She’s tiny in my arms, and I can feel her heart beat like a war drum against my chest, as the wind blows her pitch black hair every which way. Her head rests on my shoulder, and my arms wrap her in an embrace that brings back painful memories. Her eyes are shut. Those deep, riveting brown eyes are hidden. A shame, really.

The rain stops, but the same wind blowing her hair around is blowing the water off of every tree around us. I’m soaked, she is not.

She hugs me tighter. The door behind her leading into her house sways in the intense wind. The door behind me leading into my car slams violently, and it snaps her out of her nostalgic trance.

She lets go without looking at me, takes my hand, and leads me inside. I haven’t been in this house in over a year. It’s eerie, how little it’s changed. Through the tiny, mock-foyer, through the kitchen, left at the living room, down the hall, last door, straight ahead. She doesn’t need to lead me anywhere, and she knows that, but it makes her feel right, I guess

Her room hasn’t changed much. There’s a few pictures missing, and I’m smart enough to know whose they are. She lays down on her bed, and pulls me down with her. She wraps herself around me. I’m engulfed in her. I lay on my back, my wet hair seeping through her pillow case. Her head rests on my chest, her leg up on my hip, curled up, warm and safe.

I exhale, and ruffle my fingers through my hair. This is insane.

I don’t know what I’m doing here. I never know.

My thoughts drift back to the second-to-last time I was on my way to this house.

I cough.

“Are you okay, man?”

I cough again.

The dust from my airbag is making it hard to breathe. I can’t open my eyes, and half of my face feels like it’s on fire.

“Hey Kid, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I sputter.

My eyes open, and I get a blurry view of carnage. My windshield is shattered. It looks like someone put a bullet through it. Both my airbags are deployed. The hard, plastic covering that held in my passenger airbag had flipped up, causing my windshield to shatter.

“You should get out of the car, man, get out of that smoke. Can you walk?”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

I open my door, and step out.

The van in front of me is totaled. It’s cargo doors are crumpled, and I can see that all the airbags are deployed. There’s a nasty gash on the driver’s head, the same guy that asked if I was okay.

The two cars behind me are wrecked. Smoke is pouring out of both their engine compartments. The driver closest to me isn’t moving. I walk crookedly to the back of my car. It’s missing. My rear tires are gone, as well as my trunk.

I start looking for my trunk.

“What are you doing, man, you all right?”

“I’m looking for my cigarettes.”

It takes a few minutes, but I find the back half of my car. I grab the carton of smokes, rip them open, relieve a pack from its casing, tear out a cigarette, and light it up. I can feel the color returning to my face. My left arm starts to feel very warm. My hand is painted red.

There’s a two-inch long piece of what used to be my driver-side window sticking out of my arm. I leave my cigarette between my lips. I drag hard, grasp the piece of glass, and tear it out.

I wince.

I blow smoke.

It hurts.

“What happened, man?”

“I’ve got no idea.”

The moon shines on my still bleeding arm.

“You should probably wrap that up, man, it looks pretty serious.”

A pedestrian approaches us, and I see blue and red flashing lights over his shoulder, off in the distance.

“Are you two all right?”

“We’re fine, man, do you know what happened?”

We’re standing in the middle of a regularly busy two-lane street. It’s a merging point for yet another very busy two-lane street. It’s a giant “T”, and a dangerous one at that.

“The lady in front of your van stopped short making the right onto Terrace, and you stopped short, so did you. The guy behind you was flying, though,” he said, referring to the guy sitting motionless behind me, ” he just bashed right into you, and then the guy after that did the same.”

“Then why is the back of my car fifteen feet away from where it should be?”

“Light was green on Terrace, you know how people fly on this street. You two got pushed onto the road, Terrace, I mean. I guess it was just dark, and really sudden, and two SUV’s just came and wiped you off the road. It looked gruesome.”

I look further down Terrace, and there’re two SUV’s lying there wrecked, one of them flipped up over on its side.

“Fuck, man.”

“Yeah, it all looked pretty terrible.”

“Give me one of those cigarettes, man.”

“Sure.”

“What’s your poison?”

“Pall Mall”

My cell phone is miraculously unharmed. I dial her number.

“Hi Sweetheart, what’s up?”

“Amber?”

“Honey, what’s wrong, you sound hurt.”

“Come pick me up, baby, I’m on the corner of Sun and Terrace.”

I close my phone

“Thanks for the smoke, man, I haven’t had one in years. Now’s a good time to start, huh?”

“Good a time as any.”

I’m back in Amber’s bed. Her clock is telling me it’s nearing midnight. It’s been four hours since I got here, and in that time, the vixen curled up on top of me hasn’t moved an inch. I start replacing my body with one of her pillows, I need to move. 

I roam down the hallway, and hang a right into the kitchen. Amber’s dad is sitting at the table, having just got home from work.

“Kid, I can’t remember the last time I saw you.”

He didn’t look up.

“Hey Mr. Ryan.”

“New Car?”

“Heh. yeah. Kinda’ needed one after, you know.”

“I like it. It looks like the proper car for a kid your age.”

We talk for another hour or so. I remember how much I missed this house, how much I missed Mr. Ryan, how much I missed Amber. An hour later, and several cups of coffee aside, the conversation winds down.

“I’m not surprised she called you”

“Why’s that, Mr. Ryan?”

“You and I are friends enough to the point where you can call me Frank.”

“All right, Frank.”

Frank and I were friends back when Amber and I were still together. Once things between us deteriorated, Frank and I rarely talked. Deteriorated is a nice word. But it’s not accurate in this case. It was cataclysmic, for me at least.

“She felt safe with you, I guess. She knew you were the only one in love with her enough to not break her heart. Her heart is remembering the last time she felt safe, the last time she felt secure. She loves you, even if she doesn’t show it. I can’t pretend to know why she does it. Maybe she’s scared, maybe she doesn’t know she loves you, I can’t be sure. It doesn’t matter what the reason was at this point, she’s yours now. Go get her.

I can’t argue with that. I shake his hand. I can feel the calluses on his palm. They’re fresh and coarse. I feel bad for him. Triple shifts are no fun for any job, much less a dock worker.

“Goodnight, Kiddo.”

“Goodnight, Frank.”

I walk back to Amber’s bedroom, hands in my pockets, head hung low. I feel defeated, and I don’t know why. I run my hand through my hair one last time. I crack open the door, darkness engulfing my vision. My eyes adjust, and I see her there, still in the same position, as if she never let go of me. Rain patters hard against her window. The droplets on the glass are skewing light from the streetlamps every which way. There are strands of amber light penetrating the early-morning darkness.

It’s beautiful.

I swallow any doubts I have, and take the dive. I crawl into her bed beside her, wrap my arm around her stomach, and kiss her cheek gently. She stirs, and I can feel a sharp intake of air. She’s looking at me. Those big, radiant, heart-swallowing brown eyes. 

She’s halfway through the words, “I’m so sorry,”, when I stop her.

There’s nothing I can say. 

There won’t ever be anything I can say to that.

I love her.

And that’s that.

This, right here, right now, this exact moment, this is my favorite time of the day. Though I’m rarely up to see it, it’s early enough that there are no security guards telling me to put out my cigarette as I walk across campus. No one to threaten me with a ludicrously inappropriate, and equally hefty fine. In fact, there is no one at all. My walk is undisturbed tranquility. I share it only with the geese bobbing and walking lazily in the fields between the buildings. The air is moist with early-morning haze. My visibility is limited, both by the haze, and by my sunglasses. I can tell myself a thousand times that it’s okay to wear sunglasses this early, but there is honestly no point when the sun hasn’t yet peeked through the clouds to brighten the day. Though, as I walk, I can think of a reason. It may not be a conventional reason, but it is one all the same- I look fucking cool.

I hold a steaming cup of coffee in my hand, with a book and a folder under my arm. The book is a three-hundred page novel that I am currently just breaking in to. The folder contains every single paper I have written for the class that I am now trekking to. I’m over an hour early. My watch tells me that it’s approaching seven o’clock in the morning. Funny thing about watches; you can always tell what time it is when you have one, but you’re never quite sure if you have two. I like my watch. In fact, I love it immensely. It was given to me by a close friend as a Christmas present. Though neither of us are by any means religious, we still celebrate the holiday amongst each other. Usually, we just buy one another a pack of cigarettes and call it a day, but this passed year was different. He saw the watch in a local video store, and knew instantly that it was the right watch for me. Just as well, he spent the same exact amount of money on it that he would have spent on a pack of Pall Mall filters. 

Speaking of which, my cigarette is the perfect compliment to this moment. I walk at my own pace, which any person that has spent an extended period of time with me would tell you is just a bit too fast for their liking. There are a select few that keep up with my consistently. I’m never in any hurry, really. It’s just my pace. The filter of my cigarette is pursed loosely between my lips, and I can see the smoke rising majestically from the tip through the heavily tinted frames of my sunglasses. It smells good, in the way that the only cigarette that smells appetizing to me is Pall Mall. I noticed, once, that my group of friends is quite diverse in their choices of cigarettes. There’s not one person that smokes the same brand. They go through as many packs of Parliament Full-Flavors, Camel Turkish Royals, Marlboro Virginia Blends (The only Marlboro that I can stomach), and Lucky Strikes as I do Pall Malls. There was quite a debate between us, at one time, over the pronunciation of the words Pall and Mall. Whether is was pronounced Paul Maul, or Pal Mal. I know the truth behind the pronunciation, but I keep it inside because it differs from my favored method of saying it. 

I digress. I’m not telling you this story to educate you about mine and my friends’ smoking preferences, and the subtleties behind them. Which brings me to another thought: what am I trying to tell you? Read on.

I have now made my way to the entrance of my building. I stand in the alcove before the automatic double doors, and finish what’s left of my cigarette. I’ve been ragged on more times than I can count for not smoking my cigarettes down to the filter. I offer the fact that it ruins the taste when the ash gets too low. You’re tasting the fire there, not the tobacco. So I flick my still smoldering cigarette out of the alcove, away from the building. 

Through the doors, I head up the staircase that’s directly in front of me. I hang a left at the top of the stairs, and head straight down the hall to the open door leading to my classroom. My professor is already at her desk, pouring over papers and books, ever the image of a true educator. She notices me walk through the door, and then turns her attention to the clock on the back wall. She tells me I’m quite early. Over an hour, to be exact. I tell her that there’s nothing wrong with being early. She agrees with a nod of her head, and I find my seat in the back, right-hand corner of the room. I put down my cup of coffee, my folder, my book, and my pack of cigarettes. I take my sunglasses off my face, and blink my eyes rapidly as the florescent light rips through my irises. Picking up my folder, I make my way to her desk, and place it lightly on the only open space, the top left corner. I ask to borrow her pen momentarily, and when it’s in my hand, I write my name down on her sign-in sheet. I can only wonder how many times my name has been at the very top of that sheet. I file back to my seat, open my book, and begin to read.

Here we come to the heart and soul of this little tale. The girl that lent me this book, she’s an angel. As I said before, I am by no means a religious person, but it’s hard to maintain such an ideology, or rather an absence of one, when you’ve got such a wicked, wonderful vixen tugging at your heartstrings. It’s hard to stick to such beliefs when this woman can recommend such enthralling and enticing literature. I’m a mere fifty pages into the book, and I’m completely entranced. That’s been happening a lot, this passed week. It’s mostly, no, it’s entirely her fault.

I read for forty-five minutes, whereupon I decide that it’s time that I step outside and enjoy a cigarette before class truly begins. I put my sunglasses back on, relieve a cigarette from its pack, make sure my lighter is in my pocket, and I rise from my seat. I walk passed my professor’s desk, telling her that I’ll be back in a few minutes. Back down the hallway, descending the stairs, and through the automatic double-doors, a familiar feeling greets me. The warmth of the sun on my face finally makes my sunglasses a necessity. 

Unfortunately, I must endure a bit more of a walk to enjoy my cigarette. It’s late enough that the security guards are out now. They’re enforcing the smoke-free campus law like they were the Gestapo. I wrap around the building, because smoking is still allowed in the parking lots, and thankfully, there’s an access road that runs right behind my building. I walk at my own pace, and reach the sidewalk without any event. I light my cigarette, and breath in hungrily the acrid, torturous, cancerous, yet lovely smoke that filters down through my cigarette and into my mouth. I stand, arms folded, at the edge of the road, cigarette dangling from my lips. There is peace in this moment that I can’t help but appreciate. Though there are a few early students that are wearily and slowly making their way to class, I am essentially alone. I enjoy the moments unfolding around me, the taste of the smoke in my mouth, the way it fills my lungs, and clings to the inside of my body, like honey, like syrup. 

I think about the woman who gave me that book, sitting two stories above me on a desk in the corner of a near-deserted classroom. I think about the last two days, and how every waking moment has been spent thinking about her. It’s almost infuriating, to have one person on your mind for that long, though life is pretty good about dealing out situations and events that are far more infuriating than continually thinking about a beautiful, transfixing woman. 

I play back the first night we met in my mind. The smoke-filled garage, the melodies being poured beautifully from three instruments set around us. She lounges in a chair next to mine. I tried with all my might not to stare, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. She was captivating. Of all the women in all of my history, she was the first to make my heart physically pound faster in my chest. What was worse at that time- I had absolutely no clue why she did this to me. I didn’t know her at all. I was quickly going to remedy that, though. I introduced myself, with my arm outstretched. I offered her my name, as well as my hand. She took both, smiling, and told me her name in return. Her touch was cool electric running from her fingertips to mine, circulating throughout my body. Her touch was fire and ice. Her touch was angelic.

I snap back to the here and now, and quickly drag on my cigarette to ensure that it doesn’t go out. The memory of her smile is, and most likely forever will be, etched into my mind. 

Most of the morning haze is gone now, replaced with sounds that were absent when I first arrived here. I hear engines, conversations, and footsteps. I’ve found that in my musings about the passed few days, I had closed my eyes. Opening them, I have found that the world around me is a much busier place than when I had closed them. Students of varying ages, races, and creeds are filing passed me, as I stand, with arms still folded, at the side of the road. I take one more drag, and flick my cigarette clear across the two lane road. Turning on the spot. I shove my hands in my pockets, and walk back towards the front of the building. I see everything in a molasses tint. Everything is darker than it should be.

Back through the automatic double doors, up the stairs, left, straight, through the door, in my seat. I’ve got five minutes left until class starts. I open my book, and read for what little time I can. My classmates begin to trickle in, one by one, filling their usual seats. They yawn, and stretch, and drink their coffee. The two kids that sit next to and in front of me, respectively, walk through the doorway.

They’re good kids. They lighten up the class period. We give our professor a lot of shit, but it’s all in good fun. Class progresses, and I’m barely paying attention to what my professor is saying over the nerdy rants of the kid in front of me, but my hearing is just acute enough to discern a question through all the clutter. 

“Who played Jordi on Star Trek, what was his name, he was the guy on Reading Rainbow.” she asks no one in particular.

I immediately snap back with the answer, without a moment’s hesitation.

“LeVar Burton,” I say, as if it’s completely common knowledge. Everyone simply stares at me, and I suddenly understand the embarrassing realities of this. I have no reason in knowing this. It is not pertinent to my survival. The two kids next to and in front of me immediately being laughing, and offering my high-fives. I accept, with the biggest, and most embarrassed grin on my face. I am a nerd, plain and simple. I can recall useless information as if I were a walking Wikipedia engine.

Class ends some time later. I don my sunglasses, stick a fresh cigarette between my lips, collect my other belongings, and make my way out of the classroom. Once down the steps that lead to the clock tower, and the main parking lot, I light my cigarette, and breath in pure satisfaction.

I think now of two nights ago, as she and I sit in my parked car, overlooking the water. We forget the beautiful scenery before us, and appreciate the much more satisfying sight of each other. We’re less than a foot apart from each other. It’s not like me to smolder. I don’t blush, I don’t get nervous, I don’t lose my cool. Ever. Composure and tranquility reign supreme. At that moment, all of that was bullshit. My stomach was flipping, my heart pounding it’s way into my throat. I take the dive. 

I kiss her.

I release every bit of pent up frustration and pure, seething lust into that kiss. I relinquish my soul to it. I can feel hers mixing with it.

Hours later, still in my car, she lies on my chest, and asks me what I think of when I close my eyes, and feel her laying on me. I tell her that I feel the weight of another soul. She asks me quietly if it’s heavy. I tell her they always are. I tell her that, when you listen and feel carefully enough, you can feel the same stresses, the same worries, the same problems that weigh down a person’s soul. You feel that weight. That dead, solid, chunk of complete and utter panic that a soul consists of. And then you see the beauty in it. The chaotic radiance. The humanity behind it. You realize then that your soul is just as heavy. Precisely as heavy. And you realize that your two souls are one in the same.

I tell her that she’s beautiful.

I haven’t yet broken my promise to let her know, every day, that she is beautiful. 

It’s a promise I intend to keep.

My phone vibrates at my hip.

Good morning, Victoria.

I move up one seat ahead of me as quietly as possible. I gently tap the shoulder of the young man now sitting in the desk in front of me.

“Professor,” I whisper, as he turns his head slightly in my direction. His brown eyes flash to mine, and then he refocuses on the girl walking to the front of the room. She’s silently preparing herself for the five-minute long speech she has to give to the entire class.

Keeping his eyes on her, a beautiful twenty-something vixen in a tight black dress, heels, and flowing auburn hair, he answers.

“What’s up, bud?” he whispers back. I take a deep breath, and try to fight back the tears slowly forming in my eyes.

“My grandfather died on Saturday,” I say, and at the mention of this, his eyes close, and he heaves a deep sigh. He glances sideways at me, as he’s sitting not quite half-cocked in the seat.

“I’ve had absolutely no time to prepare a speech in the last few days, I mean, I have a general idea of what I’m going to say, but if I get up there today, I’m going to make a complete ass out of myself.”

He puts his hand on my knee as I start fumbling with my words, coughing on them like a cigarette.

“I’m sorry, bud,” he says, now patting my knee, “Don’t worry about the presentation. We won’t get through all of them today, anyway. You can go with the rest of the class next week.”

I nod my head in silent appreciation, and quietly head back to my seat in the far corner of the room. 

The vixen is now in the middle of her speech, spewing off about the treatment of Jews in Europe during World War II.

“’You have no right to live among us as Jews’ went to ‘You have no right to live among us’, to finally, ‘ You have no right to live’….”.

She finished her speech, and the room breaks out in sporadic applause. Walking back to her desk, she breathes quickly and laboriously. Her breathing slows as she reaches her seat. She realizes that the worst is over. The world is a better place, now.

My professor pipes up.

‘We’ll do one more presentation, and then we’ll take a short break,”. He shuffles through a few papers, looks around the room, and finally says, “Jennifer, would you like to go?”

A middle-aged, heavyset Jamaican woman sitting directly in the center of the room nods her head, and begins to make her way to the front of the room. My professor looks sideways at me, flashes a quick smile, and whispers just loud enough for me alone to hear it.

“This should cheer you up, bud,”

Jennifer settles in front of the podium placed rather haphazardly on the long, brown table that usually serves as the professor’s desk.

She begins to speak, and I have to struggle to keep a straight face, as does my professor.

“I chosed da’ phalosaffah called ah Bet’rahd Russehl. He’s a known as da’ faddah ‘a analytical philosophy…”

She continues on in this unintelligible blather for a good five minutes, and no one in the room can understand a single word she’s saying. We shouldn’t be, but every few seconds, my professor and I, as well as several of the kids sitting near us are locking eyes and snickering quietly.

“….And dat’s alleyegotta’ say ‘bout ‘dot,” she says, finally finishing up.

My professor composes himself as she’s walking back to her desk.

“Thank you. Does anyone have any questions for Forrest Gu- I mean Jennifer?”, he says quickly, and follows it up just as hastily with, “No? Good, Moving on.”, leaving no time for anyone to respond. He check his watch, stand up, and says, “All right, let’s take a ten minute break. And I would greatly appreciate if you all returned to class.”

I laugh at this request as I stand up, donning my ashen-gray pea coat, and placing a cigarette between my lips I grab the enormous cup of coffee sitting on my desk, and walk out of the classroom.

Down the staircase, and out the door, I light up my cigarette in the alcove directly in front of the building. If a security guard walks by, I’m screwed, but after the week I’ve had, I really couldn’t care less.

The wind subsides abruptly, and I take advantage of this unexpected event by blowing several smoke rings into the air. As they drift away, several girls walk past, glance quickly at the vortexes of smoke hanging around me, and then quickly rush into the building. It’s too cold for them out here. The wind picks up again, so I flip the wide collar of my coat up around my face. My beard ruffles up against the heavy wool. I take one last drag before flicking my cigarette out into the open courtyard.

Walking up the stairs, I see one of my fellow classmates stretched out on a couch in the makeshift lounge in the hallway of the building.

I sit down on the couch opposite him, stretching my feet up onto the low coffee table in front of me. I tilt my head back, close my eyes, and heave a small sigh.

He says something, but I’m so lost in my own thoughts that I miss it.

I look at him.

“I’m sorry?” I say.

“I said I heard what you said about your grandfather, I’m sorry to hear about it,” he says, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced. He’s older than me, a stout, stocky man with close-cropped brown hair, and a goatee. He looks as though he’s in his late thirties.

“It never gets any easier, does it?” he continues.

“That’s what they make cigarettes for, man,” I say. He laughs, and continues once again.

:”How old was he?” he asks.

“Just shy of eighty-seven,” I say.

“And how old are you?”

I wonder vaguely where he’s going with these questions, but I answer anyway.

“Twenty-two.”

“Have any brothers or sisters?”

“An older brother and two older sisters,” I say. I’m too tired to put up a fight or be quizzical.

“Well, look at it this way. He had a full life, and I’m sure he was a good man. He got to see his grand kids grow up, start school, start lives of their own. He witnessed twenty-two years of your life, and even more of your brother’s and sisters’ lives. I’m sure you got to drink with him, spend time with him. You and your siblings were probably the world to him. Any of your sisters or your brother have kids?”

“Yeah,” I say shakily, “both my sisters.”

“Well that’s great, then! He lived to see his great grandchildren come into this world. He seems to have lived a pretty fruitful life, at least that’s how I see it. You said he was in his late eighties? Did he fight in World War II?”

“Yeah, he did,” I say, “Survived the invasion of Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge,”

“Then the man was living on borrowed time for the majority of his life, considering how many soldiers we lost. You should remember that, all the good times you had with him, and what a good man he was.”

I sigh and take a sip from my giant cup of coffee.

“You’re right,” I say, “You’re very damn right. Thanks, man.”

I walk silently back to the classroom, intermittently sipping on my coffee. I arrive back in my seat just in time to hear my professor say, “It’s freaking cold in here,”

He goes up and places a phone call to what I can only guess is one of the campus handymen. He sits back down, this time filling the seat next to me, away from the window and the heater.

“Eric, would you like to present?” he says, breaking the silence.

The kid sitting diagonally to my left says, “Yeah, I’ll bust it out, give me a second.”

He settles up in front of the class, and is barely thirty seconds into his speech, when there’s a knock on the door.

A gruff man of about forty is poking his head in the door, looking straight at Eric.

“Sorry to interrupt, Teach, but you called about some cold air?” says the man.

My professor says nothing, sitting in the back of the room, blending in perfectly. It seems he’s going to let this roll.

“Yeah, dude, the heater’s blowing out cold air,” Eric says.

“All right, give me a second, I’ll take a look,” he says.

He strides across the room, over to the heater directly beside me.

“No problem,” Eric says, stacking a pile of papers on the podium, “I’ll be up here doing…professor…type…things.”

Everyone in the class snickers, but the repair man takes no notice.

“Yeah, I’m gonna’ have to open this sucker up. It’s gonna’ be pretty loud. I’ll come back when your class lets out. How much time?”

A huge smile spreads across Eric’s face, as he glances at his watch,

“Make it five minutes,”

My professor looks Eric dead in the face, and shakes his head back and forth in a stern manner.

“Better yet,” Eric says, “Make it half an hour, the smile gone from his face.

“All right, Teach, I’ll be back at ten-thirty, then,” he says, as he walks out of the classroom.

The professor finally speaks.

“You handled that pretty well, ‘Teach’,” he says laughing, “Why don’t you finish your speech,”

Eric finished up. I couldn’t tell you whether or not he did well, for I sat in my seat and doodled in my notebook. I just needed space in my head. I needed time to be blank.

“Duncan, you’re up next.”. My professor’s words bring me back to the hear and now. The man that consoled me at the top of the stairs rises from his seat, and walks up to the podium.

“My name is Duncan, and my speech covers the topic of assisted suicide,” he says, looking out over the class. I feel a twinge of pain in my stomach.

“Euthanasia,” he continues, “is the act of assisting a terminally ill person in suicide. It is legal, but heavily monitored and regulated by the government, in only a few states.”

“I don’t know if any of you besides the professor are old enough to remember this, but in the eighties, Dr. Jack Kevorkian took part in over one hundred and thirty assisted suicides. He believed in the right to die by choice, and with dignity,”

“He would start an I.V. drip which would put the patient in a coma, followed by a massive dose of lethal drugs. It’s just like dying peacefully in your sleep,”

The twinge grows into a pang.

“He was brought up on murder charges, and lost his license to practice medicine. He was accused of playing God, and breaking the Hippocratic Oath, never to do any harm to a patient purposely,”

“He felt, though, that by practicing euthanasia, he was upholding the Hippocratic Oath. He could not let his terminally ill patients suffer in good conscience. He gave them a choice, which some of them took advantage of,”

“Is that wrong? Is this immoral? Was he indeed playing God? Or was he an angel of mercy? Was he a good man who offered a release from a dishonorable and drawn out death. A murderer….or a saint?”

He steps down from the podium.

No applause.

No questions.

No nothing.

Crickets.

‘Thank you, Duncan, that was very enlightening,” my professor finally says, “But I have a question.”

“Sure,” Duncan says, waiting patiently.

“You didn’t come right out and say it, and I always assume, but what is your view?” He asks, his chin resting on his palm.

“I work at a hospital. I take care of terminally ill patients. I’ve been doing it for fourteen years. The first few years were rough. I took a lot of what I saw home with me, in my head, you know? After a while, you stop holding onto it. You still work with compassion, and empathize with your patients, but you leave it there,”

“My aunt was diagnosed with cancer several years ago. She beat it. She went through radiation treatment, the whole nine yards, and she beat it. A few years later, it had come back. She was given six, seven months to live. She lived for another year and nine months,”

“The last nine months of her life were agonizing. She laid in bed, and as a caregiver, I took care of her. I fed her, and bathed her, and dressed her. I watched her suffer.”

That hurtful pang in my stomach is now a thumping war drum. My eyes begin to well up with tears.

He continues.

“I will tell each and every one of you, without shame or inhibition, if I could have let her die peacefully and painlessly, I would have. I’d have done it a thousand times over, and a thousand times after that,”

The ultra-conservative woman in the class interjects.

“It’s immoral. You have no right to play God, and suicide is a mortal sin, punished by an eternal stay in hell,” She says, hints of anger and disgust in her voice.

Duncan simply looks at her, refusing to sink into a religious debate. Yet again, there’s silence throughout the classroom.

I decide to break it.

“My grandfather died on Saturday,” I say.

Nobody says a word. A few people are holding their breaths.

“His, uh, his blood was infected from a complication with his gallbladder. It spread to his heart. He died of heart failure four days ago. He sat in a hospital bed in utter, savage agony for eight days before he died.”

The tears start to flow from my eyes. I look directly at Jocelyn, the religious conservative, who’s sitting at her desk with a horrified look on her face.

“He was a husband, a father, my grandfather, and a great grandfather. He was a mechanic, and engineer. He was a veteran of World War II. He fought for his country without regard for himself,”

A smile spreads across my face, cutting through the tears. I speak.

“He loved trains, fascinated by them. He taught me all about them,”

Duncan begins to smile.

“He was a hero to me, and my family, and he deserved to die with dignity, and of his own accord. If I could have done that for him, I would have, a thousand times over, and a thousand times after that,”

Duncan pats me on the back as everyone offers their condolences. I wipe the tears from my face, and try to smile at everyone.

I realize that the worst is over.

The world is a better place now.

I can barely breath. My pack and a half a day habit is inhibiting my ability to keep up. The rain is heavy. It falls in sheets, making hard sounds on ever surface it hits. It’s almost deafening. Lightning strikes somewhere off in the distance. The rumble of thunder temporarily drowns out the sound of the rain. Streetlights throw a haze to the midnight air. It’s all very beautiful. I’ve never been here before, but I know the beach is not far ahead. The faint sound of waves crashing is getting stronger. Our heads peek over the hill in front of us, the first thing we see- a tumultuous wave crashing down on the shore, gives me tingles down my spine. We blow passed the wooden gates, and down the boardwalk leading down to the beach at a full sprint. The awesome sight of enormous waves rising and crashing is the perfect climax to this moment. We’re on the beach, now, running on the wet sand to the shoreline like our lives depended on it. Like we’d never see water again.

Thunder makes the ground quake. We stop at the waterline just in time to see lightning strike the water miles offshore. It illuminates the sky for a few fleeting moments. In that instant, we see the mortally gray clouds, roaming the sky like giant buffalo. Every drop of rain is visible for barely the length of a single heart beat. I have no time to catch my breath before she’s off again, tearing a foaming trail through the dark, opaque water. She stops, the water up to her knees. Her head tilts back, staring skyward, as she spreads her arms out wide, accepting the moments unfolding around her. The water laps at her thighs, begging her to venture forward. 

I stand, arms folded, taking in the night. The thick air smells sweet with rain. The woman in front of me turns, a wicked smile on her face. Her eyes are alive with the exuberance of the waves around her. She’s infallibly beautiful, standing there, nearly as naked as God made her. Her body is slick with rainwater. It shines and gleams as another bolt of lightning strikes the sea behind her. She embodies the night. Soaking, fleeting, gorgeous. Electric.

She makes her way back to me, slowly, water churning with each step. She says something, but her angelic voice is muffled by another roll of thunder. She takes my hand, and leads me out to the water. It chills my bare feet, shooting numbness up from my ankles and through my shins. The water chases my blood away. Still further, we trudge, splashing water in all directions. The blood has returned to my legs, and I feel the water is actually quite warm.

She pulls me further. Lightning illuminates the look on her face. That wicked smile. That electric current rippling through her eyes, complementing the current at our legs. The water pulls out, removing layers of sand beneath our feet. She halts suddenly, the smile gone, the current still at full force. She surveys the water, and the horizon, breathing deeply, calming her body.

The rain pounds harder than ever, free falling from the eerily black sky. I can’t imagine a place I’d rather be. She’s still clutching my hand, holding it in deep reverence, appreciating the unbridled beauty of each moment. A part of me will roam that beach forever, waiting eternally for that perfect storm, and longing for the company of that beautiful soul that led me here in the first place.

tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

Uhh. I don’t remember? Womp womp.