The Old Man

The man walked slowly towards the door without any moment; his eyes were vacant and his beard was whiter than his loose skin and at the same time was longer than the amount of time that he had lived on this earth. He reached the door and stopped. He noticed a gleam at the side of the carpet and, reacting on his greedy instincts from Vietnam, he picked the coin up in hopes of getting some money to fuel his next dose. He was sorely disappointed when he found that it was an old coin—possibly from the time that he was born. He remembered the good old days where he frolicked in his father’s farm without the shackle of responsibility to chain him to the prison that was life, and he remembered the not-so-good-days which were, ironically, better than he was now—he remembered Vietnam, he remembered the day daddy’s farm was overrun by bandits, the time when he experienced the grief of death…. The memories came rushing back to him; washing over him and making him feel catharsis. His irises suddenly regained color; they returned to the bright red color that they were famous for back in ‘Nam. “By god, what have I been doing,” said the man in a voice more coarse than the bark of an oak tree after seeing the marks of a needle on his arm. He quickly threw the coin to a side and waddled over to the door. A great red flame and loud screams greeted him as he burst the door open.