The Delivery

Jonathon rose from his tattered, ancient recliner with difficulty and turned, teetering precariously, to begin his laborious trek into the kitchen. He paused every now and then to catch his breath and rasp into a rag he held in his left hand. Sometimes he couldn't hit the rag and yellow mucus stains on his white undershirt were the result. Another uneventful day, like all of them lately. The home health nurse stopped by to help him bathe and she tried to talk him into having a woman in to clean. She didn't understand that he needed his things around him; any stranger wouldn't have proper respect for them.

Reaching his destination, Jonathon opened the fridge and with a shaking, bony hand, withdrew another beer, the generic kind he used to despise. He leaned against the fridge door to open it and take a long deep drink, and as he lowered it he began to rasp again and was forced to set the beer on the grimy floor to wipe his mouth. He knew his house disgusted that nurse. She'd walk in being falsely cheerful every week, but her nose would wrinkle, her brow would sag. Eventually she would mention about the woman in to clean, and Jonathon would politely refuse. He shuffled in threadbare slippers to the bedroom where he sat on the edge of his bed, took a swig of beer, and idly flicked a roach off the top of the can as he set it on a spot-stained bed table. Tomorrow it would happen. Tomorrow.

His dreams were colored, vibrant. Inside his head he was still on top, women fighting to be near him, men scrambling to shake his hand. They all wanted to be caught in that humming, pulsating glow, encompassed by the magnetic pull of his essence. Slowly though, even in his dreams, they mutated. Seemingly kind Faces turned ugly and fingers poked at him, morphing into sharp talons, digging into his skin. Blood trickled at first, then flowed. But still they clawed, they bit, they chewed, jaws moving viciously up and down while they continued to tear at reddened, wounded flesh. They were carnivores and they carried pens, sharp pens that stabbed into him and remained stuck as if he were one of the bulls in Spain. And like those bulls, in a haze of red, he waited for his dying chance at revenge.

He was startled awake, gasping for breath in a hoarse sort of whisper. Someone was banging on the front door. He squinted at dim light breaking through thin curtains and heaved up, shaking cotton out of his gray head as he moved to the door. On his sagging porch sat the box, the one he was waiting for weeks to recieve, the one he'd dreamed about since becoming aware of its existence. Just some things from the old days, the caller said. Some unimportant things they found in the theatre, in the dressing room he had once shared with no one, because big-name stars don't share. He rose up to puff an emaciated chest and emitted a reedy twitter.

Then he bent and grunted, pulling it inside, and after struggling mightily to get it open, heart thudding so painfully he had to sit and catch his labored breath, he reverently began to lift out pictures, awards, assorted memorabilia. Thirty years of memories, euphoric to his senses, had been packed into the box, along with a check. The amount of the check was unimportant to Jonathon. The point was that someone, anyone, was willing to spend money on his things. Not much sold at the auction, he'd been told, when it all went up on the block. But enough. Perhaps he still had a chance. His wrinkled, ruddy face began to shine. Maybe those journalistic vultures hadn't ruined him completely with their rapier, talon-like pens. He could begin again, start over, continue to entertain and-

And then he began to cough, racking, hacking spasms that rocked him and had him lying prostrate on the floor. He didn't care, he thought as he lay gasping, rheumy eyes luminous. He knew he would be remembered. And really, isn't that all that truly matters?