End of Ethan

End of Ethan

By D.L.D

"Do you know how old I am?" I climb my weary eyes up on Ethan, my therapist, who keeps chewing on his pen cap like a turtle. "I'm 27 -27 years old." I say.

He looks at me, then glances back to his flipped-open memo book. He pushes a Bic Cristal pen across the notepad, delicately; like a spider weaving a web. Crocheting my story onto notebook paper, nitpicking what he writes about me through the way I talk to him.

"Do you believe your age has something to do with-," he sighs, "the way you act towards certain people?"

I shrug, as I pick at this zit on my lip. "I feel like-." You can see the embarrassment on my cheeks when I say. "I need more love?" It comes out sounding more like a question for some reason. So, I quickly mutter the word, "love," again, under my breath. I feel anxious. I feel like I need to fix the word, "love," or redefine it for him, so he may actually understand what I'm really trying to say.

"Well." I point to the door going outside his office, out to a corridor that eventually leads to the rest of the mental institution I'm in. "I need less of that, and more," I cringe, "one-on-one, like this." I get ready to say something else, but he respectfully cuts me off.

"Is that why you're here?" He grips his memo book, and sets it on the counter high table next to the stool he's sitting on. "For more, one-on-one?"

"Yeah, -sure." I stumble over my words as I watch him almost fall over as he gets up.

He then, once he had recovered from his slight trip, reaches behind his back, and proceeds to pull out a crisp pack of cigs.

"Do you mind if I smoke?" he asks.

In the past, I would've expected a pistol, or blade being pulled instead of a pack of Newport cigarettes. Up to this point in my life, I never realized how common it was to find myself being threatened with hand-held weapons. But now that I think about it, I did live in Tijuana for a while. In deep thought, the pack of Newports remaining unacknowledged, he interjects by tossing me my own cigarette.

He grins, and brings a finger up to his lip gesturing a playful shush. Knowing that I'm not supposed to be smoking. I finger the cigarette's thin, bible-like paper, bringing it up to my nose, where I inhale the tobacco scent. It stings my nostrils a bit, like peppermint or rosemary, but it eases me to know that I have a cigarette scrunched between my fingers. Eager to start smoking, I ask Ethan for a light.

"Do you like it here?" he grins, as he makes his way to the opposite side of the room where his desk is located. Sliding his finger across the desk, eventually landing on a side drawer. He proceeds to open it, then clumsily shuffles through the contents inside.

"Haven't I already told you?" I ask. "Yes." he says, swapping the pack of cigarettes for a chrome-zippo lighter that looks like it could've been used by an infantry soldier during the second world war. "I guess you have."

I watch as Ethan retraces his steps back to the middle of the room, where my therapy session is taking place. I sit up in my sofa chair, extending my hand up to him with the cigarette clenched between my fingers, ready for him to light it.

He dramatically flips open the zippo lighter. Then, drives his thumb down on the flint wheel, making sure I can hear the spark, and not even a millisecond after his thumb touches the casing again, a flame shoots up from the lighter. He takes the flame, and lights my cigarette. He does, likewise to his own cigarette. I thank him, and in my current state of comfort, it feels appropriate to slouch in my chair.

"Quality one-on-one." He says, sitting back down, crossing his legs on the wooden stool. Closing, and Placing the zippo lighter on the table, swapping it out for the blue memo book, but right before he did all of that, he took a sip of tea from a cup on the table.

"Now." Ethan fixes his posture.

"Do you have any-." He arms himself with the Bic Cristal pen from before that's ridden with visible bite marks, smirking from the question he's about to ask. "significant other? A partner maybe?" Clearly mocking me, knowing that I'm restricted from having any type of intimate relationship in the facility.

Now, concerning my response to the question, any other day I would've laughed or given him a hard time about my nonexistent love life. But, today, I was more focused on his pen...

He starts to rub the barrel of his pen, like how a knight would clean blood stains off their medieval swords by stroking it with a certain type of cloth. Unsheathing the plastic cap used to cover the ball-point tip, with his thumb, and as if he were applying chapstick, starts to rub the bow of his lip with the pen cap. nibbling on the plastic, while he pushes the tip of the pen onto his notepad, impatient, wanting to record another interesting fact about my life.

I blow smoke, then cough, and Horsley say "No," glaring at him as he writes my response down.

"Interesting," he says, in distant amusement, jotting down that I may have no lover. All while he nibbles at the pen cap's clip. It deeply disturbs me. Mutilating it, disgracing the pen's delicate anatomy. Chewing, smoking, and sipping on tea. The cap's clip, bent, and twisted, no longer straight, but resembling a more acute angle; unable to clip on to a shirt's pocket sleeve. Giving an inanimate object a handicap.

"Do you mind?" I bark. He looks up at me, unaware of my concern for the pen cap's safety.

"Stop-." I jab my hand in the air gesturing for him to remove the pen cap from his mouth, "Stop- doing that."

He's still confused and unaware of what he had done wrong, and continues to nibble at the pen cap's clip. I jab my fingers at him, and I raise my voice, "Stop! -With the pen!"

He looks around the room, then slowly, yet curiously, brings his hand up to point at the pen cap in his mouth. I lean forward nodding my head. "-please."

After confirming this suspicion, he carefully removes the pen cap from his mouth, and sets it on the coffee table; keeping strong eye-contact with me the entire time. I start to sweat, and I slouch back in my chair.

"Is everything ok?" He asks, taking a puff from his cigarette, dabbling it over an ashtray placed on the table next to him.

"Yes, it's just-," I cringe, "It's my pet peeve, when people chew with their mouth open." He shifts his focus back to the memo book and he takes another note.

"You do understand-, right?" I say hesitantly, knowing what I had told him wasn't the honest reason I had him remove the pen cap, and I think he knows that.

"Yes," He slowly says, taking and closing the memo book, placing it next to the pen cap, and the ashtray.

"Why don't we," He pushes the bic pen into his pocket, without the cap on, "Do an exercise, To clear the mind?"

The thought of exercising doesn't even compute in my brain as I watch him stuff the pen without a cap back into his pocket.

He stands up. I start to sweat even more. What if the pen explodes, what would he do if blue ink saturated through his denim pocket? Ruining a good pair of Levi bleached jeans. He takes a step forward. What if the ink got on his white collared shirt? He takes another step forward. What if the pen explodes and gets onto my shirt? I compulsively start fidgeting with armrests attached to my seat. Pulling at loose leather skin.

"Don't you take another step," I say, pressing my head, really hard, against the back of my chair, whilst I reject him with my hand. Reaching out with my arm, facing my palm outwards to him like I'm some sort of traffic guard.

"Come on Freddy," Ethan says, bringing his hand next to my hand, beckoning me like I'm some sort of infant.

My cigarette leaps out of my mouth in pure fear, landing on my left thigh. It burns a hole straight through my gray, patient-issued, sweatpants. Ethan notices this and proceeds to lean over to assist me in picking the cigarette off my lap.

I seize the opportunity to ball my fist and strike him against the head. He almost instantly falls to the floor, and squeals in pain.

"I bit my goddamn tongue," He yells, in agony. Blood, and cigarette ash spilling from his cheeks.

"You bastard." I say as I watch him pathetically try to roll over onto his backside. I launch myself on top of him, from the sofa chair, pro-wrestling style, and I pin him to the floor. He struggles to release himself from my grip as he kicks around.

"Get off of me, Freddy," He yells, spitting blood everywhere, like a geyser. I loosen my grip on his left wrist, and then with my left hand I smack him across the face.

"I told you--." I lift my foot off the floor to step on to his free hand, that I had just released. The purpose of this maneuver: to restrain his feisty hand while I smack him around. I bend over to whisper in his ear, like I'm doing some sort of hip-stretch.

"I told you not to take another step fucker," I say, smacking him again.

"Get off," He yells, repeatedly, like a broken record.

"I told you--." I smack him, this time harder. Every word is a smack. "Not to take-." I smack him again. "another step-." then once more for good measure. "Fucker!"

His face glows bright red, once I'm done hitting him. His eyes start to water, and his mouth starts to tremble.

"Please get off of me Freddy." He groans, losing all motivation to fight back, as I begin to lift myself upright. The room goes silent.

We look at each other for a moment. Then, he starts to violently cough. Blackish phlegm is expectorated onto my gray, patient issued, crew neck from his mouth.

I stand up, disgusted, releasing him from my pin, as I watch him squirm on the carpet like a squashed bug.

He keeps on coughing up black spit, and the veins on his face turn purple. He tries to communicate with me, but I don't understand anything he tries to say. I then realized that he must've swallowed his cigarette, which was still in his mouth. If I remember right, when hitting him on the floor I might've accidentally pushed the cigarette into his mouth. He was now choking on the cigarette.

"Freddy," he wheezes, weakly pointing towards the door leading outside his office, gesturing for me to get some sort of outside help. I pivot my foot to the direction his finger was pointing. Waddling to the door, hearing the word "Freddy," being uttered out of his mouth repeatedly.

I jiggle the doorknob to crack it open, and as I peek outside the room into the corridor, distracted, I get hit in the back of the head with a round object.

I fall onto the door, shutting it loudly. Ethan had managed a counterattack. I suspected him to be immobilized from the cigarette lodged down his neck, but In the time span it took for me to get to the door and crack it slightly open, he was able to muster enough strength to pick himself up, and acquire a weapon, in this case: The ashtray sitting on the table.

I impulsively grab the back of my head, touching the wound, combing blood out of my hair. He hits me again, and I scream.

The impact from the ashtray constantly-colliding with my skull, causes me to uncontrollably blink my eyes.

"I cant open my eyes!" I scream, clawing at my eyelids. Trying to pry them back like sardine cans.

After failing to reopen my eyes, my last ditch effort was to start waving my arms aimlessly in hope to disarm Ethan or atleast hit him back. In my attempts to push Ethan off, he stumbles back, tripping on his shoe, dropping the ashtray, falling directly on top of the table and stool, behind him. Knocking over all the items, including a hot cup of tea that spills all over his shirt.

He twitches his body violently like a decapitated chicken. His face turning inside out in real time. Punching at his own Adam's apple like a monkey gone psycho, dislocating it, making noises that I can't even replicate. Digging his fingers underneath the collar of his white polo shirt and pulling out gray flesh. veins popping on his forehead, his face blown up with blue color. Screeching like a vulture trapped in a cage. Then, suddenly, without warning, at what seemed like the climax of his suffering, the pinnacle of his screams were silenced. Dropped to zero. Sound leaving like a piano key being played with the pedal being stepped on. The festival float leaves you as it continues on in the parade. All that's left is the candy by your toes. Like a platoon commander yelling for the squads to come to a halt. He stops moving, like a dog playing dead. The ultimate pause right before a big drop on a roller coaster. The milliseconds it takes for your brain to render something in front of you, like a jumpscare in a haunted house. Time stops. The life, tucked somewhere in your body, leaves. And it leaves without saying goodbye. Then, you're gone. Gone forever. Alone.