The Hospital?

            “Ten days…ten days without sleep,” Trevor thought to himself as he awoke from another sleepless night.

            As Trevor got out of bed and made his way to the bathroom, the hardwood floor seemed to shift and change shape with each step Trevor took. Trevor felt his feet step into what felt like carpet as he trudged sleepily to the bathroom. Trevor could not tell whether he was walking on hardwood or carpet anymore, and it made little difference to him; although he swore that what he was walking on was hardwood, although his lack of sleep led him questioning his senses.

            When he looked in the mirror, what he saw was something he didn’t want to see, but knew was inevitable. His face was grey and pallid, his eyes were but white orbs in sunken craters around his eyes, and the lack of sleep gave him the appearance of coming back from the Somme. He couldn’t even bother to look at himself, the sight of him made him want to do whatever was necessary to fix this.

            He couldn’t even remember what day it was, but when he looked at his phone, he saw that it was March 20, and a smile crept to the ends of his lips. March 20 was the day he scheduled with the local hospital to have his insomnia looked at and hopefully fixed. The notification came up that his appointment was in one hour, and in haste, he grabbed a quick cup of coffee to hold him over. Wanting to get this fixed as quickly as possible, Trevor took the liberty of heading out early in the hopes of getting an appointment earlier than he was scheduled.

            Deciding it best not to take his car since he wasn’t coordinated enough to drive, Trevor settled upon walking to the hospital; it was only a short distance away anyway. Yet, when he walked outside, he felt that it was freezing outside, even though the thermometer said it was 67 degrees Fahrenheit. Confused at why it was so cold at such a warm temperature, Trevor thought that it was either him that was cold or the thermometer that was broken. Nonetheless, he still put on a coat and made his way to the hospital.

            Along the way, people were noticeably staring at Trevor in such a heavy coat while everybody was wearing more comfortable clothing. Trevor was beginning to think that it was him that was feeling cold, but his senses along with his sense of reality has been noticeably blurred over the past couple of days.

            At first, it was only minor incidents such as misremembering little details such as numbers or certain facts. However, as his insomnia progressed, he felt things more noticeably; he began to hallucinate, such as seeing people in places, which later proved to never be there in the first place. At one point, he even thought he saw the sky change to a deep shade of green, a shade that he had never seen before; to Trevor, it was horrifying, It was horrifying not only because it was something arbitrary, but because he couldn’t discern whether it was real or not.

            Trevor was an overall paranoid man, he couldn’t discern whether things were real or not, and he couldn’t prove that he was real or a manifestation of something else. Trevor was a strong believer of Descartes’s famous saying “I think there fore I am,” but Trevor didn’t know what to think, and if it even made any difference whatsoever. In summation, he was a scared man, whose life was nothing more than a series of questions, stuck in a point in one of many timelines.

            The walk took longer than expected, but at last, Trevor saw the hospital over the horizon, and walked a little faster, even though he was twenty minutes early. In lieu of all the activity going on at the hospital, Trevor’s insomnia ridden ignorance kept him focused on only arriving at the entrance. Unfortunately, in his passionate quest to reach the entrance, Trevor didn’t see the sizeable rock directly in front of his path. When he hit it, Trevor didn’t necessarily feel himself tripping at first, but rather was asking himself why he was falling suddenly. When he met the earth, Trevor hit his head on the ground; not hard enough to do any lasting damage, but to distort his sense of reality even further, into something truly horrifying.

            A nurse who saw the whole thing came up to Trevor to help him up, thankfully, the fall didn’t hurt Trevor too much. When Trevor saw the nurse, he immediately remembered his appointment and asked the nurse about it.

            “Ah yes, you’re Trevor aren’t you? Well, come with me, you’re early, but fortunately, your doctor can get you in for an appointment now if you’d like,” the nurse said.

            “Yes please, that would be wonderful, I have insomnia terribly and was hoping you could help me out,” Trevor said.

            “We certainly will.”

            The nurse took Trevor inside, and what Trevor saw next was something he couldn’t believe. He wasn’t sure whether what he saw was real or not, but the question of reality wasn’t in his mind, instead, it was pure fear that took hold of him.

            The inside of the hospital was less like a hospital and more like a slaughterhouse. Everywhere Trevor saw there was a thick and heavily coating of smeared blood on the walls, puddles of urine and feces all over the floor, and on the walls as well, and somehow, on the ceiling. The smell was overpowering and even though Trevor didn’t eat much, he felt as though he would lose his lunch and contribute to the overpowering and horrifying mess.

            Trevor didn’t say anything as fear and disgust took hold of him and refused even the slightest sound to be heard out of him. But what he saw next prompted a choked attempt of a scream from his lungs. As he followed the nurse down the corridor, he saw the rooms, filled with entrails, dismembered body parts, and mutilated bodies of both animals and humans. He swore that some of those bodies were still alive as they gurgled faint attempts at forming some futile attempt at communication.

            “No, this can’t be, can it? I’ve been to this hospital before and it never was anything like this,” Trevor thought to himself.

            The nurse didn’t seem to mind too much about the horrific scene, none of the passing doctors or patients seemed to mind too much, not even the dismembered patients seemed to notice anything out of the unusual. In the midst of the gore and the nauseating smell, only Trevor seemed to notice what was going on, which led Trevor to ask himself; am I imagining all of this?

            With the indifference posed by those around him, he was stuck in between deciding whether this was real or whether it was all a product of his insomnia. Modern day sanitation standards wouldn’t allow any hospital to operate in this condition, it looked even worse than British hospitals during the Crimean War. But was what he was seeing true? Everything he saw, smelled, felt, heard, and tasted (mixed with the smell in his pharynx) forced him to think that the situation he was in was real. But if it was, then where were the reactions of the people who surrounded him, he saw the nurse step into more than one pile of entrails and she had no reaction whatsoever. Either he was seeing this on his own, or it was all a sick joke that was being played on him, he didn’t know which one scared him more.

            The nurse took him into a room and told him to wait for the doctor, Trevor wanted to ask for another room, but he knew that it could possibly be even worse than the one he was in. There were body parts laid out on puddles of blood all over the room, from appendages to intestines to organs that should not be outside of the body, blood smeared all over the walls in clearly visible handprints. But the worst part to Trevor was that on the wall next to him, there appeared to be the carcass of a squirrel nailed onto the wall, with its eyes gouged out, its legs contorted into impossible positions and a wide gash running down its chest with organs falling out, yet suspended by the veins and arteries. Trevor was beyond scared, he didn’t know whether it was real or not, and he didn’t care, he just wanted to be out of there, but he knew that if he left, his insomnia might go untreated.

            “This can’t be happening, for the love of God, this can’t be happening,” Trevor thought to himself.

            For a brief moment, he thought he saw something move in the pile of intestines out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked over, it stopped moving.  When he saw that it stopped, he heard someone say hello behind him. Startled and scared out of his wits, it was the doctor who came to help him, surprisingly, he was in a clean, white, pressed coat and looked decently composed in lieu of all he was seeing.

            “Nice to meet you Trevor, I’m Doctor Marcellus,” the doctor said as he extended his hand out to shake Trevor’s hand.

            “Um…nice to meet you doctor,” Trevor said worried.

            “Now I hear that you have been suffering from insomnia, is this true?”

            “Y...yes.”

            “And have you experienced any tiredness during the day, irritability, problems concentrating or hallucinations?”

            Trevor knew that he was experiencing all of those things, but he wasn’t sure if he was experiencing hallucinations since whenever he stepped in a puddle or on something in the hospital, he clearly felt it on his feet and heard a sickening “squish” come from it.

            “Yes, I have experienced all of those,” he said, wondering if he made a mistake in saying that.

            “I see, have you been suffering from an extreme amount of stress lately?”

            It went without saying that being in the abattoir of a hospital that Trevor was stressed enough and he wanted only to leave, but deep inside, he knew that if he stayed long enough, he might find out what was going on. However, he was debating on whether he should stay at the risk of his own sanity, since the longer he felt, the more scared and helpless he felt. He was worried that he would become one of those indescribable mutilated bodies, void of any information and without any hope of escape that he saw in the hallways.

            “Well, only a little bit, but no more than usual,” Trevor said.

            “I see, and one more question, have you had any recent changes in your sleep schedule?”

            “Well, I have been going to bed about an hour or two earlier than I have before.”

            “Mhm, I think that might be the root of your troubles.”

            The more Trevor looked around, the more he became frightened and the more nauseated he felt. He had to ask Dr. Marcellus if what he was seeing was real.

            “Hey doctor, is…um…has the hospital always been like this?” Trevor asked.

            “Been like what?” the doctor replied.

            From across the room, amidst the entrails and the feces, Trevor saw a man receiving an injection…into his eyes. The sight of this made Trevor cringe with an infinite amount of disgust as he saw the man take the elongated needles into his pupils, without even so much as a flinch. The doctor who was administering the shot didn’t seem to pay too much mind to what he was doing and carried on as if it were the most normal thing in the world. This sight was what finally broke Trevor as he began to have a breakdown and ask the doctor if what he was seeing was real. He asked him about the bodies, the entrails, the feces, the carcasses, and the dismembered patients he saw in rooms he passed by. The doctor dismissed Trevor’s claims saying that he was experiencing a severe form of hallucination cause by his lack of sleep. But this was not what Trevor wanted to hear.

            All he wanted to hear was that none of it existed, the horrifying sights did not exist, the bodies did not exist, and the man receiving a shot in the eyes did not exist, that is all he wanted to hear. Even if all he sensed was real, he wanted a second opinion, he wanted someone else to feel the puddles of blood and urine he stepped in and smell the nauseating smell of mangled bodies and feces he experienced in the halls. Even if they could feel what he felt, he would have been glad to hear someone say, “it isn’t real,” he may not have believed them, but he wanted someone else to feel what he felt.

            The doctor did not give him a straight answer, he did not give him any assurance, he just told him that what he was experiencing was a by-product of his hallucinations. By product or not, all Trevor asked for was someone to tell him it was not real. Unfortunately, he didn’t get that, the doctor seemed to be indifferent and prescribed him some pills to get him back on his sleep schedule.

            “Okay so, take two of these before you go to bed, and try to go to sleep at your regular time. This might have been caused by a shift in sleep schedule that your body is not quite used to,” the doctor said, handing the prescription to Trevor.

            “Thank you doc, but I have one thing I would like to ask, has this hospital always been like this?” Trevor asked.

            “In what way?”

            Deciding not to risk mentioning the horrors of what he was seeing lest the doctor think he was insane, Trevor merely said:

            “Has the hospital been…up to standards lately?”

            “The last time we had an inspection, everything was in top condition, and our practices assure only the most skilled individuals and methods,” the doctor said, taking a silent insult at the question.

            “I see, thank you anyway doctor,” said Trevor as he left the room.

            Walking through the hallways gave him an uncertain paranoia that something would jump out of the mess on the ground and attack him. Even though it wasn’t too long a walk back to the front entrance, he felt as though the walk would never end since he was now by himself, save for the mutilated bodies he saw in the hallway and in the rooms. Yet, he looked at the faint outline of what was once a human body and gave a faint smile at it.

            He now knew that it didn’t matter whether what he saw was real or not, but this one body gave him a sickening comfort in knowing that it couldn’t answer him back. It couldn’t tell him what was real nor what wasn’t, it couldn’t make fun of him nor tell him any difference in what he was seeing. As far as Trevor was concerned, it was a collection of flesh formed into the shape of a human; it probably once was able to walk and talk as he did, but now, it was laying there on the ground, with no form and no function, just a pile of forgotten flesh. He still had no idea whether it was real or not, but he decided to take the plunge and ask it the question he wanted to know, after to checking to see if anyone else was watching.

            “Are…you…real?” he asked timidly.

            It didn’t answer, but he couldn’t stop looking at it and expecting an answer, everywhere he looked, there were the entrails and the blood and the feces, but it didn’t bother him anymore. The longer he looked the more he had to wonder how many of these piles of flesh were once living people, people who could tell between what was real and what wasn’t. Whether it was his insomnia that was producing this image, or whether he was seeing something nobody else could, he no longer was afraid of it. The lines of reality were blurred for Trevor and although it may have been rough on him at first, he finally found himself situated at a point where he felt comfortable…even in lieu of a horrid sight.

            When he was finished looking at the gore that was in the hospital, he walked out the front door and looked at the prescription the doctor had written out for him. It was for a bottle of Ambien and a reminder to go back to sleep when he usually did, yet as he stepped outside, he saw something that absolutely perplexed him. Trevor hadn’t even taken ten steps out the front door of the hospital when he looked back inside and saw that the hospital itself was spotless. There were no bodies, no blood, no feces or carcasses, it looked as how a standard hospital should look, clean and sanitized.

            Trevor had no explanation for this, right as he had become comfortable with the horrors he saw, all of a sudden, things shifted once again leaving Trevor in that initial stage of fright. He thought that the gore wasn’t real, but if it could disappear that easily and quickly, he wasn’t even sure if this clean version of the hospital was the real version. He didn’t want to think about it too much since his tired mind had lost a lot of its function without its sleep. He went to the drug store, traded his prescription and went back home. When night fell, he took the Ambien and fell asleep at his normal time; he fell into a deep sleep and never wanted to wake up. But when the time came to arise, he felt refreshed and instantly better.

            He kept this up for two weeks and when he was caught up with his sleep schedule, he felt like a new man. The bags under his eyes were all gone and he was able to stand up straight and walk with pride and confidence in himself. He didn’t experience any more hallucinations, and he felt the same way he did when he was able to sleep weeks before. Trevor felt infinitely better after those two weeks, but when he opened up the newspaper one day, he saw something that made him stop dead in his tracks, and cut off his breathing like clippers to an extended hedge bush.

            The hospital that Trevor went to for help was closed due to sanitation violations because one day after Trevor went to the hospital it was discovered that at least twenty bodies were discovered in an unknown crawlspace beneath the hospital. According to the article, the bodies were horribly mutilated with the walls of the crawlspace being covered in blood and feces, with animal carcasses thrown in the crawlspace as well. It wasn’t fully discovered who did such a horrifying act, but the hospital had to be shut down and quarantined so no diseases would spread throughout it. When Trevor finished reading the article, he went over to the hospital to see if it was true, and sure enough it was with police cars and reporters in front of the hospital all involved with the bodies in some way or another.

            Trevor felt a sickening tremor go throughout him, and when it was over, all he could do was laugh and hope that his vision had nothing to do with the bodies. As he watched everything unfold from the hill he was atop, he turned back and began to go home since he knew that this was an instance that would make no difference whether he believed in it or not.

The Seventy-Year Suicide

            Leaning against the uncomfortable and unwelcoming red brick building, Howard, in his plain white T-shirt and blue jeans, took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, as he had done many times before. Shaking out a yellow and white cigarette, he stuck it in his mouth and lit it with a purple lighter he always kept in his pocket. He never kept the lighter and cigarettes in the same pockets, because he didn’t like the sensation of his pockets being full or larger than they need to be.

            As indicated by his clothing, Howard considered himself to be a plain and typical man with nothing to prove to anybody except the fact that he was a living, breathing male, capable of existing on his own. This self-depiction was also furthered by the way he spoke to people; nothing about his voice indicated any particular differentiations, no hint of benign or malignant tones, not a decibel too high or too low, just a voice that was by all means plain. Yet, it was a rare occasion when Howard actually spoke to anybody, not that Howard disliked people, he just wasn’t much of a speaker; if anything, people tried their best to stay away from talking to him.

            Generally, Howard was a content person, and to keep it that way, he kept to himself and didn’t mind that people did not want to interact with him. In terms of hobbies, anybody who knew Howard (which, as we established, was not too many) knew that the only thing he wanted to do was smoke. On most days, he would smoke up to half a pack, and on others, even a full pack. As he stood, leaning against the building, he reminisced about his life, as he often did while smoking, especially now that he was an old man, and feeling that his end was coming soon.

            Howard was twenty-two when he first started smoking, shortly after one of his closest friends was injured. The two of them were working in a construction site when a couple of workers set down a sheet of glass and, not seeing the glass because of its transparency, Howard’s friend, Leopold, walked right through it. Howard was gazing, awe-stricken, at his friend on the ground as Leopold bled profusely with shards of glass sticking out of various places in his face and one could tell the pain he was in by simply looking at him. Wasting no time in calling an ambulance, Howard dialed the phone and told the local hospital what had happened. Two minutes passed when Howard hung up the phone and the paramedics arrived and put Leopold’s bloody body into the ambulance, which whisked him off to the hospital leaving behind the sound of sirens fading away in the direction of the ambulance.

            While, Leopold was in the hospital, Howard stepped outside to get some fresh air and avoid seeing his friend in the inexplicable pain that Howard could not feel. One nurse, who recently lit up a cigarette, looked over at Howard and saw that he was in distress.

            “What’s the matter pal?” She asked, as her voice indicated years of smoking.

            “My friend is in there, in a lot of pain and I don’t know if he’s going to be okay,” Howard said.

            Looking around herself to make sure that nobody was watching, she offered him a cigarette, understanding that she could get in big trouble for doing that. Taking the cigarette from the nurse, in her full regalia, Howard lit the cigarette using the nurse’s lighter and took a big drag. Aside from the slight tickle in his throat, he felt no different; it didn’t make him feel better nor worse. To Howard, it felt no different than breathing regular air with a little bit of exhaust in it. He knew that smoking was bad for people, and to him, it didn’t give him any extra pleasure, but at least it gave him something to do while Leopold was in the hospital.

            After saying goodbye to Leopold for the night, he went to a corner store and bought his first pack of cigarettes. Howard was not kidding himself, he wasn’t denying the fact that he was addicted and needed to buy some cigarettes. But in his mind he was asking himself “How could I be addicted to something that provided little to no pleasure?” He blamed it on the chemicals and the tobacco, that first drag on the nurse’s cigarette extended its arm around him and took him under the control of a rolled up paper with dead leaves inside that wasn’t even 1/100 of his size.

            The first night he smoked, he recalled that it was a warm night with the lampposts acting as makeshift stars. As he was smoking, he thought about the effect of tobacco all throughout history. He thought about the Natives and Europeans smoking it and how it saved the Jamestown colony.

            “Isn’t it funny that the same thing that saved America’s first permanent settlement would go on to be the second leading cause of death for Americans?” Howard thought to himself.

            With another puff on his cigarette, he felt like asking more rhetorical questions. Howard stood on that first night smoking more than half the cigarettes in the pack he bought, yet feeling no different than if he didn’t smoke at all. Yet, his mind was ablaze with questions and thoughts he had never envisioned before, with each question more unanswerable than the last.

            When he was finished with his last cigarette, he pushed the burning end down into a newly bought ashtray, which looked like a whole tavern of smokers used it and rinsed it to get rid of any lingering smell. Even though Howard lived by himself, he still believed that every aspect of a cigarette should be left outside, even though Howard’s clothes brought the smell inside. To Howard, smoking brought him no internal pleasure nor made him feel any better. Smoking was but a break from everything, a few short minutes to escape that all the world had to throw at him. That is why he had to take as many breaks as he had to, because there was nothing about this reality that he enjoyed.

            One week later, Leopold came out of the hospital with twelve stiches on his face, and possibly more all over his body. Howard was glad to see Leopold okay and working in the construction site again, and when Howard paused to take a smoke break, Leopold asked when he started smoking. Howard bluntly replied when Leopold was in the hospital and needed some comfort.

            “But don’t you know that those things will kill you?” Leopold said.

            “What doesn’t these days?” Howard replied.

            Feeling as if he didn’t need to say anymore, Howard continued smoking and ignoring Leopold as Howard’s mind was liberated from any and all burdens. When he was finished with what was left of his stub, he pressed it into a public ashtray, completely extinguishing any flames that could have been left over.

            When he was done, he returned to the construction site to pound a metal stake into the ground. Given the amount that Howard had smoked in the first week, everybody thought that he wouldn’t be able to do it; not even Howard thought he could do it. But when Howard picked up the sledgehammer, he brought it down with ease on the stake’s flat head as it visibly moved into the ground. After hammering it again another eighteen times, he was done and did not feel as winded as everyone thought he was going to be. Of course, some energy was taken out of him, but no more than it would normally take to hammer a stake into the ground. Two hours later, Howard took another smoke break.

            As time went on, Howard continued to smoke as much as he did when he first started. Weeks, months and years went by, friends and family came and went, he noticeably got older, but paid no mind to any of this. After all the time Howard spent smoking, one would guess that it would inevitably take a toll on his health, but this was not the case. Despite how much Howard smoked, his health did not falter, he did not develop any wrinkles and there was not the slightest hint of jaundice on his body. By looking at him, nobody could have told that he was a heavy smoker; not even his clothes or furniture held the smell of tobacco.

            Doctors were baffled at Howard as they tried to find an answer to his phenomenon, but no answer seemed feasible enough to explain Howard’s condition. Stumped and confused, people were trying to figure out why Howard was immune to the effects of smoking, but to no avail did they know. Not even Howard knew how this could be, but the only difference between him and everyone else, in his eyes, was that he did not pay any mind to it. He knew that this was not normal, but it didn’t inhibit him from smoking as much as he did.

            But as an unintended consequence of smoking, Howard was virtually isolated from everyone else. Some people avoided him because they did not want to catch any second-hand smoke whilst others avoided him for fear of his odd resistance to tobacco; not even regular smokers would associate with him out of this same fear. Even Leopold stopped seeing Howard, but more because he did not want to catch any effects of second-hand smoke. Soon enough, Howard was alone, but he did not mind at all; he felt comfortable with his cigarettes and decided that they were all he needed. If anything, Howard felt more free to be with his thoughts; no people to say that his opinion was wrong, no fingers to point nor blame, and no eyes to cast silent judgment nor offending glances on him as he walked by. Even if he did have the chance to socialize with somebody, he didn’t take any chances if it meant having to give up smoking.

            But one day, when Howard was in his mid-80’s, a little boy, named Ben, saw Howard smoking while on his way home from school. Having just learned about the effects of smoking in his health class, Ben felt the need to step in and say something to Howard.

            “Hey, mister,” Ben called to Howard.

            Howard darted his head in all directions to see who it was that said that; when he saw that it was coming from Ben, he had no idea what to expect. What Howard saw was a little boy in either 4^th or 5^th grade, with shining black hair, and a walk and posture unfit for his age. When Howard replied with a blunt “yes?” Ben finally came up to him.

            “You know you shouldn’t be smoking cigarettes, right?” Ben said, timidly.

            Howard could have easily ignored him, but something about Ben made Howard genuinely interested. Looking into his ebony corneas, past his pupils and into the darkest reaches of his eyes, Howard saw something he never thought he would see in anybody else: the look of inquisition. He saw that Ben wanted to help him, but also saw that he wanted to go beyond helping, Ben wanted to know why Howard was smoking if he knew it was so bad for him.

            “Kid, I’ve been smoking these things since I was twenty-two, and it hasn’t done any harm to me in the past sixty-somewhat years” Howard said smoothly.

            “But mister-“ Ben began.

            “Please, call me Howard.”

            “Okay, Howard, but you do know what could happen to you, right?”

            “Yes, yes, cancer, emphysema, and me looking like a train wreck. Look, I already told you, there’s nothing wrong with me for my age, despite how much I’ve smoked.”

            “But, how can that be?”

            “I don’t know, nobody does. But if these things haven’t killed me by now, I’m either a freak of nature or we’ve been lied to this whole time; and frankly, I don’t care anymore.”

            Ben struggled to comprehend what Howard was saying; he was trying to piece together the logic of how Howard was able to stay healthy in lieu of all his smoking. Howard could see the confusion and disheartenment in Ben’s eyes as Ben looked for something to say.

            “But…the teacher said that smoking could kill us...so how…why?” Ben finally said.

            Howard gently put his hand on Ben’s shoulder, which seemed to calm Ben down tremendously. Speaking in a soft, but disciplined tone, Howard said to Ben:

            “Listen, I know that this is hard for you to take in, believe me, you’re not the first one, but I have no idea how this is happening, all I know is that it just does. Yet, this whole thing has taught me something valuable that you will never learn in school; nothing is certain in life, but sometimes that uncertainty can be the best thing that happens to you.”

            “In this case, your health not being damaged by smoking, right?” Ben asked, fully recovered.

            “Well…that and these cigarettes giving me time to be alone with my thoughts and away from everyone else. Let me tell you, that school you go to won’t teach you anything, only by going out and seeing the world will you learn something.”

            Ben found all of this difficult to take in, especially for someone as young as him. Feeling overwhelmed with what Howard told him, Ben decided to continue his way back home and get some rest. But not before promising Howard that he would come back the next day.

            Later that night as Howard was smoking, he asked himself:

            “Was I wrong in letting him know the way things are this early in life?”

            But a puff of his cigarette assured him that what he did was the right thing. Tapping off some ash into an ashtray, he went back inside his house and went to bed, excited to see Ben again the next day; the first time he had been excited to see anyone in a long time.

            When the next day came, Ben came back as promised and told Howard about his day at school. One particular aspect that interested Howard was how Ben told the teacher what Howard told him about smoking. The teacher did not believe him and denounced Ben for saying something as ridiculous as that.

            “Geez, give those people a tie and a room full of kids and they’ll think that they know all there is to know,” Howard said.

            Ben looked up at Howard with eyes as round and smooth as marbles. What frightened, yet intrigued Ben about Howard was how he disproved his teacher about smoking as much as he did without experiencing any side effects. Was the teacher wrong the whole time? Was Howard a god? A demon? No matter how much Ben thought about it, he could not come to a solid conclusion.

            From all of this thinking, Ben’s mind went blank and could not adhere to any thoughts. Howard could tell by Ben’s facial expressions, that he was stunned by this and invited him inside for some water. Once Ben downed a full glass that had a few specks on it, he felt much better, and wanted to know what else he had been lied to about.

            “Well, Ben, I can tell you right now that there are more lies than truths in the world. The food you eat, the water you drink and the air you breathe is all full of lies down to the last molecule; contaminated, polluted and likely to kill you faster than starvation, dehydration or suffocation. The world you live in is built upon lies, so much so that nobody knows what is true anymore. Unfortunately, since you are only a child, adults will try to paint the world into pretty colors for you; all that this will do if stiffen the blow against you once you realize what the world is all about,” Howard said to Ben.

            “But why would they lie to me, I haven’t done anything?” Ben said.

            “It’s not what you have done, it’s what you’re going to do…for them. Unfortunately, the world is full of yes-men, and if one person says no, then they will be cast aside like a piece of trash.”

            “But what if every person says no?”

            “Then they will replace the elites with even more elites, sometimes, even worse.”

            After their discussion that lasted a half-hour, Ben went home with a new kind of knowledge and promised to see Howard again the next day. To which Howard looked forward to, as he was not only helping someone, but also showing them what was wrong and what they could do to fix it. Perhaps it was what Howard needed all these years.

            As promised, Ben came back the next day and was eager to learn more from Howard. For nearly an hour they conversed about various topics from politics to freedoms to truths withheld from them. Ben hung on to every word and was firmly convinced that he was learning more from Howard than from any teacher he had. Of course, Howard still kept on smoking all the time and still preserved his health, miraculously. Ben asked Howard if he could have a cigarette, but Howard knew better than to give drugs to minors.

            “I’m sorry Ben, but I don’t want to risk your health. Besides it would be illegal to give you a cigarette and if your parents don’t kill you, then the law certainly will,” Howard said coolly.

            Understanding what Howard was saying, Ben maturely accepted the decline for a cigarette. Once the conversation was over, Ben got all of his supplies and went home.

            For the next few weeks, Ben visited Howard on a regular basis and learned more from him than he did in school. Howard saw Ben as his pupil and not only told him what he thought, but he allowed Ben to think about some issues for himself. Occasionally, he countered some of Howard’s points, but this is exactly what Howard wanted; even if Ben’s reasoning was off, he was still standing up for himself. For Howard, he was teaching Ben everything he learned from smoking, he made a true friend, one that seemed to put even Leopold to shame.

            Unfortunately, for a while, Ben stopped coming to visit Howard. He thought that perhaps Ben was on a vacation of some sort and shrugged off the notion that Ben stopped wanting to see him. One more week went by and Howard still had not seen ben; if this happened to Howard in the past, Howard would have been angry, but in this situation, he was upset. To put his mind at ease, Howard went out side to think and smoke.

            As Howard lit up his cigarette, he saw a procession of cars making their way through the road, with a crowd of people following it. Despite how rude he may come off as, Howard pulled one of the people aside and asked whom the funeral was for.

            “This is a funeral for little Benjamin Tourias, he was killed two weeks ago when a car hit him. It’s a real shame, especially for his parents and the man he kept company with after school,” the person said, beginning to tear up.

            Howard thought for a while of who this could have been until he realized that it was Ben.

            Once the thought of Ben, who hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of the world, passing away sank in, Howard felt a constriction in his chest and could barely breathe. He knew that the unexpected death of someone as close to him as Ben would tear him up inside, but he didn’t know that it would hurt this much. Every minute that passed made Howard feel an increased sense of pain that spread further into his body. He decided to go back into his house to hopefully alleviate the pain.

            Even though his house was not too great a distance away, by the time he reached it, he felt out of breath and an incredible pain all throughout his body. Each step was agony, he couldn’t move without a fully concentrated effort and the taste of every cigarette he ever smoked was collecting in his mouth and left an unpleasant taste.

            When he got in, he called 911 and spoke to an impatient operator, but when he tried to say what the matter was he couldn’t talk, his vocal chords were shot. Clearly frustrated, the operator hung up, leaving Howard in his pained silent state, with not so much as a word of comfort. With the pain intensifying even more, Howard decided to look in the hallway mirror to see what was wrong.

            Howard looked in the mirror and was taken aback by what he saw. The mirror, in all its brutal honesty, showed Howard’s state from all the years of excessive smoking. Howard, according to the mirror, had wrinkles all over his body, fingertips and teeth as yellow as corn kernels and skin as pale as that of a corpse. To reassure himself of what he saw, he looked down at his hands and saw that they were as wrinkled and yellow as the mirror presented. All the time he was noticing this, the pain was continuously getting even worse until he collapsed on the ground, clutching his chest.

            “My God, what is happening to me?” Thought Howard as his voice was devolving into a series of wheezes.

            There lay Howard on the floor, trying to breathe through his hardened alveolis and trying to figure out what was going on with him. He let out a few prolonged and painful coughs that did more harm than good while he was slowly losing his fight to stay alive. In his final moments, all he could think about was the knowledge he passed on to Ben; now with Ben gone and Howard on the way out, who will now pass on the knowledge that Howard learned? To Howard, he would have endured his pain if it meant that Ben could live and benefit from all that Howard taught him. Unfortunately, Ben was taken away far too soon and Howard had no one else to turn to in his final moments. With the room growing a steady shade of black and coldness spreading all over his body, Howard lay on the hardwood floor, gave one last cough, and left the world without a fight.

            Two days later, someone looked into the window of Howard’s house and saw via the mirror a corpse. They called the police and told the two officers that a man’s body lay in the living room. Once the police officers found they key under Howard’s doormat, they went inside and looked at the corpse as it lay lifelessly on the floor.

            “Hello! Is there anybody else here?” One of the officers said.

            “Holy shit! Look at this guy; poor bastard must have been here for weeks. Look at his body,” the other officer said.

            “Must have died by old age, all by his lonesome.”

            An ambulance arrived in the meantime and two paramedics came in through the open door. A third paramedic came in shortly after with a body bag and without a word, they confirmed that he was dead by checking his pulse, then zipped him up in the black bag.

            As the police and ambulance sped away, the bystander was left wondering who that person was. The house looked familiar to them, it reminded them of that one man who smoked a lot, yet wasn’t affected by it. They weren’t too sure that it was the same person though, instead, they looked in the house one last time and continued on their way, as dusk was beginning to set in.