Playing With Fire

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I was on my third sleeping pill and my second glass of whiskey when he knocked on my door. Why I bothered to answer it, I don’t know. I had resigned myself to my fate and arranged matters so that I would leave the world as peacefully and comfortably as possible, and nobody would mourn my passing.

Beethoven’s Pastorale symphony was playing on the stereo, mostly because I had once seen a film about a futuristic society in which a man goes to be put to sleep in a hospital, and there are projections of brooks, waterfalls and forests on the walls, and the Pastorale is playing. I can’t say it was doing much for me, but it was nice to have something to go along with the incessant tapping of rain on my flimsy roof.

I suppose answering the door was an instinctive reaction, like a nervous tic. When the phone rings, you answer it. When someone knocks at your door – especially as it was such a rare occurrence in my isolated world – you go and see who it is. Anyway, I did.

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