"Assistance"

In a cloud of exhaustion the train pulls into the station. The doors slide to the side meeting the crowded platform full of mothers and girlfriends and children jostling for a clear vantage of their loved ones spilling from the door one by one like chickens from a narrow coop. The sun, still low in the sky, peeks through the slots in the roof. Rigid from the long night ride in artificial illumination, you raise a hand to block the morning sun, then realize the futility of the act and lower your hand. You stare at the sun and the sun stares back.

The night ride wasn't easy, a passage common enough, but this time your quota for hardship is full. You're ready to be done. Now, once you're finally stationary you drop from the train, breathing a sigh, but your deliverance is drowned by the push of passengers, and you're reminded of the unbearable absence of breathable air.

Coming out of the crowd, there's a man in a gray wool suit holding a small piece of paper with your name on it. He raises his hand in greeting and leans forward to catch your eye.

"I'm glad you're here," you manage to say, reaching the man.
He nods. "Thank you for the payment. Now that everything is in order are you sure you'd like to continue?"

The man motions toward the parking lot. "How was the train ride? Did you get any sleep?" "The lights in the carriage were blinding," you say. "I couldn't see the stars for my reflection."

His car is waiting. Leather seats, water bottles, boxes of white tissue. A sweat of rain pervades the interior like a mountain forest after a downpour.

We arrive in front of a smart-looking apartment building. You get out, and as you cross the narrow street the uneven lay of cobblestones buffet the soles of your feet. The stones look recently washed in strips, shiny and clean where the cars run. Even the gutters are clean. The air here is light and crisp as if never having been inhaled. The sky is blue and full, the sun shining sideways as if saying, "Behold, the world."

The man opens the door of the building and enters, beckoning in. You mount the staircase until the door with DIGNITAS written on a plaque. The man shows you in and closes the door.

"Here it is," says the man. The apartment is sparsely decorated with a large window opening onto the city. The lake, shimmering in the morning light, is visible to the right. "Are you sure you'd like to continue?" the man asks.

The man motions to the plush seat by the window. You lower yourself gently into it and breath out until your interior and exterior reach equilibrium, an equilibrium that sinks you lower and lower into the plush. The train ride tired you. A lifetime of renewal and fatigue pulls on your body.

The man walks out of the room returning immediately with a glass of water. Out of a cabinet he removes a small vial and empties the vial into the glass watching the two colorless liquids mix, twisting and contorting around each other in a lewd dance. He places the glass on the side table next to the window.
"The doctor's forms are all in order. Are you sure you'd like to continue?"

Your fingers wrap around the glass, cold with its colorless fluid, and outside the sun shines on the still lake, and trolleys snake proudly up and down the street like parents with their children in tow. A couple below, a boy and a girl, walk hand in hand. Their gait is so youthful in its moxie that the street scene becomes hopelessly infused with a seductive nectar of vitality, one that lures the innocent into a room with no exit and clouds the view with a mist of impossible dreams. The couple, they must be on their way to the lake to drink in the new day. The boy stops, hand around the girl's waist, and pulls the girl close. He whispers in her ear, and they dive together into an endless embrace.

Back in your plush seat you see the man in gray and he looks at you sitting in a cloud of dust and the colorless liquid in your hand.

You put the glass to your lips, close your eyes and let the poisonous drink chill the back of your throat. It coats your throat, then esophagus, then gut and you can feel your arms and legs not feeling your arms and legs. And the air in the apartment suddenly wanes thin and frigid lifting hanging dust particles that grow in prominence like countless waxing moons. And your mind stumbles back to the apartment, to the gray scratching wool of the man's suit, to the life you've just about finished, a burnt day-old-pizza-crust-of-a-life lying still after the delicious part is gone. Gone and you're ready to go, fantastic visions of color-wheels and city lights, the purple surge of passion in youth and its measured companion in aging brown, and the blurred majesty of sunflower fields, memories eddying, spilling like neglected spaghetti water boiling over in protest. Boiling dust in colorless liquid. Boiling leather seats and tissues. Trains stop and breathe. Sputter.

And as you lean your head to look over the city one last time, you are blinded by the glory of the morning sun, dead in the dusty plush seat by the window.