I
The end was coming quickly - but wait, no, maybe this wasn't the end. He gasped out for air. The heaviness of his breath clouded over the cotton-colored room like a mid-afternoon shower, his groan a clash of far-off thunder.
Nearby, the doctors tapped another line of morphine - or maybe it wasn't morphine - who knows what it was, but it made him calm, calm enough to lay back and breathe oxygen he didn't know existed. "You think it will be too long?"
"One more lost - now we're just waiting for -"
"Naw, it won't be too long now. You want some?"
A sip of gin that burns the back of the throat like wildfire. Anything to ease the tension. People really become true when their last moments are arriving. Especially when there is a crowd of them, waiting to die; it's like they know they're burning, but they just don't care. There's all this talk about telling your loved ones goodbye, but that's not what you see - they're all tracing their hedonistic desires. The liquor store sold out five days ago from supply and demand, and that doesn't even comment on the needles disappearing from the streets.
Another clash of thunder rolls across the top of the room. He rose with a tensed head, shoulders hunched together as if he wants them to touch. The remnants of his grease-spotted leather jacket hung loosely around his thin arms. He clenched the blue cotton throw in his hands, and now he grasps his skin, now his lungs are grappling with the air. There's a little priest in the corner, but he's rocking back and forth with a Bible in his hand. They weren't prepared for G-D --
"Last bottle they had, that store on 12th - had a crack in the side. I bugged the man to give it to me and he got so pissed he gave it to me for free..."
"Think he was drunk?"
"Pissin' liquor, if you ask me."
Another loud clash of thunder, rumbling, infiltrating, he screams - "ALL I WANT IS A CIGARETTE!" and somewhere someone grabs a lighter, but the grimy-looking priest stopped the flame before it was ignited.
"Oxygen -"
"What about the fucking oxygen, godly man? What about -"
"Oxygen - the tank - it'll blow -"
"And you think I give a shit? We're dying anyway, Moses. We're going down like your precious Israelites did - and this mother fucker right here? This mother fucker is your Satan, and your fucking Jesus. He's giving you breath -"
"...and he's taking it away." The room returns to the sickening silence it had remained it before. More morphine. More cocaine. More heroin -
And the man in the bed with his sandy skin and his ruffled brown hair, he's shaking. He's cold, and now he's hot, and now he's sweating, and he's dying, dying, dying - and in his hand is the world. All of these people, they're chasing their anxiety because of him -
II
The sun rose over the row of idyllic houses as the navy blue truck pulled in to the driveway. 7:38 AM - in the window that peeks in to the kitchen, a slightly plump, rose-cheeked, curly-haired brunette peers out in to the miles of green yard, of uniform white marble porches, of planters filled with ferns, lilies, tulips, and one especially precocious case of ivy. Everything is well-groomed, well-placed - too perfect. The door opens, the smell of morning infiltrates, the sound of leather dress shoes comes further down the hallway until they stop directly behind her.
She can't help that her skin crawls when he wraps his arm around her waist, his breath falling heavily on to the back of her neck. Five years ago, the crawling of her skin meant excitement, the enjoyment of his touch. Now, however, his touch did little more than create a chain reaction of repulsion beneath her skin.
"Miss me?" His voice was rough and his skin smelled like a pack of cheap cigarettes. She'd do anything to get away from him, but she knew his capabilities...
"Yes, dear, I missed you," she considered saying, but the best she could utter from her throat was a squeak.
