Wishes

The Salesman Again

On the morning of January 30th, at 10:47, there was a sharp knock on Jason Krun's door. Jason lackadaisically scrambled out of the sheets, bounced up from the sofa, and opened to see a smiling Mr. Steward, whom he would have punched, if not for the lack of energy in his beaten body.

The salesman looked exactly as he had a week ago. The same smile, the same hair, the same waxy face. 

"Hello, Mr. Krun. How are you doing?"

"Y-you. You monster. You freak." He slouched further down the doorway he was leaning against as he tried to point accusingly at the salesman. "How did you do that? How could you do that?"

"The answer is simple, Mr. Krun. You stated that you believed that you could change fate in a moment. Yet there have been no moments in your life in which you tried to change fate. Look at you. You allowed your wife to leave you without any resistance. You allowed your father to slowly slip away from you. You never worked hard enough to try and earn enough money to put down on that new condo. Instead, what did you do? You sat and watched all those stupid re-runs of people living the life you never tried to obtain except in the deepest, darkest hours of the night. Now you try to tamper with fate without putting any effort in, and this is what you get." He sais all of this with the same assured, smug smile.

Jason stared back through haggard, beaten eyes.

"I just have one more question, Jason. How are you feeling?"

Jason spoke, his voice barely a whisper. "What do you think?"

"I wouldn't know. Are you tired? Are you in pain?"

"Am I tired? Am I in pain? You prick. I want to die. I want to painlessly kill myself. LIke there's no reason to live, and maybe if I try hard enough, I can just slip away in my sleep."

The waxy lips curled, Mr. Steward tipped his hat, and turned to leave.

"W-wait!" Jason called, hoarse in his morose exhaustion. "Where are you going? You owe me more than this stupid bullshit."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Krun, but I really must be off. I'm off to see someone else. Someone whom you don't know very well at all." He tipped his hat again, and disappeared into the dark shadows cast by the bright sun.

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All the credit must go to Richard Matheson and WW Jacobs. This was just their timeless work (which I have enjoyed for so long in so many ways) crudely distilled through a modernized, less talented lens.