Orin's Phoenix morning (iii)
he’d awakened from a night of horror-show dreams—woke up with an abrupt fetal spasm, unrefreshed and benighted of soul, his eyes wobbling and his wet silhouette on the bottom sheet like a coroner’s chalk outline— […] had had to lie there, moist and paralyzed, curled fetal on his own sweat-shadow
Context
The morning a Subject watched the Fenton documentary while Orin lay "paralytically awake" beside her: the fetal spasm, the soul benighted, and the sweat-silhouette upgraded to a coroner's chalk outline — the depressive waking as his own crime scene.