• I’ve been finding blood in my phlegm for much of the morning. I think that’s a bad sign.

    What do you do in a situation like that, especially when someone asks you “How are you doing?” Well, I found blood in my phlegm. No, you don’t say that, right? You never tell someone how you’re actually doing when they ask. Nobody does. Nobody really wants to know. If they did, you wouldn’t want to tell them. Show no signs of weakness. Here there be sharks.

    I was sleeping on my back last night, and the air was very dry. Perhaps my nose was bleeding overnight and I didn’t realize it. Perhaps it was trickling down into my lungs, and that’s how it got there. If that’s so, then I should be okay.

    Right after Thanksgiving I found blood in my vomit, and it had me worried for a week. I kept on wondering if I had a hole in my stomach, and yet I’m back at it. Yesterday is a funny-looking word. Yesterday I put a ton of booze into my stomach, and a salami sandwich. That’s all I’ve eaten over the past two days, and yet here I am dropping more junk in there: A can of diet Dr Pepper and a caffeine pill. Just to get the morning rolling. Later on I think I’ll throw in a can of Steel Reserve, just for kicks.

    Everything’s falling apart. The left lens in my glasses keeps falling out. My car won’t start because the battery keeps going flat for no apparent reason. My hands shake, and I can’t fall asleep I can only pass out. I wonder why the insole in my left shoe keeps on sliding out of place, and not the right one.

    …

    DEATH or SERIOUS INJURY can occur.

    Well how do you like that, I’m glad these shade-things that you can put down in the front of the car, the ones that don’t work very well when the sun is just coming up or going down, are here to tell me that.

    As if I didn’t know.

    At least the picture of a young child in a rear-facing child seat being crushed by the air bag is entertaining.

    Samual regarded his bloodshot eyes in the rearview mirror.

    I feel distinctly uninspired by life lately. This is probably because I’m rotting away on the inside. Everything else is just so trivial. I’m talking to myself, as there’s nobody around to talk to. I wake up amid the beer bottles with a fake cockroach in one hand and my flask in the other. I wake up amid the chaos of consciousness, wondering how the past twelve hours went by, and hoping to find a way to spend the next twelve in some kind of oblivion or other.

    Run rabbit run. What difference does it make? I can’t tell yesterday from the day before, what liquor store I went to, how long I slept, what dreams I had.

    “Sit as far back as possible from the air bag.” Right.

    …

    He was cold. Very cold. That was when he began to realize he might be dead.

    Keeping his eyes closed, prone on the pavement, not wanting to move.

    There were no real memories, only vague impressions. There was the smell of blood, and of vomit. He had been dying slowly for so long, you couldn’t call what he had been doing “living,” could you? Yet it was still surprising that it had come to this. He remembered sitting in the car, contemplating what had become of things, then walking to the liquor store for the one can of booze he had enough money to buy. Finding a nice, secluded spot by the bridge. Opening the booze. Then opening a vein. Taking in his last drink as life seeped out.

    Now, this.

    This sucked.

    The corpse opened its eyes. I’m back where I left off … Resume consciousness, in the dead leaves. The night was cold, but not as cold as he was.

    Was this his punishment? Or a second chance? Maybe this was hell. Maybe this happened to everybody when they died. There was no way to tell for sure. He had senses, but his heart had stopped. He no longer had the need to breathe. He closed his eyes. Maybe this is just a bad dream.

    …

    Leaves covered him now. Still he declined to move. What if he couldn’t? How long was rigor mortis supposed to last? He didn’t even know how long he had been there. Something nudged his side. A boot-clad foot.

    “You okay, buddy?”

    A voice, the feel of someone standing over him. He opened his eyes, looked up. The man regarded him contemptuously. What could he say? Sure I’m okay, except for that I seem to be dead? The leaves were covering the blood, otherwise why would this person even ask? Samual stood up. Brushed himself off. The stranger took a step back. Samual stepped forward.

    Without even fully understanding why, he looked the man straight in the eyes and smiled. Then, even though his lungs had lost their function, leaned in close and began to breathe in. And breathed the stranger’s soul right out of his body.