the cornered toad in the corner
squatting sweatily in a corner of the stripped living room, right outside the little luxury bedroom Gately and Pamela were lying in, out there squatting over his Sterno cooker and incredible twin hills of sky-blue Dilaudid and many-hued M&M's, not much speaking or responding or moving or even seeming to cop a nod, just sitting there hunched and plump and glistening like some sort of cornered toad, his mustache flailing around on his lip.
Context
The thesis rendered as a body before it's rendered as a sentence: two weeks motionless in the corner, twin hills of Dilaudid and candy, not even nodding, just hunched and glistening — a man who has answered a death sentence by becoming furniture next to his stash. The apparent contradiction the scene flags (a mountain of the Substance beside the cornered-toad look of Withdrawal-terror) is the whole condition in one image: having the drug and still hiding, the fix no longer even reaching the fear.