually leave backwards , without having said good-evening. I must really lend myself to this story a little
     longer, there may possibly be a grain of truth in it. Mahood must have remarked that
     I remained sceptical, for he casually let fall that I was lacking not only a leg,
     but an arm also. With regard to the homologous crutch, I seemed to have retained sufficient
     armpit to hold and manoeuvre it, with the help of my unique foot to kick the end of it forward as occasion required.
     But what shocked me profoundly, to such a degree that my mind (Mahood dixit) was assailed
     by insuperable doubts, was the suggestion that the misfortune experienced by my family
     and brought to my notice first by the noise of their agony, then by the smell of their
     corpses, had caused me to turn back. From that moment on I ceased to go along with
     him. I’ll explain why, that will permit me to think of something else and in the first
     place of how to get back to me, back to where I am waiting for me, I’d just as