But Tate didn’t seem too concerned about whether Jonah wanted to play or not. He said, “Working your ass off, hey bro?”
“Yep,” Jonah said, just wanting his food to get there so he could eat and go home. There were reports to call in tomorrow, and maybe if he got started early and skipped the pot on Saturday, he’d have a little time to veg Sunday night.
“It’s going to be getting warmer soon, bro. You ought to try and take a little time off so you can enjoy it.”
Jonah smirked. “I could take a vacation, a week, maybe two. Then what? I’ll still have to come back and be miserable again.”
Tate shrugged.
Jonah continued, venting. “I’d have SSI cut back the cases they send, if I thought it would do any good.”
“Nah,” Tate said. “You’d still do the same thing. Instead of obsessing over forty cases, you’d spend a little extra time obsessing over the remaining twenty or thirty.”
“You’re right,” Jonah said, almost vindictively. “Hell, it wouldn’t be so bad, if I didn’t have so much time between the time I saw each client and the time I called the reports in. I call in Monday’s reports on Friday, Tuesday’s on Saturday, then rush like a mad man to finish up on Sunday.”
Speaking rapidly, Tate said, “And having to remember would be hard for anybody, especially after seeing that caseload. Then, on top of that, the time lag increases the chances that you could make a mistake, which pulls on your obsessive nature.”
Jonah hated it when Tate referred to his obsessive nature. But Tate was right, so Jonah nodded his agreement.
“So take out the time lag,” Tate said, as if it were as simple as flipping a switch.
Jonah laughed with exasperation, but lightly, because he was so tired. “And how do you propose I do that?”
Again, Tate spoke as if what he proposed was simple. “Get some of the reports done at work. David did, didn’t he? So why can’t you?”
Jonah didn’t answer. He didn’t answer because he and Tate both knew the answer already. There was usually time between clients, and, with a client fresh on his mind, Jonah was sure he could read in the report in half the time it usually took him. But he needed that time between each client.
“How much you smoking now, bro?” Tate asked.
Jonah shrugged, pretending he didn’t know. “A little more than I used to.”
Tate smiled, arrogantly. “Going through a couple of cartons a week, huh?”
Tate was not far off. Jonah had pretty much doubled up in about all of his smoking slots. It was now two after each meal, two after each client, two after calling in each report. “Forget it, Tate,” Jonah said. “I’m not quitting.”
Tate shrugged, as if indifferent. He threw his hands to the side and held them there for a few seconds. “All right, bro,” he said, then put his hands down. He was quiet for a little while. Then, in a low but highly accelerated voice, he said, “I’d just quit myself. That way I could call in my reports as soon as I finished them, so I’d be able to have a life outside of work, but what the fuck do I know.”
“Fuck you,” Jonah said, which brought up Tate’s intense glare. Jonah just looked away and again said, “Fuck you.”
About a minute later, Jonah said, “I think I will cut back, though. On the assessments, I mean. I won’t make as much money, but it will buy me some free time. Money’s not everything.”
Jonah wished he could take the last statement back. So trite. So obvious in its purpose. The kind of statement that made Tate lick his chops.
In a cloying voice, Tate said, “Money’s not everything. That’s a very good rationalization.” He did his wicked, high-pitched laugh. “Smoking, on the other hand, is everything. You could have them both, the money and the free time to spend it. But you’re right, bro. Who needs that, when smoking is such a pleasure?”
Jonah thought Tate was probably doing two things at once: He was helping his friend, and he was getting a payoff. He was helping Jonah by trying to convince him to strive for all he could get, not settle for what his limitations offered. But Tate wasn’t just coming right out and saying this. No, he was mocking Jonah. He was messing with Jonah. He was playing a game, and playing the game was Tate’s payoff.
“How long have you smoked, bro?” Tate asked.
Jonah’s mind flashed back to a night with one of his mother’s men. Clarkson was his name. Jonah had tried cigarettes before he met Clarkson. But with their harshness on his virgin throat, they hadn’t taken. But Clarkson had taught him how to get past that initial harshness. All you had to do was take a few shots of whiskey to numb your throat. After a few trials, Jonah hadn’t needed the whiskey anymore. Yeah, thanks to Clarkson’s assistance, Jonah was slowly killing himself.
“Since I was fourteen,” Jonah told Tate.
“Wow!” Tate said. “Have you quit since that time?”
Jonah laughed. “For like a day, on a few different occasions.”
Tate smiled, pleasantly, and not fake either. He said, “So think about this, bro. You’ve smoked over half your life.”
“So?”
“So, you probably don’t remember what it’s like to not smoke.”
Reflexively, Jonah tried to remember. But there was no memory there. Only fear. It frightened him to even think about facing his life without the little companions that were so much a part of his existence.
“No, I don’t,” Jonah said. “And I’m not sure I want to.”
Tate smiled his challenge. “Not even for a few days?”
Jonah thought about that. It was somewhat less frightening.
“Give it one week, bro. Then you’ll know what the world is like without cigarettes. If you hate it, you can always go back.”
Again, Jonah considered it. “A week, huh.”
Tate threw his hands to the side. “We’ll call it an experiment.”
#
The day after Tate proposed his experiment, Jonah called SSI and told them he wanted to take a vacation sometime in the near future. The clients being scheduled a month in advance, Jonah had to wait.
On a Thursday night, four weeks after the experiment was proposed, Jonah walked out of his office building with about forty reports to be called in. He skipped dinner with Tate, and he skipped getting high. It was still late Sunday when he finished calling the reports in, but he had the next seven days off. Tired and fearful that he wouldn’t be able to pull it off, Jonah went outside into the night and smoked one last cigarette. The next day, the experiment began.
#
Jonah woke up early but prolonged getting out of bed, slipping in and out of sleep a few times. It was around 10AM when he finally got up. He usually took a cup of coffee outside with him to have with his first cigarette. This morning, he did the same thing but without the cigarette. In his head, Jonah could feel himself going through the motions, lighting up, sucking in, like it was natural, but it wasn’t very hard to forgo smoking. Yet.
During the planning stages, Tate had said, “Your OCD mind is like a trap. So if you want to let go of something, you’ll have to let go of it completely.” That meant no surrogates of smoking, such as the patch or nicotine gum, which would probably just be something else for Jonah to hang onto. He had to go cold turkey.
The first two hours were more of the same. Against his will, his mind kept feeding Jonah the motions of smoking, and with those motions, he could taste the tobacco and got just a hint of what the relief would feel like. Still, it wasn’t that hard. Then, shortly after noon, the memory came out of nowhere. “You ruined my life!” his mother had screamed at him. “I was young. I was supposed to be out with my friends, not running away.”
Boom! He was supposed to smoke. The inner turmoil would cease with the first breath of a Camel.
“Spend some money,” Tate had said. “Surround yourself with other pleasures. Then, when the urge to smoke gets heavy, fulfill another urge to get your mind off of it.”
Jonah got out the bag of candy, a variety of minia
ture Hershey’s chocolate bars. He took them to the couch. With trembling hands, he unwrapped the first bar and stuck it in his mouth. He held it on his tongue, letting it melt slowly. It didn’t make him forget about smoking, but, as Tate had said, it took the edge off. But the effect of the chocolates wore off, and they grew tasteless. Jonah got up to satisfy another addiction. He brewed coffee. The first few sips were mildly soothing. Then, the more he drank, the more he felt like he would puke. It was as if his body had felt the oral sensation and then started to be satisfied, then it said, Oops, that’s caffeine, wrong stimulant. Here’s a little nausea for trying to trick me.
That nausea stayed with him as he did the only thing he felt capable of, staring at the television, and the nausea wasn’t like the variety he was used to. He didn’t feel like he was going to puke. No, puking would require that his body was functioning, and more and more, that wasn’t the case. His brain was nearly gone. He was watching the television but not taking it in. Instead of seeing the picture in front of his eyes, he saw the picture in his head: A cigarette burning, the red tip eating away at the paper. And it wasn’t just a regular cigarette in his head. No, it was a giant cigarette, as round as his entire head. He’d open his mouth as wide as he could and suck as hard as he could.
This was like being sick, but with a major difference; Jonah knew what the cure was, and he knew that cure would be perfectly effective and immediate. In his imagination, he could sense the smoke entering his body and making all of his symptoms dissolve. The smell of the tobacco, the sensation of it entering his system. The cold sweats going away. The nausea dissipating as the nicotine came in and reclaimed his shaken nerves. Everything’s going to be all right. We left for a little while, but were back now, to mend all that has been broken.
The questions: Why did he want to quit? Was there something that was going to make this worth it in the end? He doubted it. If he didn’t smoke again, would it always feel this way? Yes, at this point, he felt pretty sure it would.
Around four o’clock, Jonah got off the couch. He’d thrown out his last pack the night before. No matter. There was plenty of money to buy his relief. What had he been thinking? He didn’t want to quit smoking. Fuck what Tate would think when he failed. To hell with being able to get the reports done between clients. He probably wouldn’t be able to concentrate enough to do the reports anyway, unless he smoked.
By the time Jonah got out to his car, he already felt some relief. Even if he hadn’t actually smoked one yet, the commitment to smoking one in the near future was something. He was able to concentrate enough to get his car to the corner gas station. A little while later, he was walking to his car, a pack of Camels now in his possession. He didn’t even wait to get home. He tore the wrapper off and threw it on the lot. He opened the foil wrap. He brought out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. He pulled out his lighter.
He stopped. He did the math. It being a little after 4PM now, he had made it over seventeen hours since he last smoked. If he smoked now, he lost those seventeen hours. Jonah took the cigarette from his mouth. He stared at it for about a minute. He was indifferent to the cars passing by, the people in the gas station, the cars at the pumps. He didn’t care that there were undoubtedly some that were staring at him, the strange man standing in the middle of the lot, looking at something in his hand.
Finally, Jonah turned. He picked up the wrapper he had thrown on the ground. He walked over to a trashcan in front of the station. He couldn’t do it, not just yet.
“It’s just an experiment,” he said out loud. “If it doesn’t get better, I just start up again.”
With that, knowing that he could smoke again in the future, Jonah was able to throw the cigarettes away.
#
From the gas station, Jonah had returned home. It was nearly 8PM now, and he was on the couch. The physical DTs were, for the most part, gone. He just felt a slight icy feeling in his head. But now there was the psychological to deal with. Jonah felt empty. For years, cigarettes had supplied him with a constant source of desire and an anticipation of quenching that desire. When things got really bad, there was always lighting up to look forward to. When things that should have made him feel good didn’t—like getting into the Ph.D. program at USC—there was always the celebratory smoke to look forward to. That sequence of desire, anticipation then satisfaction, was constant. It recycled many times during the course of the day. Now that the sequence was gone, Jonah didn’t know how to desire. He tried to think about his future, his money piling up, the expensive vacations he’d be able to buy, a nice car, a nice house, a cabin on the lake with a dock. But all these things seemed bland, because he wasn’t smoking while he had them.
One of the things he’d done after Tate’s “satisfy urges” recommendation was rent pornography. It turned out to be the first time he’d been impotent while doing it on his own. The graphic images, the risqué situations, did nothing for him. He could not desire the beautiful women. He could not desire to be the men. He knew that would change after a smoke. With nicotine in his system, his primal urges would wake up and so would his penis. But for now, it was all just bland.
The worst part about lacking desire was that he thought it might last forever. Would he ever want again? Would anything ever feel good again? Without craving, there was no fulfillment.
That night, Jonah drove up to his office. There, he checked and made sure all the lights were off. Even though the coffeepot had a timer that shut it off two hours after it was turned on, Jonah checked it anyway, just in case the timer had malfunctioned. He checked the phones, making sure he got a dial tone. Then he checked the doors several times. Checking the office when he hadn’t been there for a few days was a bit extreme, even for Jonah, but he chalked the extra compulsions up to the stress he was experiencing. At home, before he went to bed, he checked some more.
#
Jonah had thought sleep would be the easy time, a hiatus from the DTs. He was wrong. He fell asleep fast, and the nightmares came. He was in pain and suffocating, because his chest was caving in. There was something wrong with his eyes. All he could see were the blurry images of human forms around him. He wanted to ask for help, but he couldn’t speak. He wanted to nudge one of them, just to get their attention, so they would be able to see the state he was in and help him, but he couldn’t move.
Jonah woke from this nightmare, but there wasn’t relief. Awake, it was still hard to breathe, as he still felt like his chest was caving in. His head was icy and spinning. He was nauseated. And, once again, he could feel that if he would just smoke one cigarette it would all go away.
It got worse. There were shadows in the room. They darted, one at a time, through the door, and then disappeared into the wall. Jonah lay there, frozen in fear, telling himself it was just a shift in the light coming in from the outside, clouds crossing in front of the moon. Telling himself this worked for a while, until he looked over and noticed that the blinds on his bedroom window were shut.
With that, the shadows stopped coming. He kept his eyes open and stared at the room beyond his bed. Like that, he waited. Nothing, for the longest time. If he wasn’t awake, then this was one hell of a realistic dream. Becoming tired, he starting to blink. He told himself that he could go to sleep and wake up in the light. The light would make things normal again, and maybe the light would make the DTs go away, the craving cease. He was just about to close his eyes for good, when the next shadow came.
But this time it didn’t dart through the room. It crept in. It came right up to the bed, its form human. It stood there and looked down on him. He tried to think of something to do, but fear wouldn’t let him think. He could only be afraid. It was even harder to breathe now. His breath finally ceased altogether. But that was fine. He’d suffocate until he passed out. Then, maybe, the shadow at the foot of his bed would be gone.
But that shadow did not go away. Jonah did not suffocate fast enough. It went down and under the covers. He felt the bed shift as the shadow mov
ed up beside him. He felt its coldness coming up his body, starting with his legs, then up his stomach, his chest, his neck. Then it was breathing its icy breath against his face. Jonah could not move until he felt it stab his ribs. He jolted right out of bed and landed on the floor.
Light. Light would make it go away. Jonah crawled past his bed to the end of the room. He got up on his knees and flipped the light switch. It was gone. There was nothing in his room that wasn’t supposed to be there, and he was fine. Nothing was with him, and he was fine.
He could breathe, and he was breathing fast. There was still pain in his side. He looked where he had felt the shadow jab him. There was an indention there, surrounded by a quarter-sized area of red. The indention was about the size of one of Jonah’s fingernails.
“I jabbed myself,” he whispered. His own whisper scared him. It scared him because he didn’t feel like he was alone. He needed to be quiet.
More light. He was next to the bedroom door, and there was darkness in the hall. Jonah crawled a few feet into the hall and switched on the light. When there was still nothing out of place, he felt a little braver and got to his feet. He took a couple of steps and switched on the bathroom light. Something wasn’t right. But it had been fast, too fast, possibly just his imagination. He did a quick scan. All was fine. But something had been wrong.
Stop scaring yourself more.
Jonah went toward the front of the house. In the hallway was the door to his spare room. He opened the door, then flicked on the light inside that room. He saw only boxes and other things that he’d stored. He went into the living room. There were no overhead lights there, but he switched on the two standing lamps on either side of his couch and the one situated above his computer desk. Nothing there to be frightened of, he went to the adjacent dining area.
This room was already pretty well lit by the lights from the living room, but he flipped on the overhead anyway. The extra light didn’t change anything. The room still contained no monsters. Next was the kitchen. Also safe. At the end of the kitchen was the door to the pantry. This would be harder, the pantry so small, no room to maneuver. With no place to go, whatever might be there would be right on top of him. From the wooden sheath on the counter, Jonah took a serrated knife. He opened the pantry with one hand and swung the knife with the other. He stabbed nothing. He pulled the cord, and that light was on too.
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 7