The Bubblegum Goons- Chapter 2 1st Draft

I didn’t know him very well. He was quite reclusive and never liked talking to anyone that much. But I went to visit him in the hospital all the same. I don’t think I will ever forget all those tubes and machines. How much time we spend running away from these places, only to be wheeled into them, by the people we thought we could trust.

The silence was painful. It was the kind of silence people often say something stupid to break. I could only think of really ominous demoralizing things, the kind of sentences your brain comes up with when your trying not to think of the most inappropriate comment you could make. I though I would buck the trend and not say anything. So we sat there looking at each other intently. Him with his tubes and machines and me with my box of chocolates and get well soon card. Both of which now seemed like bad jokes. The chocolates because he couldn’t eat solids and the card because, well everyone kind of knew.

His funeral was at 9.00 the following Saturday. I watched the precession from a distance. I didn’t want to look like one of those shitty movie stars all out in the open like they’ve got some big statement to make and know some terrible secret, but in the woods near the yard so no one could see me. After the vicar had spoken and all the guests had scattered off towards their cars I trundled out of my hiding place.

His name was Peter Simmons. And although his death was but a tiny splash in an ocean of history, to me it meant something. He had been a janitor at the hotel I sometimes worked at. I did not really know anymore about him than that and the fact that his lungs had packed up. I had barely said hello to the man or held any sort of conversation with him for the entire time I was there. But when I looked down into his grave on that balmy July morning, I felt like a Loman brother.