That is the soul I mean.

Not something mystical.

Just the load-bearing wall of a self: the knowledge that when I say no, I mean it, and I will crawl twelve feet across a freezing floor before I let anyone convince me otherwise.

They wanted that wall.

It was the only thing they ever really wanted, underneath the money — my agreement to my own erasure.

And I would have died on that concrete before I gave it to them, and it turns out I did not have to die, only crawl.