The Way We Were

Intro to Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was -- but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me -- upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain -- upon the blank walls -- upon the vacant eye-like windows -- upon a few rank sedges -- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees -- with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium -- the bitter lapse into every-day life -- the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart -- an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it -- I paused to think -- what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in the unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down -- but with a shudder even more thrilling than before -- upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Feeling Lucky

Emmett wants to buy cigarettes, so we stop at 7-11, right across the street. This 7-11 is the stuff of dreams, maybe because I’ve been going there since I was around twelve, when my dad first started letting me roam free around town; this place, to me, exists in a different time, where it’s the 1960’s, and everything’s perfect: Slurpee’s, innocence, the corner store, baseball cards and ice cream; when the steady buzz of street lights, crickets, and A/C units droned through muggy nights. In my mind, it exists as an old faded Polaroid photograph, rife with nostalgia.

Until I walk inside. It smells like old doughnuts, and the artificial fluorescent lights are blinding. I go over to the Slurpee’s, and the Slurpee machine has spilled the sticky, sugary drink all over machine and floor. Used straws and cups litter the little metal countertop; in a huge plastic box, hot dogs and sausages are slathered with grease—who knows how many days they’ve been heated there, rotating under a hot metal lamp slowly but surely. I’m not thirsty anymore, so I go to the front. Hassan looks like he’s about drop dead. His skin is dry, his eyes glazed.

“Hi there.” He sounds like Apu.

“Long shift?” I smile.

“Oh yes—here since midnight.”

“Almost there buddy. Can I have two lottery tickets?—the two dollar ones, the ones that you have the best feeling about.” He rips off two, hands them to me, and I give him my check card.

“Cash only, sorry.”

I stuff my hand into my pocket and take out a crumpled five dollar bill. “Here.”

Hassan takes it and rings it up. “Thanks, bye now sir.”

A burst of cold air greets me outside. Emmett’s pacing back and forth in the parking lot, taking long rips from his cigarette. His left hand is jammed into the pocket of his black, puffy overcoat.

“Let’s go dude.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Hey, come on, I got us some lotto tickets.”

“Oh shit, true. Sorry.” He stands still for a second. “Yo do you think Kelly will fuck me?”

I laugh. “I don’t know.” We start walking over to his car. “Invite her over tonight or something.”

“Yeah, because at the bar the other night I was treating her like shit, and she was just loving it. Like, she’s cool. You can make fun of her and shit.”

“She wants you dude,” I say. I’m an optimist.

“True.” He throws his cigarette down, and belches out a burst of smoke and hot breath. We arrive at his 1998 Camry. He gets in the driver side, and leans over, manually unlocking the passenger door. I open the door, and duck inside, pulling my hood over my ears. Emmett starts the engine, and I grab a sticky penny and a nickel in the cup holder. He lights another cigarette, rolls down the window, and exhales out.

I look over at him. “So I’ve been reading this book—The Secret—and it’s all about how positive thoughts lead to good things, like if you think about things you want, then they come true.”

“You believe that shit?”

“Well not at first, but it makes a pretty good argument. And they tell stories of people who use it, and how their desires came true. One lady wanted needed money to pay off her mortgage, and all of a sudden checks started showing up in her mailbox. Another guy was supposedly paralyzed, you know, for life—and he used it, and slowly he was able to walk again.”

“Okay what’s your point.”

“Well we should make it a part of our lives.” I turn up the heat, and zip up my coat. “It can’t hurt, right?”

“What’s it?” He blows a straight line of smoke out the window and ashes the cigarette in the cup holder.

“Visualization, using your imagination and seeing yourself succeeding. Here, this will be our first try.” I hand him a lottery ticket. “We have to visualize ourselves winning a lot of money.”

He holds the ticket in his hand, examining it. It says “Scary Rich” and has a picture of a ghost on it. “Do you want money for this?”

“How about if you win more than a grand, you give me half of it.”

He looks at me like I’m crazy and laughs. “Alright.”

I hand him the nickel. “Okay, so close your eyes.” I close mine. “See yourself bathing in money—you have so much money you don’t know what to do with it.”

He laughs.

“I’m serious, just shut up and do what I say.” I take a deep breath. “Okay. You’re set for life. You never have to work again if you don’t want to—well you’re going to want to, or else life would be boring, so you can do whatever you want to do. You could open up a baseball card shop, start a restaurant, hell, work at a gas station for all I care. But you’re set and you never have to worry about money. You can take care of your family, too, so your dad can retire early. And they can buy that house on the Cape that they want so badly. See yourself at that house.”

I stop talking and imagine myself on Martha’s Vineyard, when I was nine, and for ten days my dad was able to get us a little cottage by the beach. I’m on my boogie board, on the top of a wave, squinting, eyes stinging from the spray of sea salt, and I can see the entire beach—families playing wiffle ball, kids building sand castles, the massive, multi-colored clay cliffs looming in the distance, and the miniature figure of my dad, holding a beer and standing, observing me from the shore. The lighthouse on the cliffs flashes, a singular pulsating blip: red.

“Yo so can I open my eyes?” Emmett laughs. It snaps me out of my trance.

“Uh, yeah, sure. Let’s see if it works. You go first.”

He flicks his cigarette out the window, squeezes the nickel in between his index finger and thumb, and scratches away at the ticket. He blows off the silver shavings, studies it, and looks up at me, smiling. “Nothing.”

I take a deep breath, and scratch the prizes first. There’s the chance to win $100,000. Then I scratch the two winning numbers: 11 and 5. Eleven is my lucky number, so this must be destiny, I think. I scratch away at the others, one by one, leaving the $100,000 for last. I lose those, but that doesn’t matter—if I lose the smaller prizes, there’s an even better chance that I’ll win the $100,000. Finally I get to it. I close my eyes, scratch, and open them. 17. I stare at it for a second.

“You win?”

I drop the ticket to the car floor. “No.”

Emmett puts the car into reverse and pulls out of the 7-11 lot. I don’t talk the rest of the way home, until he drops me off at my house. “I’ll call you after work,” he says.

Passing our time in the grassland away

I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker yesterday who's an avid outdoorsman. He recently spent three weeks in the woods with his coon dog, Murphy, just the two of them, with no other human contact. He craves these getaways because they offer an escape from over-stimulated, attention diverting technocratic barrage.

"When I'm working I don't talk to my family. When I'm in the woods, I talk to them more than I ever would, because there is the time for it, and there is a priority placed upon it."

It made me think how I rarely talk to my family, even though they're only ten minutes away from my apartment. The one time a week I do see them, I'm in and out, and even then the experience is disrupted by phone calls. I said I'd never get a Blackberry, but my job has forced me to, and now it completely dominates me.

My co-worker told me about an article he had read about how destructive technology is to our ability to complete projects and goals--the pop-ups, videos, phone calls, texts, and e-mails that have become an inescapable presence in our everyday lives. They completely disrupt a natural biological process: an innately focused, zeroed-in drive to complete long-term goals, such as building shelter, hunting for food, planting crops, and maintaining strong familial ties. And so we sit at our desks W.I.R.E.D. into our gadgets, harmlessly passing our time in the grassland away.

It doesn't make us better at "multitasking"; rather we have become the kings of procrastination, because there's always something else--an article to read, an e-mail to check, a quick message to send--that exists solely to divert us from what we're trying to accomplish. It's all there at our fingertips--in the palm of our hand if we own an iphone--and yet it simultaneously imprisons us.

Cluster One

We Could Go To Vegas

My big shades rest on the bridge of my nose. Stunnaaas, Wilson calls them. I’m wearing a rhinestone-studded shirt that goes down to my knees.

“Ship it,” I sneer, having just won my third bet in a row. It’s sick—capturing that feeling of just not giving a fuck, of being young and ripping cigarettes, knowing you look good. White Air Force Ones, baggy jeans. It’s like you’re in the movies.

Calm, cool, buzzed.

There’s a new dealer. “Hey now, I’m Ricky, the guy from Long Island—here to help, here to win for you.” He claps his hands, slides the cards across the table, and starts shuffling them.

A group of four girls stumble by, heels scraping against the carpet. His eyes track their movements.

“Hey! I may be an old man, but you know what they say about old people—they can stay up all night long, catch my drift, honey?” Fast talker, fast shuffler. His hands are warped. Hawkish nose. “Hum-in-nah! Yeesh!” He whistles through his teeth. We all chuckle.

The guy to my right is Filipino or something. He nods in and out of consciousness, bobbing his head up and down, trying to meet straw with mouth.

The waitress strides by. Her tits are hiked up; her stiff blonde hair reflects light like bright plastic. She has my watered down Jack and Coke. “Get my man another Long Island,” I say, dropping a dollar chip in her tip cup.

“Great drink brother!” Ricky flips his cards. I lose. Again. Ricky grimaces, my bad my bad we need a shuffle, he says, let’s turn this around. Yes, let’s

I nod and wink. It’s about the luck. I read once that the MGM Grand had to remove its big gold lion from its front entrance—Chinese people refused to enter the casino, because lions are bad luck in China or something. They also don’t stay in hotel room numbers with “four” in it—because “four” sounds like “die” in Cantonese.

This gorgeous girl walks by quickly, head down, clutching her purse tightly against her side.

“Have a seat, I don’t bite.” Ricky smiles, revealing a set of shimmering, white—albeit crooked—teeth. “You here to have fun, or you here to watch?”

She stops, turning red. “I’m in a rush—I got to, uh, meet some people.”

“Oh come on, honey—what’s the rush? Where do you have to be? Wherever it is, it can’t be better than here we’re having a great time, aren’t we boys?”

We all nod, smiling.

The pressure is too much. She slides into the open seat, tentatively removing out a twenty-dollar bill from her purse.

“High roller, high roller,” he grins, dealing out the cards. “I’m Ricky.”

“I know,” she says, “it says so right there.” She points at his nametag.

“So you can read, huh? I guess I should have raised my expectations.” That draws a laugh from the rest of the table. She loses. As do I.

After some time I run into a couple of the guys from Albuquerque. We all came together. But it’s hard to stay together. I follow them from casino to casino, dropping more and more money at each place. They’re with me, but they’re not really there. We’re all in our own desperate worlds, searching for that high, the ultimate satisfaction of being a winner.

We had decided to stay at the Luxor, my favorite hotel, a based purely on aesthetics—I love the beam of light that shoots up into the dark, desert sky, a symbol of Vegas' limitless potential (or at least that's what they want you to think), and then the sleek, black pyramid gives the place a nice, classy feel (on the last day, we had a message from the concierge offering to put us up for a third night, comped; Vegas, just like the rest of us, is desperate). Don biked up from New Mexico, and he had to bring it in from the parking lot and store it behind the front desk, creating an ordeal that delayed us about an hour.

* * * * * *

I’ve just left Paris, this casino that’s basically a replica of Paris, with my friend Wilson. We’re hammered. “Isn’t this the greatest place in the world?” I say.

Wilson pauses. “Yeah, it is”

It’s 2 AM, and we stumble towards a gas station on the strip. We go in and buy two forties. I clutch mine tightly, bringing it to my lips and sucking down the bubbly drink. Wilson buys cigarettes and Skittles, along with his forty. We go behind the station, sit on a bench, and eat, smoke, and sipped our drinks.

“You realize nothing we do matters, right?” Wilson says. At Paris he had gone down $400 in twenty minutes playing roulette, had withdrawn $500 from the ATM, put it all on one hand of blackjack, and won. And then he won more. He won so much, in fact, that he tipped the blackjack dealer $300. Then he blew it all tipping more dealers and trying to win more money so he could tip this dealer named Alyssa (an obese dental school dropout)$1,000.

“In the scheme of things, I agree,” I reply. “But in small snapshots I don’t.”

Wilson and I aren’t the best for each other; we feed off one another’s hypochondria and anxiety. For example, on this road trip we took once, Wilson had felt nauseous (his Lithium medication, according to him), and thought he was going to pass out and crash the car, killing us both, so he pulled over and made me drive. Better safe than sorry, he said.

But now, as we sit at the gas station, I see Wilson throw his still-lit cigarette near what looks like a barrel of gasoline, and I’m the one who has thoughts of death creep into his mind—I imagine the entire gas station exploding, incinerating the two of us into nothing more than ash.

“Fuck, dude, put that shit out,” I say, rushing over to the butt, heart racing, before forcefully stomping it out. Wilson laughs. “Dude, relax,” he says, popping a couple of Skittles into his mouth. Easier said than done. I wonder what he would have thought had I said “dude relax” a couple of months ago when he kicked me out of his dorm room because he thought he was having a heart attack.

* * * * * *

Outside the MGM Grand I meet a “dealer,” who calls himself Nick, a club promoter from Wisconsin who claims to be twenty-two, but can't be older than seventeen. “I got the hookup, I got the shit,” he whispers. I nod and smile stupidly. “You got any on you?”

“Here, give me your phone.” I hand it to him without a thought. He punches in his number. “I'll shoot you a text tomorrow.”

I look over at Gil and Don and shrug.

* * * * * *

4:56 AM. I sit at a blackjack table at The Luxor, by myself, smoking Benson and Hedges. I lost Wilson about an hour ago, and I have no idea where Don and Gil are. An Irishman is to my left, and we’re not losing. My black shirt is smoky and damp with sweat. I wear sunglasses even though we’re indoors—big, stupid aviators. The pit boss looks on in disapproval. I’m betting conservatively, no more than five or ten dollar bets.

The waitress comes by to grab my empty bottle. “Keep it coming,” I slur. I awkwardly hand her a one-dollar chip. I’m on at least my tenth Miller Lite in the past hour. Just sucking them down. At one point, the green velvet of the table seems to jump out at me—I need to stroke it to put it in its place. Some of the elderly are up for their morning walks; a few head to Starbucks. They sip orange juice and haven’t rubbed in their sunscreen enough. The rest of us are ghosts. I stagger to the bathroom—the main floor is nearly empty. On my way I walk by the slots—the part of Vegas that fascinates me the most. Rows and rows of these machines, with flashing lights and booping and beeping. A woman sits at the end of one of these rows, robotically pulling the machine’s arm. I stop to watch her. Pull, grimace—pull, grimace. She looks over at me and we lock eyes. Her face looks tired, but she nods in acknowledgment before turning back to her machine. Pull. Pull. Pull.

I come back from the bathroom and promptly bet everything I have on one hand. Six, five. Dealer’s up card is a King.

“Hit me.”

He flips a six. Fuck. “Stay.”

Dealer flips over a jack. House wins. I sit there, stunned.

The Irishman feels bad and throws me a one hundred dollar chip. He started with two hundred and now has five grand.

“Try again, son.”

I do try again—I try with all my might—and promptly lose.

Now I’m unsure where it all went, how it got spent so fast. I stumble outside for some air, greeted by a burst of mugginess. I feel like my pants are going to melt off, and my knees wobble. I take off the sunglasses, and rub the lenses nervously. Yellow cabs zip down the strip, but other than that the place is eerily silent. A man and a woman sit on a bench ten yards from me. She’s sitting on his lap, her long legs shaking, sucking his face as he fondles her right breast. He’s probably some rich guy who bought her a couple of drinks and gave her some chips to play with. After some time, he whispers something in her year, and she slides off his lap, rising and tucking some of her stringy black hair behind her right ear. Maintaining poise and confidence, she adjusts her tube top. Her heels clack as he leads her towards the hotel entrance. The automatic doors whoosh open, then whoosh close.

Then it hits me. A penetrating, ear-splitting white noise that I know no one can hear but myself. Watch someone on TV scream at the top of his lungs, but on mute. That’s me.

The white beam from The Luxor shoots upwards, parting the clouds overhead. The sky is pink, now—it’s nearly sunrise—but I’m on my hands and knees scraping my knuckles against the paved concrete, leaving bits of skin and dried blood. I can feel my breath being sucked out of me, the anxiety over what’s ahead in the coming days, months, years—and I realize why dawn is called mourning.

Day 2

We emerge from the Excalibur at around 9 AM, and it's so unexpectedly bright I have to shield my eyes.

“Let's gamble more at the MGM,” I suggest.

“I don't give a fuck,” Wilson says.

He stumbles into the bushes, falls to his knees and begins vomiting in typical Wilson fashion—loud, violent heaves. Usually I cringe, imagining, on that last wretched heave, his stomach plopping into the dirt or toilet like a pink, premature fetus. Now I stand near him, drunkenly indifferent, smoking a cigarette, just taking in the scene around me. Couples on walks with children glance over, horrified.

A jogger--an older executive-type, wearing knee socks--stops moving forward, but still pumps his legs as he stays in place. He removes an Ipod earbud. “Your friend alright?” He pants.

I nod, waving him away. Go on your way, back to your luxury suite at Mandalay Bay, nothing to see here. Take a nice shower and crawl back into bed with the hooker you met last night at Diamond's Gentleman's club.

Everything's alright in the world.

12 PM, MGM Grand Parking Complex

I had heard it before: whatever you do, don't leave the strip. Shit's scary. Projects, degenerates, drugs, hookers. Somehow, the alcohol makes me forget all of this. Or at least ignore it. With $400 in my pocket, I got my one track mind, my Kevin Garnett mentality: do whatever it takes, anything is possible—in this case, buying weed and coke from a random kid who I met (supposedly?) the night before, and who now keeps texting me, leading me further and further away from the “comfort” of the strip.

First we're supposed to meet in the lobby of the MGM; then in the massive casino parking complex, then across the street from that.

He's there, frantically texting. "Hey," he sticks out a fist for a quick little greeting. I warily meet his fist with my own.

"What's up? You got the stuff."

"I don't, but my dealer does."

"Okay, where is he?"

"You a Patriots fan?" He changes the subject, eyeing my Wes Welker jersey.

"I am." I clear my throat. "We are," I motion back to Wilson.

"Brady's overrated."

I can feel the anger rising. "Really? Is that so?"

"Yeah."

So now this punk from Wisconsin who knows nothing about football is talking shit about the Honorable Thomas Brady? The greatest football player of our generation, who posseses three Super Bowl rings--the guy who has it all: looks, ability, work ethic; a true winner, a team player who makes half as much money as he should, but refuses to hold out for a raise, because he knows it will ultimately hurt his own chances of winning MORE?

"Favre's better," he says confidently.

Now I want to laugh. A degenerate prima donna who single-handedly ruined the hopes of the Jets fans? Better than Brady? Favre? This was the guy who, with a torn up shoulder, refused to take a seat, and as his numbers took a nosedive, so did the Jets' playoffs chances. I'll take Cassel any day of the week.

It's not even worth arguing, there are more pressing things on my mind. "Where are we going?"

"My apartment, it's right off the strip. My dealer will meet us there."

Obviously it's terrible—mexi-cali weed, schwag.

6/18, 2 PM: Wendy's

Baconator?

Gil comes back from checking Wendy's nutrition chart, hung neatly out of sight in the hallway to the bathroom. He's rubbing his biceps. “Uh, the triple baconator has, uh, 1200 calories.”

“Dear God,” Wilson scoffs.

“Hi?” I salivate. “Should we?”

We pause for a second, contemplating this deliciousness, the versus the bowel breakdown that will inevitably occur at the worst possible time—bombing down the highway at 90 mph, in the middle of the Nevada desert, with no gas station for miles. I know he's thinking the same thing.

“It won't be so bad,” I try to rationalize. “We can just pull over on the side of the road. I'll just take a wad of napkins with me that can double as toilet paper.”

“Can I help you sir?”

Wilson dryly swallows, “I'll, uh, have the crispy chicken sandwich meal, large—with, uh, coke.”

“Pussy,” I mutter under my breath.

“Man whatever,” he says, snatching his cup and heading towards the soda fountain.

It's a lot harder for me to make this decision, now that I've been ditched by Wilson. Triple Baconator. I look at the poster to my left, this vibrant image of three juicy patties, lathered in ketchup and mayo, with gooey yellow cheese and strips of crisp bacon.

I'm not one to be a renegade. In other words, I don't like to take risks. I'm still hungover, I rationalize, and I haven't puked yet, which might mean it's only a matter of time

“Double baconator.” I say, defeated.

“Meal?”

“Just the sandwich,” I mutter. I take the receipt.

“You do it?”

“Well—I got the double.”

Wilson throws his hands up in the air. “Would you have even gotten the triple if I had?”

“Probably not,” I admit.

“What the fuck!”

I laugh.

“Just look at the box,” I point out. Everyone laughs—it's seeping with grease. I open it and take an enormous bite—it's delicious. And I can tell they're jealous.

We clean off our food.

The Way We Were

A quick walk through the woods. With each step brittle leaves crunch resoundingly like fragile hearts. You are surrounded by trees, bare and vacant. The epic transformations of age and time amplify with every pace. Don’t waste time looking at what’s around you—because before you know it, it will be gone.

Steep houses sprout up on your left and right. Dirt, once loose and free, becomes compact and hardened.

The leaves around you begin to dry out and disintegrate, one by one, vanishing into the beaten path below you.

Walk on.

Dirt turns to rocks. Little hairs sprout up on your arms, on edges of your face. A brisk walk becomes a gait, a staggered one-two cadence. Knees stiffen. The rocks underneath your feet melt together, forming blocks of gray concrete.

A gray cloud cover barrels across the horizon, destroying everything in its path, swallowing up the bright blue sky. No mercy.

You pull your tattered jacket closer to your body, protection against the biting wind.

And then you stop, arriving at your destination.

The steps wind high. The distance seems farther and farther each time. You used to gallop up these steps, skipping one step, maybe even two if you were in a hurry. Soon they will become an insurmountable mountain, but for now, you look down and go, one at a time. One foot up. Stop. Then the other. All the way up, to the top.

Take out a key, hold it tight, make sure it doesn’t fall, because you know you won’t be able to bend down and pick it up. Slide it into that oiled-up metal lock; gasp as you struggle to turn it, hear the click, and grasp the knob with the warped fingers of your left hand. Turn, open: enter, but don’t look back. That would be too hard.

Will.U.Be.My.Friend?

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Create that moment of perfect stillness and serenity--where all you can see are the stars, all you can hear are bugs and birds--and everything is dark--you are small, so very small; yet the blood that flows through your veins is a culmination of the efforts of past generations, while your heart pumps oxygen to your throbbing brain: the organ that represents the pinnacle of evolution, of intelligent life--an organ so complex that we can alter nature while simultaneously thinking ourselves to death.

The Days of His Life...

...no longer exist apart from one another. They have instead blended together—it is no longer "last Tuesday he herded the sheep into the barn because the wind chill was so brutal, it would have frozen them alive.” Rather, it has become “some point in the past month, it was cold, which meant he had to protect his flock."

He cradles a cigarette in his calloused fingers. His woolen socks are pulled high up over the cuffs of his tattered slacks. He sits in an oak rocking chair, which he had built over thirty years ago.

"Good morning, Sweets," he says hoarsely.

She shifts in bed, the springs creak, and she groans.

"I made you some lentil soup." He points to a crusty Tupperware container filled with steamy, brown goop.

At that, her eyes squint open. Little tear droplets form in the leathery creases of skin. "You look." She pauses for a moment, as her chest heaves up and down. "Like a dog."

He ignores her, bringing the cigarette to his lips and staring out the window. His land, in February: craters of mud brimming with dirty runoff---residue from the gray canvas of the sky, having slid down barren tips of stripped trees and pooled at the bases of their trunks. A desolate, barren wasteland of clumped, icy prairie grass.

Surrounded by death, his chest swells with warmth. They could be the last two people on Earth. A small gaggle of geese jab their beaks at clumps of frozen dirt.

This, he thinks, is beautiful.

When he looks back at her, she is staring up at him, and now she’s the dog---her beady eyes wide and needy, her panting breaths short and quick. He exhales, rises from the rocking chair, and pinches the butt of the cigarette, before pressing it against her chapped lips. The skin on her neck is nearly dripping off, but as she inhales it tightens inwards---firm and taut. She holds the smoke inside for a few moments, before it all comes tumbling out in a burst of hacking, throaty coughs.

"You’re killing yourself, Sweets."

She gargles mucous, and he grasps a big, chalky metal spoon with his warped fingers. Kneeling beside the bed, he takes a spoonful of soup. He brings it to her mouth, but accidentally spills some on her nightgown. She closes her eyes and gasps.

"I’m sorry." He says.

She shakes her head.

"Did you get burned?"

She shakes her head again. Her lips quiver and she takes in a deep breath. She’s trying to speak.

"If it’s too hard to talk, it’s okay."

"No," she whispers. Mucous dribbles out the corner of her lip. Her eyes well up again, and she closes them.

He puts the soup on the bedside table, next to a faded pink, plastic phone, and shuffles out of the room.

"I'll be back later," he says. She's weeping softly now. He closes the door.

Wanna Get Away?