If You’re Afraid Of Death, You’ll Never Want To Hear What Happens When It Doesn’t Quite Take
There was a time when I was controversial, but society swayed heavily in my favor the past two decades. There used to be debate about whether or not I should go to prison, whether or not I was a murderer.
By 
Jack Follman
I couldn’t believe what I was looking at it when I saw it. Sitting in a motorized wheelchair was a green and purple, swollen blob of a human being I could barely recognize as Big Jim. This is what patients usually looked like a day or two after my final treatment, like some kind of hideous dead Jabba The Hutt – bruised, swollen, dying pussballs, but Big Jim appeared to be still alive and breathing.
“I look like hell, don’t I?” Big Jim said with the hint of a laugh. “You should have finished me off doctor death boy. That was your mistake.”
“I was just doing my job,” I pleaded. “I just did what your daughter told me you wanted.”
“My daughter, ha. Should have known not to trust her again. You too.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it’s okay.”
Big Jim interrupted himself by spitting a horrible greenish, yellow loogie in my direction.
“I’m going out real soon anyway, I just don’t like the way you work. You drive around fucking killing people, how do you do that and sleep at night?”
“It’s not how you think it is.”
“I don’t give a shit. Like I told you, I’m already dead. I just want you to feel like shit for it before I go,” Big Jim stammered with his purple eyes glued to me. “And I want you to know one more thing.”
Big Jim pulled a large, silver pistol out of his pocket. I dove back out of his line of sight. He moved his wheelchair up and laid his eyes back upon me.
“Don’t you fuckin worry. I won’t shoot you if you don’t move again doc. This thing here’s for me. I just want you to know something. You know when you went into the station back there to pay for your gas?”
I did. I nodded with a horrible feeling developing in my gut.
“You left your smokes on your dash while you went in and I turned the table on you. You know what arsenic does?”
I nodded.
“Well in case you don’t, you’re going to find out since you smoked those Camels boy. Oh boy you will, it’s probably already started. Wonder why you’re so tired?”
Big Jim started to laugh, my entire body burned. I fell to my feet and started to weep, felt the urge to vomit as I stared at the dirty carpet of the living room. Until I heard the eardrum-bursting sound of a gunshot erupt from the kitchen.
