Work was done for the day, and Jeremy immediately came back home. He was uninterested in catching up on the sleep that he had been missing all week, and he showed littler interest in any dinner that he could prepare for himself. Instead, he contented himself with drinking one of the beers from the back of his fridge, and then a second, and then, finally, a third. He finished off the third as he ran the shower in his bathroom to a scalding-hot temperature, and he stepped into the shower, washing himself a good second time for the day. Finally, at sometime after one that morning, Jeremy succumbed to sleep, his gangly body splayed out in his only piece of furniture in his living room, his moth-eaten chair.
He was up at five, but he had woken up three times before that. He had been tormented with awful nightmares, and the only cure for them was insomnia. A few cups of coffee later readied Jeremy for the bus ride to work, and he did so begrudgingly, walking to the bus stop in the near-dark of the early morning.
He had brought no reading material, and it would not have mattered, anyway, since the pitch dark of the bus shelter would not have done well for his already itchy, temperamental eyes. Bored, Jeremy leaned over, so that he could see beyond the filthy, smeared clear plastic wall of the bus shelter, and watched as a small group of children readied to pass by the shelter, most likely on their way to school. Unable to help himself, Jeremy succumbed to the desire to stare, blindly, down at his shoes.
It might have been his imagination, but he got the suspicion that there were less children in the neighborhood every year. It hadn't bothered him at first, but thinking of what he did every day at his job...
Jeremy also had another thought that had been in his mind for the last year, before he had the inkling that he would work at the facility, but it had amplified after he had begun working. There seemed to be more old people in the neighborhood, and they only seemed to become more insidious to him with every day that passed. He hated it, almost as much as he hated himself for how pitiful he had allowed himself to become, but he shuddered a little every time he saw one.
The bus came, and Jeremy felt himself being shuttled back to the middle of the bus, where he found his seat to be next to a very old man. Jeremy flailed for a moment, his physical exhaustion metting it out with his repulsion to the old, bent creature who sat next to the window, and whose gaze had rose to meet his. A small, craggy smile formed on the man's mouth, and despite the disgust that rose up in Jeremy like vomit, Jeremy could feel his own weakness forming in his legs, and he, regretful, took the only available seat next to the old man.
For two minutes, Jeremy was comforted by the sound of the bus as it noisily slid through the suburb streets, once stopping to drop someone off, as he focused his gaze ahead of himself, trying to make out the shapes appearing in the dark outside of the bus' windshield. After a second of dismay and annoyance, Jeremy realized that the old man had been addressing him.
“Hm?” Jeremy murmured, not turning to face his companion.
“I was just sayin' – how long have you been here, in the city?”
Jeremy could already feel that sensation he had recently been getting when he was adressed – hell, even LOOKED at – by an elderly person. A creeping, icy sensation that made him shake ever so slightly, just enough that he always had to hide his hands from sight. Which he did then. “Oh, oh, uh, I've been here all of my life.”
The old man spent what seemed to be near five minutes digesting this fact, before he spoke up again. Jeremy imagined the awful smell that emanated from his mouth, which he was grateful that he didn't have to breathe in that often. “I moved 'ere when I was... when I was fifty-three.” How long ago could that have been, Jeremy wondered. He wasn't willing to take a closer look at this man, and even if he did, he doubted that he'd be able to accurately guess at how old the man was, anyway. “It was 'ard, moving 'ere alone. I suppose it's always 'ard, when you're alone, to do anything. Whaddaya think?”
I'm thinking that I want you to shut up. I'm thinking that you are as wretched as you look. “Oh, I would believe you.” Jeremy lied.
“Uh-huh. It's worse, when you're older, too. I, I would 'ope that nobody as young as you would have to think about going through what I've gone on through. It's awful, jus', jus' awful.”
Jeremy stiffened, angry at the man's assumption that things were going great for him, just because he was younger. You mother FUCKER, Jeremy thought angrily. I have problems, I didn't cause mine, unlike yours. If just some of you old bastards would die, let some of us try to make better things out of the garbage you're set to leave us with anyway...
Jeremy's thoughts took over, and he took to staring solidly through the front windshield, not wanting to think of, let alone look at, the man next to him. His mind reeled with all of the things he wish that he could tell not only this man, but to all of the old that he ever saw, would ever see. It's true that he hated them, but what he did not want to admit to himself was that he was frightened of them, and had been for awhile. The shaking in him increased, and a slow, throbbing pain signaled the beginning of a migraine in his head.
The old man spoke up once more after a long reprieve. “You seem bothered. You shouldn't be so bothered; you 'ave your whole life a'ead of you - “
And then Jeremy couldn't take it any more. Unable to muster the strength to reach across his companion to pull the string to signal the bus driver to stop, Jeremy rushed off of the too-small, bucket-y seat and pressed through the throng of annoyed people, until he reached the front of the bus. After a quick word – and a withering glare from the bus driver – Jeremy got off of the bus and began to try to understand where it was that he had been dropped off.
His mind, still hazy in anger and dull pain, eventually recognized some of the signs that he was quite a walk from the facility. He could get to work on time, but it was more likely that he would ten minutes late.
“Fuck it.” Jeremy said, not meaning to say it aloud, but instead to think it. He told himself that he didn't want to go to work because he would only be late, and not that he was dreading the work day.
Taking in a few deep breaths, Jeremy tried to steady his mind on the simple task of what he should do next. He was hungry; yeah, he could go with that. Suddenly, with his escape from the bus, and his emboldened decision to skip work for the day, Jeremy was happy to realize that his appetite had returned. The question of where to eat stopped him for a while, until he quickly decided on a diner that he had stopped in a couple of times before.
The diner was a small place, and back in happier times, Jeremy had felt a certain fondness for the place; its smallness, its "design" (it looked as though the owner of the place had neglected to update anything in the place since the seventies - including the spider-webbed decor and the items on the menu themselves), and back when he had a likeness for people watching, he used to sometimes love sitting in a far booth from the entrance and watch who would come in during lunch. Walking up to it, Jeremy still wasn't quite certain if he was still as fond of the place as he always had been.
Opening the left of the twin doors that lead into the diner, Jeremy walked in, and had a hell of a time trying to locate a booth that was empty. He managed to find one, a good way in to the building, sandwiched between a table full of old timers and another one with a tired-looking salary man who looked as though something had fallen ass-out through for him, and the best that he could do for himself was to eat what looked like a patty melt and drink a large glass of urine-colored soda.
Jeremy took a seat in the booth between the two that he had eyed earlier, and waited until the waitress could come over to him.
She was taking a long time; and where WAS she, anyway?
From behind him, Jeremy couldn't help but eavesdrop on the conversation that ensued from the group of old men and the one woman that sat at the booth behind him. "Didja hear the news yesterday? " A wheezy voice softly asked.
"No, what was it about, Ben?"
Jeremy strained to find where the waitress was. She should've made her rounds by now, and she should have come to take his order by now. He began grinding his teeth in anger, his spine stiffening. And the old, withered voices continued their slow, grating conversation.
"It was about some heathcare changes. They're talking about things that'll change in the next few years."
It was the woman who must have spoken then, for the next voice sounded gravelly, but with a feminine undertone to it. "What kinda stuff are they talking about?"
"They're talking about letting that miracle drug - the one that makes ya live a lot longer, n' re-creates organs - they're talking about making it available to almost anyone above the age of fifty."
"Oh, you couldn't have heard right, Ben, those drugs are expensive. And with what I heard they're made of... That'll be hard to mass-produce. You believe me on this one."
"I'm just telling you what I've heard... Believe me or don't."
"...Don't you think it's a bit... eerie?" A new voice spoke up, sounding hushed, serious.
"What're you referring to?" Asked the main old man. "
“The way things are changing right now. I mean, I ain't complaining, but what is the future going to be like, with people like us being able to live a lot longer. I mean, the younger generation..."
"There's no reason to think like that," A stern, male voice said. "You've got to have hope in the whole grand scheme of things. God'll protect everyone, I've always believed that, and don't you, Don?"
Don hesitated, and then spoke in an even drearier voice. "Oh, I have a belief that God is good; the only problem is that people ain't so good. And lemme tell ya something else - if I had more money than I knew what to do with, and I was like one of those really rich, really old men out there, I would do anything to keep all of that money, I would do anything to keep alive, so that I could enjoy it. Ya'll can't tell me that you wouldn't be really excited to have the answer to the oldest problem in the entire world, sitting right there, buyable and open to being bought at any time.”
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