A black door.
I feel it’s avarice.
It hates me.
It wants me to open it.
It wants me to come inside.
Because it hates me.
I don’t want to be here. I’ve run from this my whole life.
🚫 Blockaded 🚫 myself from this very moment.
…Haven’t I?
What did I do?
To deserve this?
Above the door, the sign reads:
“Death’s Pharmacy“
And for reasons I don’t understand, I have a prescription to fill.
My trembling hand reaches for the door. It twists the silver knob like a knife.
I step inside and, immediately, I feel it.
The pharmacy is dead inside.
The decorative plants rot.
The customers haven’t lived in years.
Shelves lined with bottles that are marked with X’s that are jagged and hand-painted.
I walk by a mirror. Glance at it. Just long enough to see my face.
Oh, no.
I’m just like this pharmacy.
I’m dead inside.
I approach the counter and place my prescription on the table.
The Pharmacist approaches.
He hates me.
He’s just like the Black Door.
He takes my prescription and returns with bottles of alcohol, a pack of marijuana cigarettes, needles full of opium, and vials of cocaine.
He returns with a screen covered in pornography, strip clubs, hookers, adultery and betrayal.
He returns with a gun.
He says, “You can do it the easy way or the hard way.”
I ask him, “Which do you recommend?”
He replies, “I don’t give a shit.”
That was uncouth.
But he hates me.
Hate can make a perfectly good man uncouth.
But then, this isn’t a perfectly good man.
He’s not a good man at all.
He’s like my prescription.
He’s like my doctor.
He toils in my destruction.
If I drink this alcohol and smoke these marijuana cigarettes, perhaps I’ll enjoy their bedside manner while they smother me to death.
If I stare at this pornographic screen and cheat on my spouse, maybe I’ll enjoy myself as it fills my lungs with water, and drowns me.
And if I hold this gun, well…
Perhaps I’ll feel the weight of my choices in the palm of my hand.
It is unlike the doctor. Unlike the medicine.
It does not distract me from incoming death.
It makes its intentions clear.
It’s like the Black Door.
Ah, yes, the door.
I leave it all on the counter and head for it.
It tries to make me stay.
It wants me to suffer.
It hates me.
But it feels this way about everyone, doesn’t it?
So does the doctor.
So does the pharmacy.
So does the medicine.
So does the gun.
They all have different means, but desire the same result.
But this Pharmacy of Death.
And his medicine.
And the Doctor of Death who prescribed it.
They don’t understand.
They cannot hurt me.
Because I love myself.
I love myself enough to show restraint in the face of bad medicine.
I love myself enough to leave out the same Black Door I came in.
I love myself enough to censor that which would harm me…
…and embrace all that would never.