These nights the black chill comes on real quick—and darker than before—so’s you don’t forget you can’t trust even your own eyes to keep you from stumblin’ over yourself. Nights like these, reason is a little lamp on your nightstand that whispers to your rollin’ ‘round that it ain’t too late to just git up and pour yourself a glass of numb. But it goes down the wrong hole and another, too, and still another, ‘till it leaves you sprawled out in the wet grass thanking Jesus for tall wooden fences and neighbors good enough to pretend they ain’t heard nothin’ last night.

And you cry to yourself and to God for birth and death and the whole rotten show between. And you ask the good Lord why he lets those little demons so close to you and if there ain’t no demons why he gets off on not tellin’ you who you are and what he wants from you. ‘Cause life’s too short to not know what, and if I wasn’t a preacher’s son I was on 4th Street until my cheeks were flush.

And when I wake up in the morning in a pile of my own sick, I wonder what’s the point of being good or bad or anything at all. ‘Cause I done both and I ended up here, while folk better than me have done pretty awful for themselves, while devils in suits get the whole lot in life and pretty tombstones with pretty words on ‘em when they die.

Father, sir, you did a lot of talkin’ about God’s love until I gave you a reason to bring out the belt. And I can’t say I’m mad at you anymore about any of that, ‘cause maybe all you were doin’ all along was showin’ me what God’s love was about. So you beat me. Well, I’m beaten. And I’m red and I’m sore and my eyes are sunk in and so far as I can tell God’s love ain’t nothin’ but a stray bitch on my lawn sniffin’ at my ass at dawn tellin’ me I’m late for work.

Sprawled out there like a squatter in a familiar condemnment—the cable out, the phone line cut, the food rotted, spoiled, festered, putrefied—he alone with his thoughts and all of these goddamn mirrors. And the bottle (empty) and the mailbox (filled):

Letters from friends, from family, why haven’t you called? how are you handling? are you OK? and all the love and the guilt trips, you’ll get through this; late, second, third, final notices followed by notices of discontinuation of service; the grocery store coupons and notifications of subpoenas ad testifacendum and notices of court determination upon defendant’s nolo contendere plea. Outside there was a stack of papers hidden in tin and dictating in reverse chronology the past to which he’d refused to commit as far back as the first unopened postmark, dated July, 23, 2003.

That was when life stopped for Ever Brennan, almost three months back, and he fell into the same wasted position on the same piece of furniture on an evening as dark as this and him too.

The playroom was still littered with the toys his girls played with and his sink was still filled with the dishes his wife had stopped washing and his doorbell was still ringing with the lazy pleas of his prostitute for him to get off your fucking ass and open this fucking door ’cause I’m not coming through the window again.

My crumpled hands strain across white hospital sheets, glide across white hospital sheets, then fresh, pale, sickly. The children all around me clutch recycled stuffed animals with yearning to live. We old men talk about the war. It’s funny, the way death follows your whole life, a silent passenger, the only proven fate after all. We’re born in this sterile gauze; these cotton sheets; bed pans at once both polished and dull from compulsive scrubbing; a single window and shades that don’t keep out the light; the smell of lemon Pledge and an idea of continuity, a room with other babies, the first, unspoken, unconscious thought: one day, I’ll die here.

I’m sick now and it’ll be my time. It’s been a good run and he’s been kind enough to let me think I’ve done a good job cheating. Today, the parts that didn’t belong to someone else are made of metal and plastic. Most of me died gracefully already. The broken bones, wisdom teeth, and the heart, the liver: they all knew when it was time and cracked, pulled, failed from this world, but not me. I refused to go out a martyr.

Those formative years spent at Mercy in the capable hands of Dr. Holder, who I could call Lisa, they were preparation for tomorrow. Until then, these wires and tubes that bring in air and water and liquefied food and blood, and take out piss and shit and bad blood, they’ll keep me company along with the slow, rhythmic pulse of my assisted heartbeat. I’ll cling to them like teddy. And all I can hope for is one chance to slip out of this blank place I’ve lived in for the past six months long enough to spit up undignified and embarrass my children one final, joyous time. I would give anything to breathe something real before I leave this hospital room and this world with the rest of the wires and the machines and every list I ever made and never finished.

It had been years since the war, but there wasn’t a person in Manhattan that could convince John. He fought his battles under the cover of darkness, drunk and sprawled out at the base of his bed. Most nights, he’d face these moments alone in his one-bedroom apartment, with a bottle of Jack Daniels always at arm’s reach, but once in a while he’d grant himself the luxury of being alone in public. The great thing about the city, he conceded, was that the twenty-four hour subway system allowed you to get wasted without being a danger to anybody but yourself.

Sometimes John would hang around the counter until the scene died down. When the volume of the world lowered and he could hear his thoughts, he swore he could hear the impact of his rounds on their targets, too. Tonight, he heard the hiss-wee-hiss of a buddy’s sucking chest wound and he heard television sportscasters arguing about the Mets.

After an idle sip of what was mostly melted ice, John said that all men are connected through shame and depravity. But it was late and his words came out slurred and incomprehensible.

The bartender looked up from the other end of the bar and went back to wiping the water from pint glasses. To the rest of the world, John was just another thing worth ignoring.