Yevgeny Zamyatin — We [81]

The number next to me glanced to the left, at me, and snorted. Somehow, a vivid memory remains: a tiny bubble of saliva blew out on his lips and burst. The bubble sobered me. I was myself again. — Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, 81

Note

The grotesque detail of the saliva bubble acts as a sudden, brutal bucket of cold water, snapping the narrator out of his hypnotic, diseased aesthetic trance and returning him instantly to the sanitized collective.