Published by DC
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by Shawn Martinbrough
And just like that, I couldn't help myself.
It wasn't the stench that bothered me. It wasn't the way my teeth cracked and yellowed over time. It wasn't the newfound shortness of breath or paying seven dollars a day knowing it was killing me slowly. It was knowing that I wasn't in control, that my conscious mind gave way to new and frightening desires. That every twenty minutes I'd need another dose. Just the chemistry of it was disgusting.
It took everything from me when you really think about it. My parents, the two most beautiful people I'd ever known, had succumbed to it. My mother, good lord, I watched her hair fall out twice. She gained and lost weight and muscle mass seemingly at random. The cancer made her a monster. I didn't understand the term "humility" until I helped her off the toilet that first time and wiped the piss and shit from her legs. The treatments for the cancer were even worse. It's a brutal way to fight something. The chemotherapy was like burning a house down to kill a few rats.
My father began his adult life holding a rifle in another country for God knows what reason, and at the end of his time on Earth sat in front of the television in a diaper, beer in one hand. How proud he must've felt sitting in his waste, his one good eye fixed on John Wayne in McLintock for the umpteenth time. It's a nightmare of a life, a surreal place where the walls are melting at night and you go to use a door knob and you just . . . can't. From his bed in the hospice, he said he'd be there for my twenty-first birthday. He lied. He lied to me a lot, so what?
It's been about twenty minutes since I stared at this once blank page, believe it or not. Every twenty minutes, like clock work. What did I tell you? This was supposed to be about a comic book. I think I live in a fucking comic book.
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