Glen Greene

"Would you like orange juice, or apple?" the nurse said. And she opened up that plastic smile. For the first week it had fooled him and he mistook her professional courtesy for actual kindness. After that he realized that she smiled in exactly the same way every single time, and that the smile never once touched her eyes.
"Just water," he said, unconcerned. After his realization about her, she was not kind, and not beautiful, and didn't remind him of the daughter he never had. Like the walls and the floors and lunch and arts and crafts time she was simply there. And one day, if he lived long enough, she would not be there any longer, like the one before her, what was her name? Cynthia, Sylvia? The one that actually had been kind. She would be gone, and there would be another in her stead. And that was how time was measured in this place; by death, and by the changing of the staff.
There was talk of a woman named Catherine Babcock. Like a legend, no one could say whether she ever existed or not. Only one resident was old enough to remember her. Bill Ralston. And his mind was so plagued by dementia that no one knew for sure whether his word could be trusted on the subject. But he said that she would sneak ice cream to all the residents at all hours of the day, and real flavors too, not the standard chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. Real flavors, like they scooped out of the large brown barrels with the silvery rims at the ice cream parlor. Peppermint and cookies and cream, pistachio, and fudge ripple. Once, Bill said, she had even taken a bunch of them out to dinner. Snuck them right out of the place altogether.
"I wish Cathy was still here," Bill would say. Or, "Cathy was the best thing that ever happened to this place," wistfully. And when he was in one of his states, he would scream for her, and demand to be allowed to talk to her, shouting and throwing everything he could get his hands on until he had to be sedated, and then the whole wing would breathe a sigh of relief for the blessed silence. Cathy was supposedly there for years. Another rarity. Mostly the good ones never stayed too long; a couple years at the most. Like Sylvia, or was it Sarah? She had only lasted a year and a half. And maybe that was how the whole thing worked. Maybe, a woman who cracked fake smiles, and did as little as she had to, could go on forever. But maybe someone who really gave, like Cynthia, maybe she gave what she could till it was all used up, and then maybe she had no choice but to move on.
He looked out the window. On any given day there would be children playing, or lovers walking hand in hand through the parks. He’d seen family picnics, and people walking dogs that ran and leapt in their leashes, barking excitedly, and he’d watched with a sort of wide-eyed wonder. It was so hard to believe, but every one of those stages had passed him by, in the blink of an eye it seemed. Once he had even witnessed a mugging. It was a terrifying, brutal affair, and almost, he reached for his golden belt to stop it. It was wrapped in cloth and tucked away inside a locked box that he kept hidden in a drawer in his dresser. But he knew that if he leapt out his window it would set off an alarm, and then they would know his identity. There were still friends of the hero he'd once been, walking the streets, and more importantly there were still enemies.
For a moment he'd watched the thing happen in shock. Then he picked up the phone and told the office to call 911. They had to send someone over to his room to verify that the mugging was actually happening, then that person dialed 911 which was blocked on all the residents’ phones because of too many false alarms in the past. Of course, by the time the police arrived the whole thing was over. The mugger was never caught, and Glen had never felt so powerless and emasculated in his entire life.
But most of the time looking out the window was a simple pleasure. And a way to pass the time as the days grew dimmer. But lately he had seen a shadow passing. Sometimes swiftly, and sometimes slowly, lingering a little. And he wondered if that was how the thing started. Or to put it more accurately, he wondered if that was how the thing ended.
Sometimes he dreamed of the old days. And that was the only time he remembered those days clearly. He would savor the moments, because he was young, but in some recess of his mind, he remembered that he had grown old. But in the dream he was young again, and his muscles were lithe and strong, and his body was quick and ready, and his mind was sharp and alert. And something seemed strange about being young again, but in the way of dreams he accepted it. All that mattered was the energy, the strength that was coursing through him and he would leap from the top of a building, never once considering that the power of the belt would fail him, never once dreaming that the body that wore the belt would, one day, fail him. And he was soaring through the skies that knew no bounds and free of the bonds of gravity, and the petty concerns of men. And sometimes he would battle his enemies or relive the day that his best friend was crushed by a chunk of building that his battle with the gray guardsman had dislodged. Or he would find himself helpless and bound, battling the rigors of torture at the hands of his most hated enemies, and when he awoke every one of those fates seemed preferable to this one, waiting to die in this place... Just then the shadow came by again and he felt old and tired, scared and alone. Once he had been one of earth's mightiest heroes, now he was a castoff, a throw away. The shadow lingered now, longer than it ever had before. It was a cold and silent thing, but it was not cruel or unkind. It knelt, and it whispered in his ear. He nodded, his gray, tired, eyes that once were cadmium blue, seeing the way of things.
He went to the drawer and pulled out the chest. He reached into his shirt and took out the key. With shaking hands, he pushed the key into the lock and turned it. The lock gave a satisfying click and the chest opened. Glen stood there for a moment, looking at the belt, all golden in the wan light of his room. He touched the belt, like a father touches the face of a child he hasn’t seen for years, to prove to himself that the moment is real. Then he pressed a series of buttons. The belt lit up, a strange sequence, a rhythm of light playing on its surface. It was calling out, across the city, across the state, across the world perhaps, or to some distant planet beyond the stars. It was calling out, the way it had to him, so long ago.
He lay back then, and told the shadow he was ready. He closed his eyes and breathed easy for the first time in a long time. And just for a moment he was at the house on the lake at sunset. The geese were calling out, making plans for their long flight south, and he was walking on a dirt road to nowhere, wondering if his life would ever have any direction, never dreaming of the incredible adventures that awaited him. And he was riding his bike down a steep hill in the summer sun, and running through the shadows of trees on a stormy night. He was kissing a girl for the first time, in the half light, her eyes all smoky, her dark hair clinging to her sweat moistened neck. He was everywhere, and nowhere at once, and the lights were dimming at the theatre of the greatest show he'd ever seen. He was lying breathless on a bed that was every bed he'd ever slept on, next to every woman he'd ever been with, and the whole world was silent, and all of the lights in all the world went out, and he wondered if this was all there was after life. And even as he thought that thought, it was gone too, leaving only a nothing beyond nothingness behind…