Bill Bryce sat in his car, staring in the direction of the Wal Mart entrance. He dreaded the thought of having to go into a place that he hated so much, but he needed a car battery and no other store in town was open at 7 am on a Sunday morning. He despised the people who frequented the store. Bill was a racist to begin with, and the thought of having to brush past black and Hispanic shoppers, as well as those who he considered to be white trash, made him almost turn and head back home. He sat for about ten more minutes and then decided to just go in and get it over with.
The store was crowded. It did not matter what time that a person was there, it was always crowded. Bill started to navigate his way toward the automotive section. He turned down an aisle and found it nearly blocked by a Mexican family. He flipped his cart around and headed in the opposite direction. “Damn wetbacks,” was all that came to his mind.
He turned down another aisle and saw that there were only two groups of people on this particular row, a woman pushing someone in a wheel chair and an old lady staring at some craft items. He proceeded toward the wall of tires which he could see lined up on the other side of the old woman. As he approached the woman pushing the wheelchair, he found that there was not enough room for him to pass. He was enraged, as he always seemed to be about something.
“God Damn it!”, he said, directing his comment toward the woman pushing the wheel chair, “Don’t you people have home care workers or something? You push these cripples around in these big chairs and take up the whole fucking store! Normal guys like me can’t catch a break!”
“Cripples?” The woman responded, in a state of shock. “This poor girl is 18 years old! Her name is Gwen, and you are willing to condemn her for the fact that she cannot move her arms and legs. She has not always been like this, she just lost her ability to move in the last five years. It is an attitude like yours that is causing Gwen to give up on life. She is slipping away because of peoples lack of compassion. She could be YOUR daughter. What would you do then?”
Bill pushed his cart around the wheel chair, and then turning his head back to the woman, he said, “I would put her in a home.”
He proceeded down the aisle. As he approached the old lady, she stepped in front of his cart.
“Would you get the hell out of my way!” He almost yelled.
She was an odd looking old lady. There was a blank look in her eyes, almost as if she was teetering on the edge of dementia. She walked over to Bill and grabbed his shoulders. Looking him straight in the eyes, obviously not intimidated, she said, “Some day, you will be in the way. I curse you, you evil man.”
“Why do all the freaks shop on Sunday morning?” He asked her sarcastically, walking away from the encounter.
The old woman walked over to Gwen, and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry about that evil man. He will understand, one day.” she said, sympathetically.
The woman pushing the wheel chair responded. “Thank you for the kind words. I am Gwen’s mother and it meant a lot to me, also. Gwen never even talks any more. It is like she has given up. People like that will never understand.”
“This one will.” She said with a smile, and then turned and walked away.
Bill arrived back at his house about an hour later. His wife was still in bed, and his daughter was in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal. He looked at her and smiled, feeling grateful that she was a normal thirteen year old. They said their good mornings, and then he exited the house with his tool box. He was not much of a mechanic, he was a telemarketer. He made a good living being rude and obnoxious, it seemed to be his forte.
While completing the battery change, Bill’s feet began to itch. He hated athletes foot. He seemed to get it a lot, and always had some spray in the bathroom. He went inside, and sitting down on the edge of the bath tub, he proceeded to pull off his socks. He was puzzled by how his feet looked. They were not red and inflamed, as would normally be the case with athletes foot, but instead, they where whitish in color. His toes itched so bad. It was like no itch that he had ever felt before. He started to scratch them, and what happened next was horrifying. The skin on his toes began to come off like dust. He could not even feel his hands touching them. Then his entire pinky toe snapped off, like a piece of chalk. He tried to stand up and all his toes disintegrated , leaving a pile of ash looking dust on the bathroom floor. There was no pain, no blood, just a scream of disbelief..
Bill’s wife called 911 and the whole family rode to the hospital. The doctors took him immediately, and were completely baffled. His toes were gone, but the ends of his feet were smooth and healthy, almost as if no toes had ever existed. There was nothing that they could do for him, he seemed healthy, and there was no sign of any disease. He was released, having to go home with a wheel chair and a walker.
He spent the next week buried in a drunken state, hoping that this was just a nightmare, but it seemed that reality had won out. He reclined in his chair and turned on the TV, hoping to lose himself in an auto race. That is when his legs started itching below the knees. He looked down and saw that both of his shins were almost white. The itching was so intense that he was compelled to scratch. He dug his finger nails in and scratched ferociously. A chalky dust filled the air as his fingers dug through what was once his lower leg and into the chair below. His wife entered the room and screamed.
“What is happening to me?” He yelled!
His wife looked down at his legs, and as had been the case with his toes, his skin was smooth and perfect at the knees, but there were no legs remaining below that point, just two piles of dust.
Another week at the hospital and a battery of tests produced the same result as with his previous visit. They could find nothing wrong with him. The doctors wanted to keep him and study him, but Bill was not going to be a lab rat, he would rather die than be a specimen.
Weeks went by and the itches on his legs came back two more times, robbing him of all of his lower extremities. He was starting to fade into the depths of despair. He was now in a wheelchair, and had nothing to look forward to but what was on TV. He picked up the remote control, and that is when the fingers on his left hand started to itch.
“Nooooooo!” He screamed. It was such a loud scream, such a surrendering scream, that it was heard in houses throughout the neighborhood.
A few months later, Bill and his wife had to go to the grocery store. In the past, Bill would never make the trip, but now, she could not leave him at home alone. Their daughter, who was afraid to watch her dad by herself, came along and pushed the shopping cart, while his wife pushed the wheel chair. Bill had no arms or legs remaining, just tiny smooth stumps. He wore a ball cap and sunglasses, to hide the embarrassment of his existence. He never spoke any more, and remained in a daze at most times. His wife was contemplating putting him in some kind of home, but she knew that it would go against his wishes.
She parked his wheel chair off to the side of the aisle and began to put food items into the cart.
Two women walked past his wheel chair and smiled at him. Continuing to walk away, the younger woman began to cry.
“I wish that I could help him!” She said.
The other woman spoke. “Gwen, you cannot help everyone. I wish that you could. I don’t know how you got your arms and legs to function again, even the doctors don’t know. I like to think it is because you have a good heart and honestly care about people. I am not just saying that because I am your mother. I don’t know how that poor man over there lost his arms and legs, but you cannot feel guilty because you can walk, and he cannot. Those years that you were in that wheel chair were the hardest years of my life. I like to think that good things happen to good people.”
As they embraced in a loving mother daughter hug, an odd looking old lady, who had been standing within ear shot, turned to them and said, “….and bad things happen to bad people”.
They thought that she looked familiar, but could not quite place her.
Eternal Offensive Questions
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