Carcinogen

Photo by Mathew MacQuarrie on Unsplash

The blackout curtains secure the darkness of the room as the sun bounces through the midday sky. There I lay on my square sectional couch comfortable enough to keep me from wanting to move, but not enough to cause me to forget my mental state. Square cutouts of material give way in resistance to my body weight and frame as I repeat the laying position that I have been in so many times before. The television is on a low hum, I am using the subtitles to read the words spoken by characters in an episode of “Once Upon A Time,” a Disney series that has just about undone every childhood fairytale I have ever read about.

Uuugghhhh!! I am so comfortable, but nature calls. I slowly wrestle with the arms of my blanket in an effort to escape to the first-floor bathroom. Each step toward the bathroom echoes the grumblings of annoyance as I live out the results of trying to drink more water.

They say you are supposed to drink half your body weight in water as a standard of health. Who is “they” anyway? What the hell do they know?! I figure if I actually met that goal consistently, I’d drown in my own piss because I’d refuse to get off the couch every time nature called me. I figure sensory adaptation would allow me to eventually ignore the stench and be content laying in my urine.

That’s such a gross thought.

Now that I have completed my bathroom experience while living in a mental fantasy of what I’d do if it didn’t warrant a sure ticket to a mental health facility, I wander into the kitchen to see what I can eat to serve my desire for taste and leave my nutritional needs void of fulfillment. As I walk into the kitchen a dusty heavyset man is sitting on a stool over the vent next to the trash. His eyes are a clear blue taunting the rest of his face with the threat of a wash it hasn’t experienced in days. The smell of him nearly causes me to faint as the sound of the stench grows stronger. I must employ my ears to help manage the smell. As I sift through the vibrations of my senses, I narrow in on the visual evidence of the cigarette burning under the ragged dirty blonde mustache hair coated in the gray dust of age and burning ashes. My eyes widen in fear that he will burn off the hair above or below his lips and chin; not that any of it will be missed. There is so much of it that I can barely make out his face.

He doesn’t speak to me. He stares back at me in the same way that I am staring at him in reflection that one of us doesn’t belong. I am not afraid, though, I am utterly disgusted; even more, as my eyes graze the image of his bare feet and body loosely wrapped in a t-shirt and sweatpants that mimic the decorative patterns of molded Swiss cheese.

He continues to draw from the cigarette in his mouth, but it doesn’t seem to shrink in the burning of cancer that fills our lungs. While releasing his breath he expels a thick cloud of sickness that all my senses seem to reach out in haste to receive. I don’t cough or react to the experience. I stand there in the discomfort of the smoke I just inhaled.

Finally, I think to myself: “I need to say something. I need to get this man out of my house!”

I open my mouth to speak, and his facial structure mimics my own.

“Who are you?” I ask. “Who are you?” They ask at the exact same time.

“Stop mimicking me and answer the question!” I feel my anger and confusion rising as they say the exact same thing at the same time as me again. I realize they are not mimicking me because there is no time between my words and theirs.

What the hell is going on?!

“Please get out of my house!” My nostrils flair, my voice deep with authority elevating the volume of my anger.

Again, they say the same words at the same time.

Am I losing my mind?!

I calm down enough to realize that their body language, emotional expressions, and tone have not changed at all. Even in the experience of them stealing the words from my mind before they come out of my mouth; nothing has changed about them. In a moment of overwhelming frustration, I smack my palms against my face and upon pulling them away I nearly faint from what I see. My once golden brown melanated hands are pale white with nails hoarding enough dirt to plant a garden. I immediately begin to examine the rest of my body and I see fat hairy arms that suddenly feel heavy and itchy. My stomach is expanded, my legs too heavy, my hair is gone, and I feel like the man I don’t know who is sitting on the stool in my kitchen. After examining myself I look around to see what else has changed and I taste the cancer of the cigarette in my mouth as I draw a deep drag of nicotine seeking relief from what I see next.

The man, I mean the woman, I mean ME! I am tall with long thick legs expressed out of my round hips; wearing my grey terry cloth pajama set, bonnet still snuggling my locks for safe keeping, and everything about my face is what I saw in the mirror when I finished using the bathroom just a few minutes or hours ago as I have lost connection with the use of time.

I am sitting on the stool in the clothes I was wearing. My legs daintily crossed with my spine straight and shoulders back. A slight smirk appears on my face. The first independent sign of communication since this encounter started.

I rise quickly and authoritatively and command me to leave. I am afraid and confused so I run for the front door with the cigarette locked between my new hairy upper lip and beard. I think about shoes, but I am so afraid that there is no time. I find myself down the street in a church parking when I finally stop running. I am bewildered and frantically trying to get a hold of myself.

I grab the package of Sorrento sliced cheese out of the refrigerator and a stack of Ritz crackers from the pantry next to the bathroom. I walk in for what was meant to be a brief moment to examine the results of cancer that has overtaken my body. On October 13th, 2022, my oncologist called informing me that I have stage 4 lung cancer. It is now February 13th, 2023, and I have lost everything, but the cancer itself. No treatment was strong enough to sustain any semblance of life. Each treatment took more from me than I could afford to give and offered nothing in return. I feel like I am running away from myself as I no longer recognize who I am.

The irony of it all is that I have never smoked a day in my life.