Bruce Man

Bruce Man

         • Nausea and vomiting
         • Weakness, fatigue, exhaustion, fainting
         • Dehydration
         • Hair loss
         • Ulceration of the esophagus, stomach or intestines
         • Vomiting blood
         • Bloody stool
         • Bleeding from the nose, mouth, gums, and rectum
         • Bruising
         • Sloughing of skin
         • Open sores on the skin

         Bruce reread the symptoms on the page in front of him. They were in a chapter titled Radiation Exposure. It had taken the doctor a while to find the page. He explained that he didn’t hear of these things often. The one thing that Bruce really cared about was the one thing the doctor couldn’t tell him. How long did he have? He decided the doctor was useless. The book knew more than both of them. The doctor yelled as Bruce ripped out the page. Bruce hated yelling and he hated incompetent doctors even more. This guy was disposable.

         Bruce wiped the blood off his gun. It would take a lot longer to clean the rest of the room. He didn’t bother. He shambled out the doctor’s office door, shuffled across the parking lot and sat in his car. He sat there thinking about where to go and came up with nothing. You tell yourself that when something like this happens that you will make everything alright, have everything in order before the end. But where do you even begin? After a lifetime of dodging issues, even a terminal diagnosis wasn’t enough to immediately spur him into action. One problem was that he didn’t know how long death would take, but then again he definitely knew it was coming. Bruce worked as a limo driver for certain shady business men, so he didn't exactly have a 401k plan, or life insurance for that matter.

Letting out a long, slow sigh, Bruce decided that it made the most sense to start with his family. Get the tough ones out of the way first. Yeah right. He doubted they even wanted to see him, much less hear his sad story. Ah, well what did he have to lose? He would be dead soon and it would all be over. Or would it? Bruce ran his hands through his hair, trying to build up the nerve. The hair stayed in his hands. He had better hurry. And find a hat.

         Knocking on the door, Bruce grimaced in pain. Blood and skin were left on the door. He barley managed to wipe it off when his daughter opened the door, saw who it was, and slammed it again. Bruce was halfway back to his car when he turned around. He had driven thirty minutes to come here. To this horribly peach colored eyesore his daughter Gina called home. That was thirty minutes of his deteriorating life that he had used up, and he was going to at least talk to the bitch. Kicking the door open almost made Bruce pass out with pain. She was screaming now, calling him a psycho. She was right he guessed. When she stopped screaming and was just glaring at him, he began.

“I’m dying.” He said.

"I don’t care!” yelled Gina. It hurt his ears. He decided to hurt her back.

         He grabbed her by the hair, and pinned her against the wall. At least her haired stayed in. Gina was scared now, her kid was crying somewhere, his grandson. Yeah right. The kid was a year old before Bruce even knew he existed. Some grandpa he was. As he stared into Gina’s scared eyes, he wanted to undo all the pain he had caused her. He wanted to be there all those times she had asked her mom where daddy was. He wanted to be able to tell her what he really did for a living when she was a kid. He wanted to communicate all these feelings to her, but instead Bruce head-butted her unconscious. He was never a great talker.

         Standing over his grandson’s crib, Bruce tried to remember his name. Chris? John? Dan? He probably wasn’t even close. The head-butt had given him a splitting headache. He hoped Gina’s was worse. Not having anything to say to the child staring up at him, Bruce took a hat lying in the kid’s crib and put it on. It was hopelessly too small, but it would have to do for now. He left the house and got back in his car. The visit had been somewhat unsatisfying. His next stop would probably even worse. His ex-wife lived near.

She saw him coming up the driveway.

“If you come one step closer, I’ll call the fucking cops! Why are you here?”

“I’m dy..” Bruce vomited in her garden. It hurt a lot. The pain was getting worse.

         “Oh, that’s nice” yelled his ex-wife Beatrice. “You have a restraining order that says that you can’t come within 50 feet of me or Gina. So FUCK OFF!” She slammed the door shut. Bruce wished that he had some gum. Also, he needed a new shirt. His nose was bleeding freely now. This was going to get messy before the end. Instead of kicking the door in, this time Bruce just shot off the knob. The noise would attract neighbors, but he would be long gone by then. Besides, what did prison mean to him now?

Beatrice knew him better than his daughter, she was already hanging up the phone.

         “They are on the way you maniac” Beatrice said. She was remarried now, to a lawyer. They seemed to be doing well, except for the fact that the house looked like it hadn’t been cleaned for ages. The trash was overflowing, cat hair was omnipresent. What was the lawyer’s name? Pete, Phil, something with a “P”. He had to sit down. Thinking really hurt his head. Bruce plopped on Beatrice’s couch.

         “Why are you here? Why do you have the hat I gave to Gina’s baby on your head? Didn’t you just hear me say that I called the cops?” These were just some of the questions that Beatrice rattled off before Bruce could answer any of them. He just sat there.

         “Patrick! Get your ass out here!” screamed Beatrice. Patrick must be the name he had been trying to think of. Patrick must be the toad Beatrice was screwing. Patrick must die.

         He came ambling into the living room with a ‘who me’ look on his face. His answer was a .45 bullet crushing his sternum. Beatrice flipped. She sat in a corner wailing like a police siren. No, wait that really was a police siren. Beatrice hadn’t been kidding. Now there was dead Patrick on the floor. It was time to bolt. Bruce jerked her to her feet and marched out the front door, across the vomit-strewn lawn and into the back seat of his car. Then it was back to Gina’s. He was improvising, and dying.

“I am going in to get Gina.” Bruce said. It hurt to talk now, his voice garbled.

“Stay put”.

Beatrice sat there in shock. She was beautiful.

          Gina was still lying where he had left her, slowly regaining consciousness. Bruce grabbed her up, and had her in the back seat with Beatrice before she knew what was going on. Next, Bruce debated whether to take along the kid or not. It was his grandson after all, kind of. He decided to get him, he would need someone to talk to on this trip and the wide-eyed face seemed willing to listen instead of yell. It was while carrying him out the front door that Bruce came into conflict with the local police.

         Before they could even start their ‘freeze’ bullshit, Bruce opened up with his .45, tearing holes into everything indiscriminately. The truth was that he couldn’t see too well. It worked though, because soon Bruce, Beatrice, Gina, and the kid whose name he couldn’t remember, were tearing down the interstate in Bruce’s limo. Inside, Gina and Beatrice were slowly regaining their confidence and were demanding things of Bruce. As in, where he was going, what he had done, and what the hell was wrong with him. Bruce pulled the sheet of symptoms out of his pocket to show them what was happening to him, but instead he screeched into a gas station.

         Closing the trunk made Gina and Beatrice’s voices much less irritable. Gina’s baby smiled when Bruce got back into the car without the banshees. Bruce liked him for that. He decided to call him Jones. Bruce got back onto interstate and resumed his quest.

         Stopping at the gas station gave the cops time to regroup. Also, Bruce saw a worker in a paper hat staring at his bloody clothes and talking into a phone. He didn’t look so good. With a nosebleed that couldn’t be stopped, and his ears leaking something, monsters looked friendlier. Gina’s baby was a real sport though. Even when Bruce emptied his gun at the chasing patrol cars, he didn’t cry, he just slightly winced at the noise. In another world, Bruce would have made Jones into one hell of a man. Then Bruce vomited on the windshield.

         This wasn’t ordinary vomit, this was bloody, chunky dark vomit that couldn’t be seen through or wiped off. It stunk. Now Jones was crying. Now Bruce was leaning out of the window to see, with shots being fired from behind his head. It was not good times.

         Through his oozing eyes, Bruce didn’t see the bend in the road or the oak tree. The limo tore in half and flipped a few times. Gina and Beatrice were crushed together in the trunk. The emergency crews only thought to look in the truck because of their blood oozing out of a broken taillight. Jones was ejected from the vehicle out the windshield and lay in a pile some fifty feet away, still and peaceful.

         Bruce was alive when they cut the driver’s side door away. He was hopelessly pinned between the seat and steering wheel, with his face smashed in on the broken windshield. He was broken in half. He would die when they moved him. He would die anyway. Bruce tried not to think. He tried not to reflect. He only wanted everything to be alright. The paramedics thought they heard him say, ‘kill me, kill me’, but there was no way someone could talk in Bruce’s condition. It was over.

End