Chained Smoker

The man sat in the examination chair as the physician talked to him. He could feel the sunlight coming through the window, warming his face. If he looked toward the window, the sunlight dazzled him, and when he turned his face away, it still painted the periphery of his vision with a haze of red. To his right, he could see where pieces of plaster had fallen out of the walls and ceiling of the small examination room, leaving specks and blotches of white drywall showing through the dull, lime-green paint. Farther to his right, he could see the metal instrument table. Probes and mirrors lay in the half-opened drawers, neatly arranged, menacing. On the table, an alcohol lamp faintly flickered with a pungent smell that reminded him of his first, frightening encounters with his childhood physician. He felt a twinge of nausea.

Although in his fifties, he looked like an old man. His face was tanned and wrinkled, and his cheeks and lips were sunken because he had no teeth to fill them out. His gaunt temples emphasized his dark, sunken eyes. He had a full head of oily, unkempt black hair that was peppered with gray. On his hands and forearms were several crude tattoos in faded ballpoint pen. One spelled his ex-wife's name, and another represented the torso of a nude, headless woman. Various cellmates …