Things Worse Than Anguish

Really angry now, Morris snapped. “I’m not, and it wouldn’t be any business if . . . “

“Take, for example, that book you’re writing,” Lester plowed ahead, as if Morris had said nothing. He tapped a finger on the papers he’d brought, the automatic writing. “You’ll never finish it.”

“I…what?”

“Two reasons for that. First, because you’ve basically realized that you have no talent for that sort of thing. I mean, your first book was all right, but that was really your doctoral dissertation, and you had your major professor to edit it line by line, page by page, until it made sense. Your second book, well, that was a mess. I’ve tried to read it. Sentences go whirling into infinity. Logical connections get tossed out the window.”

Morris felt the fury take him. He meant to say something cutting . . . to yell …even to stand and threaten physical violence.

But he couldn’t move!

Lester continued without seeming to notice his paralysis. “Second, because you don’t give a damn any more. Years ago, you woke up and realized you were just going through the motions. Everyday, every passing day, it’s a gets a little more tedious for you. The papers sent off to ‘Prestigious Journals.’ The snide comments you put on student’s work. The office politics. The way you sit on grant committees and deny funding to all and sundry . . . regardless of the value of the projects . . . simply because you can. And because that’s the way it’s done.”

Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he speak? He tried to move his arms, his head, his body . . . he couldn’t. He felt as though were buried in something. A hot, viscous liquid … like molten glass.

Lester spoke on. He tilted his head, like a dog. “And you’ve begun to hate it all. You hate it the way a man on death row starts to hate the walls of his cell, the calendar, the other prisoners, his guards. Begins to hate even his own lawyers, and the endless appeals that keep him alive. He begins to long for the chair, the chamber, the lethal injection that drips cold death into your veins. It would be a relief.”

He couldn’t breathe! He couldn’t cry out. He felt he was strangling. He had a visions of human bodies piled in great heaps…

“I think it is all rather horrible really. I mean, your life.” Lester spoke from some distant place. “Day in and day out. Sort of Sartre, don’t you think. But I can help you. I’m your gateway, you see. I’m the door out.”

He could move again! He gasped and choked. Dear God. What had happened to him? Dear Christ. He glanced up, found Lester’s red and yellow eyes looking down at him.

He found the breath to curse him. “Why didn’t you help me, damn you?”

“Because you didn’t ask.” The eyes continued their pitiless regard of him. “But, I repeat my offer. If you ever do want to escape . . really escape . . . just call. I’ll do what I can.”

“Go to hell.”

The man in dark leather smiled again. “Now there’s an interesting concept. All that nonsense about eternal suffering. As if.” He laughed. “As if there aren't things much, much worse than mere anguish."

Then, with a last “good night,” he turned on his heel and was gone.