The little black box lay fallow on the white floor. Cohen was staring at it, it being the only reliable thing in his current universe. This at that point consisted of the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. The walls were white, as were the floors; tucked in the corner was an ivory rubber and plastic cot.
Everything about the room reeked of cleanliness. But different somehow, it wasn't clean like a person could make it, cold and sterile here a man could feel like a virus for all of the emotional footholds he could gain by trying to lose himself in that room. And Cohen had tried.
'Wake up Mister Cohen,'� a voice, at best mechanical, at worst a microphone. In his plastic bed, ensconced within the rubber sheets, Cohen stirred.
'Did you sleep well Mister Cohen?'� the voice asked. Cohen mumbled a response either to the question or as something to the hazy gray world of giants he was rising from. As he woke up, Cohen caught a glimpse of his one window and thought, for just a second he saw a speck. A speck that could have been anything from an entire ocean to a drop of rain, Cohen could feel the distance between the two in his skull, long and vast, the extremes of his temperament attached to both ends and being pulled in medieval style torture.
'Mister Cohen, did you sleep well?'�
'I didn't wet the bed,'� Cohen said.
'There now, that's an improvement isn't it?'� the voice cooed like a metal bird. 'Every day we are helping you just a little bit,'� it continued.
Cohen merely sat on the bed wincing slightly at the squeaks and crunches his bed made every time he shifted or breathed.
'A little every day, is that it?'� Cohen asked.
'Yes, remember you're unwell.'� The voice responded.
'Unwell how? How unwell?'� Cohen questioned. He then felt his breath catch, somehow causing his hair to stand on end. The fatigue of his heart and body were not relieved by the drugged stupor dubbed in irony as 'sleep'� he had just woken from. If possible the sleep had just exacerbated it making the average non-descript man into a tired and frightened non-descript man with only an unshaven face and a stiff hospital gown to call his. Cohen had been stripped before he was medicated.
'Oh very unwell Mister Cohen very unwell,'� the voice emanating from the black box gave pause, Cohen's mind then treated him to the image of a guillotine somehow clearing its nonexistent throat. 'You have been having bad thoughts.'�
'Bad thoughts?'�
'Yes, quite terrible really. It would be best to avoid details but suffice to say, well, you should know better than anyone,'�
'Regarding my thoughts?'�
'Yes, do you remember them Mister Cohen?'�
'The actual thoughts, themselves?'� Cohen responded. He then felt shafts of light in his head piercing the dirty fog that had accumulated there behind his eyes. 'Why am I here?'� he yelled suddenly, almost beyond his control. This action combined with the struggled scramble to his feet left Cohen breathless. Inhaling sharply, Cohen felt the unpleasant shiver brought on like a jagged wind down his spine, he was already sweating.
Through blurry eyes he stared at the black box, steel bolted to the floor. It was the eyes, the ears, and the mouth for a face that wasn't there, yet filled the room to the point of Cohen feeling it in his lungs.
'You are unclean Mister Cohen; perhaps a shower will relax you, allow you to clear your mind before you take your medication.'�
From the white walls then a quick intake of air could be heard suddenly, like a panicked beast or a voracious lover. Two slats appeared in the walls. Following this were two burly men in white orderly uniforms who seemed to melt from the ivory around their shoulders. Both in headgear that resembled a gasmask in appearance and visual comfort.
Before Cohen could react with any rational impulse he felt his knees buckle. The exhaustion in him was so great, all consuming yet hollow and barbed as a set trap left unnoticed after a hellish blaze. He collapsed, or rather he felt his body begin to go through the motions of collapse before being interrupted by four giant hands belonging to two massive men twisting and contorting his body into a less than natural feeling human mold.
Cohen was reminded of an accident involving a kayak, two drunken Polish rowers and an American waterfall. The jet stream from the hoses had been cold and hard, shattering against Cohen in broken sheets that cut like knives and chilled like nitrogen.
'You are now clean for the moment Mister Cohen,'� the voice said, the source again being a black box, this time under a nice and cozy waterproof seal. Cohen tried to get up off the white tiled floor; using both hands. He had given up trying to cover himself after being stripped by the orderlies who were now holding the two hoses, still aimed straight at him and hovering between aqua blitzing him again, and letting him remain prostrate and blanched. It was all in the orders that the voice would suggest.
'Don't you feel better now?'� the voice asked.
Cohen looked at the floor at eye level and found himself staring at the drain; only then did he realize he was folded and grouped around it as a sea sponge would be, or as he was, a quivering mass of flesh and doubt.
'I don't feel anything,'� Cohen muttered, his thoughts blurred and his speech stilted and brief.
'Now that is an improvement, isn't it Mister Cohen?'� the voice asked again, somehow creating a baritone voice from something that sounded like liquid steel being filtered through a net and a funnel. Cohen didn't respond to it, but the orderlies propped him up; dragging his skittish body away. Their stride was only broken by the occasional sputtering of bile or vomit.
Back in his gown Cohen still felt wet despite a thorough drying off session by the two orderlies who he named in his mind, Rick and Trick. A bit bruised, Cohen had the image of a damaged fruit of many definitions in his head. The fact that he was now in a line with men, women, and in and out betweens all dressed and acting in a similar non fashion as himself did little to ease his mind.
'Mister Cohen; you must take your medicine to get well again,'� the voice stated, now from a cozy alcove nestled right above the medicine counter window. Cohen thought to himself, without humor or despair, maybe a little annoyance, that all the window was really doing was separating the medicated from the overly medicated. For that moment though, Cohen looked up and found his gaze was met by the crimson eye of the black box, and with nothing more to go on than its flickering red light, Cohen thought he could picture what the box saw him as, the sole un-hammered nail in the line.
'This is for the morning and this is for the morning, and this is for the afternoon, and this is for the time after the morning but before the afternoon but only it needed to aid in a session of sleep of no less than five hours but no greater than six hours and only if naps are desired during the designated napping hours between two-thirty and three-forty-five. And these pills are- '
Cohen blinked, not realizing that this was a different voice he was hearing. Looking straight at the medicinal counter and sensing the empty human sized space, he realized it was his turn. Barely seeing him, the trained medical professional behind the counter was staring straight through Cohen and buzzing through his medication instructions like a fool describes nuclear fission, quickly and with gusto. The medical worker's blue eyes were piercing to say the least, sharp and pointed, they sifted right through Cohen's brown eyes, shattering, reaching violently to the place behind his eyes, the space between his frontal lobe and irises. Within his mind, blue was becoming red, and Cohen soon found himself drawn back to the glowing red of the black box. Everything, even the white, seemed to melt away and be dimmed just a bit around the presence of the black box's red eye.
'Mister Cohen, you are here for help, and you are receiving it, don't you feel better? Don't you feel more like a human, more like a man?'�
'I feel like a monkey in a box- 'Cohen began.
'Mister Cohen, you are receiving all the help you need. So do not be silly, do not lose hope, and do not forget your medication.'� Upon hearing this, Cohen felt a stutter he thought long suppressed work its way up his throat and down his tongue, causing every tooth to buzz and chatter like a malfunctioning work of metal and iron.
'Excuse me,'� Cohen said.
'-and in the evening again you- 'the trained medical professional went on.
'Excuse me, 'Cohen tried again, this time waiting for that imperceptible second when the man breathed.
'-morning'�What? What is it?'� he finally paused, his eyes flickering like an old televisions; Cohen could have sworn he heard a bit of electric snow.
'It's just'�which of these meds are mine again?'� Cohen asked. The man blinked so suddenly Cohen felt the sound of a click echo in his ears.
'All of them Mister Cohen, now don't interrupt please, you need to take these in just the right order and at just the right time and you could die. I mean 'or' you could die, please don't interrupt.'�
'These will help in suppressing your bad thoughts and curbing your deviant urges Mister Cohen,'� the voice again, this time overpowering the noise of the trained medical professional. Cohen looked at the black box again, its red eye blinking, switching off and on; it was pulling at his pupils again. Red stained Cohen's vision drowning the white world of the hospital into a sanguine mess. He blinked once, twice, but even as his vision cleared he couldn't help the red tint dotting his periphery vision.
'Take your meds, you'll feel better,'� Cohen heard this, and suddenly felt a tight pain close around the back of his neck. Sputtering out breath, Cohen somehow idly wondered if it was Rick or Trick manhandling him this time. As the pills were forced past his tongue, Cohen's mind constructed another thought to entertain him, this one concerning how tempted the orderly, Rick or Trick, would be to simply snap his neck, with only the medicine men and the voice to call as witnesses.
Cohen was guided back into his room after having gone through group therapy; Rick/Trick/Whoever trusted him enough now that he was medicated to not twist and bend him into his own bed and allowed him to walk in under his own power. Resting on the bed, Cohen winced again as the crunches and squeaks assaulted his ears relentlessly. With the sound of rapid air loss, Cohen looked up and found the doors closed and himself alone again.
'The medicine must be working Mister Cohen, the levels of deviancy in your thoughts has gone down,'�
'How do you figure that?'� Cohen asked, wondering if he could stand the answer.
'When you thought of Melissa, the care worker in charge of the group session, the nature of your sexual thoughts was not as bad as it used to be,'� the voice said. The red of it s eye flickered, casting and recasting shadows across the room. Red and white clashed, and Cohen felt a moron's rainbow binding his arms and legs.
Cohen lay back on the bed. Holding both hands to his ears he attempted to lose himself in the ceiling, wishing that the noise of the fluorescent light would just get louder and louder, drowning into his ears like a torrent, washing away everything else and leaving him nothing but an unfeeling husk of peace and human tranquility. But try as he might, Cohen was forced to reminisce about Melissa. Her alabaster skin, beautiful body, all tacked together with her repeated use of the word 'urges'� did much to combat the meds de-sexualizing affect.
'Damn it,'� Cohen thought. 'Why couldn't they medicate my thing away?'� though he was tired, Cohen's thoughts were almost entirely on taking Melissa right then and there on the crayon drawing table. The sounds of the crying and the screaming of his fellow patients were just background noise to the shameful images and scenarios he was playing in his head. Melissa being a health care worker and the whole reason for Cohen being in the hospital being some kind of physical, emotional, and mental recovery, did nothing but force a faint sense of guilt on Cohen and his imaginings.
But somehow he had made it through the group therapy, and had participated to a degree. Mentioning something, confessing to something else, he even remembered shedding a tear or two. He had been sincere at the moment, hadn't he? Yes, he was sure he had been, but now he was so damn exhausted.
Cohen tried to close his eyes but found his body, though extremely fatigued, refused to stay still. As if snakes had gone under his skin and wound their way around his bones and muscles, Cohen couldn't force his body to stop moving.
'These side effects are to be expected Mister Cohen, nothing to worry about.'� The voice reassured in the same tone as it condemned.
'My face is moving, my face is moving on its own!'� Cohen yelled as he felt his lips and cheeks suddenly begin to contort, the intensity of the side effects nearing his pain thresholds. The lips on his face turned down into what was quickly becoming a perpetual frown. Cohen tried to force a smile, a glare, something, anything to flex his face back to what it was. To no avail, Cohen began clawing at his lips and cheeks to force them to move.
'Do not do that Mister Cohen, you want to look good when company arrives,'� the voice chastised. Cohen stopped, drops of blood crisscrossing at minute intervals on his hands and chin.
'Do I have family?'� he asked.
'No, your case manager, Julia, and your breakfast,'� the voice stated. Cohen heard three sounds at that moment, one of the doors rushing open and shut, the swiff of a tray being shoved into the room, and then the sound of a pair of feet in high heels walking over them, slowly and deliberately, clicking and clacking rhythmically until whatever distance between this person and Cohen was minimal. The door shut again, and Cohen caught only a glimpse of Rick and Trick on the outside making some kind of gestures towards the woman who had just entered the room. Cohen, denying himself any kind of suspense, stared right at the face of this new entry.
She was beautiful. And already his body began to wage war.
'Hello Mister Cohen, how are you feeling today?'� Julia asked. Damn, Cohen thought, looking at her all he could see were imaginings and scenarios, the likes of which could fill a thousand racy novels. He looked at her body and immediately sized up she could be a home wrecker if she wanted, bedding an unsuspecting husband, enveloping the poor man in the glance of her eyes and the sighing of her lips. He wanted her to destroy him; he wanted her to just give him that momentary numbing relief that came with indulging a sin.
'I'm feeling jittery, I can't stop moving.'� Cohen said, forcing his eyes to focus on Julia's.
'I see,'� she said walking towards the bed. Cohen quickly noticed there were no chairs in the room. Wraith like, she sat silently, without care she began to dangle one of her high heels off the edge of her foot. Cohen watched the shoe drift back and forth, back and forth, not wanting his eyes to follow the trail up her leg, tightly enclosed in designer black pants.
'Is the medication helping you at all?'� Julia asked an unreadable smile on her face. Cohen could feel the sweat dripping down his back, soaking his gown.
'Its' made me feel worse if that counts for anything,'� Cohen responded, his words so dry of sarcasm that it surprised even him given the situation. Julia then did the unexpected, she laughed. It was all Cohen could do to focus on the bars outside his room's one window as opposed to gazing at the light joyful movements of his current bedmate. Against his will once again, Cohen's thoughts quickly descended into the foggy lust of his imaginings. He wanted nothing more than to force himself on the woman next to him. At least, he partly rationalized, in the fantasies she seems to be enjoying herself.
'What's supposed to happen to me?'� he asked, clamping down his thoughts and somehow strong arming them to remember the gray skies and white seas outside his window.
Julia looked at Cohen with an odd smile that reached her eyes. She then began writing down on her notepad that appeared to be standard issue to all attentive health care professionals. Cohen blinked, reaching the eye of the storm constituting his thoughts; he was able to conclude that this woman wasn't really listening to him.
'You need to be more assertive Mister Cohen,'� the voice said, the red eye flashing from behind Julia.
'Do you have any questions Mister Cohen?'� Julia asked, clicking her pen.
'I just asked you a question: 'What's supposed to happen to me?'�
'Oh I apologize, you need to speak up Mist- '
'Yes, yeah 'Mister Cohen' 'Mister Cohen', do any of you know my first name?!'� Cohen suddenly said, a lot louder than his brain told him it was. Julia just stared blankly.
'I've been led to believe I've been here a while, how long ago did you put me on the medication?'� Cohen asked.
'How long?'�
'Yes, how long have I been here and how long have I been treated?'� Cohen got up off the bed. A little shaky, but his resolve had given some new found strength. Julia than ran a hand through her long auburn hair and let it fall across her bare neck, to this, Cohen clenched his teeth and burrowed his eyes into hers, refusing to back down.
'Well, if you'll just let me check'�'� Julia began, sifting through her note pad.
'It's about trust Mister Cohen, trust,'� the voice said. At that moment, the doors to Cohen's room flew open. Rick and Trick lumbered in, their hands bearing the gift of fists and needles.
'What is all this? Why am I here?'� Cohen asked while doing his best to stay on his feet.
'You're in the treatment now Mister Cohen, just let us help you.'� Julia said softly as Rick and Trick advanced on Cohen. Before the pair descended on Cohen he was able to spot a little black square with a depressed button beneath Julia's notepad, with her finger holding the button.
'What's my first name huh? Tell me my first name! You know me, want me to trust you? Tell me my name!'� Cohen yelled as Rick and Trick grabbed and quickly wrestled him to the ground. Feeling a light sting, Cohen suddenly felt as if a lead weight was on his chest and quickly sinking inward. The last words Cohen heard before going under were Julia's:
'Patient has clearly demonstrated he is a threat to himself and others. I recommend he be placed in the Isolation and Observation barracks,'� Cohen felt his eyes close.
Upon waking, Cohen found himself in a somewhat bed in a somewhat different room. It was darker than his last, the only florescent light being a small white spot in the center of the ceiling. He still had a bed, but it too was now in the center of the room. What made Cohen breath raggedly was that now his room had no windows, in fact, the walls were so uniform he couldn't tell where the door, if any existed, was supposed to go. His powers of observation growing, Cohen found that in addition to all this he was now also naked, his gown having been taken away, and quite suddenly at that as was evidenced by the red marks at several points on his body.
'What is this'�place?'� Cohen asked, assuming at first he would be listened to by the light bulb.
'This is the Isolation and Observation barracks, for special patients classified as threats, either to themselves or others, Mister Cohen,'� Cohen almost felt a sense of relief, the voice had been the only reliable thing in this whole situation and at least it had followed him here.
'Mister Cohen, being a recent arrival, you have not been briefed on the hospital rules,'� the voice began.
'Wait,'� Cohen said. 'So I am new to this place?'�
'Yes, you only arrived 'fzzzz- days ago.'� The voice stated, the sound of a shock and a pop causing the momentary lapse in its speech.
'My bad urges, the deviant thoughts, what are they? Why was I admitted here and what are they giving me? And damn it, how long have I been treated?'� Cohen heard his voice echo and reverberate right back at him. The general black of the room telling Cohen's senses he was in more of a cave than a room
'Mister Cohen, would you trust the answer I gave you, assuming I were to give you one?'� the voice asked. Cohen paused. Taking a step out of the small halo of illumination the one light afforded him; Cohen felt chills as his bare feet touched the floor. Searching for a bit, Cohen eventually found the black box, complete with yet another red eye, this time it was tucked away in one of the rooms upper corners, bordering the ceiling.
'Just tell me something, anything of substance,'� Cohen said.
'The people here will say they are helping you. But what they are really doing is their job. To them, you are a duty and an obligation, the means to an end, said end being a paycheck,'�
'So-'
'So, they will say things to you, tell you what they think you should hear to make you easier to handle,'�
'They haven't told me anything! All I've been asked, by you included, is how I'm feeling how I'm feeling how I'm feeling.'�
'Mister Cohen, remember when you were told it was all about trust?'� the voice asked. Cohen searched his drug addled mind, probing the inner recesses of his conscious for that question.
'I think I do'�'�
'Do you trust what you hear right now?'�
'I don't trust myself, that's all I'm absolutely sure about,'�
'Trust these words when I tell you that there is a storm happening right now outside of the building. And periodic lightning strikes are to be expected,'�
'What does that have to do with- '
'In times of a black out all the doors are automatically opened, and the alarms and cameras around the facility including the ones wired to the windows are deactivated. One of the old relics of security protocols long past, and since rain is so rare in this area, there has been no need to- '
'Are you-are you real? Are you in my head or an actual voice? What if you're just a delusion, huh? What then?!'� Cohen screamed at the black wall.
A pause. Cohen took a breath and started lightly tapping the walls.
'You've hurt me, and lied to me too, but then I guess if you're not real, it's just self betrayal and masochistic tendencies on my part, right? I'm crazy, right?'� After saying this, Cohen began punching the walls, hard. At first, due to the impressive stores of fear he still had in his mind, he was merely nudging the walls. But in no time at all he had begun raining down blows on the wall, denting, even chipping it just a little bit. His skin was bruised and cut, and the blood soon began to drip in rivets down his fingers like sanguine tears.
'You have been lied to, and you will be lied to again. It is up to you to choose whose lies you'll believe.'�
'Mine'�or theirs,'� Cohen muttered, giving his nearly ruined hands a break. 'And of course, there is the third option,'� Cohen said looking up into the black box's red eye.
What happened next at the hospital was interpreted in different ways by different people. But all could agree that lightning struck, and the electricity, along with everything that entailed, shut down. Doors opened, cameras shut off, conversations about quitting the medical profession were put on hold, midnight trysts in the janitors' closet went on unnoticed, and several people, some clothed, some not, made their move. Creeping up and down the halls like POW's rushing towards their war's end, some were too overwhelmed by their new found freedom to do much with it. These few merely went to the group therapy room asking for cigarettes and time with Melissa. A few simply thought it was morning and relieved themselves in various ways within the halls; a good number didn't even leave their rooms. Some however, attempted to get to the exit. All who did though were caught.
All heads were caught and accounted for, with one exception. And his was an interesting suicide.
The beach near the hospital was nice, though Cohen assumed if he weren't naked there he would somehow enjoy it more. He had read articles on nudist colonies, and while he had no philosophical issues with them, he had just checked in too much mental baggage to truly be comfortable 'letting it all hang out'�. Brushing some stray shards of glass out of his hair and off his shoulders, Cohen felt the absence of the blood he had lost on the way through the window, squeezing between the bars, and tumbling down the hill more than a little disconcerting. Dizzy, and a bit nauseas, Cohen attempted to stand but soon found himself collapsed in the sand.
Cohen then began to laugh; at first it came out like a trickle, small giggles and chuckles, but then the dam broke and he burst out laughing hard and loud. After a few minutes of this, Cohen reached one hand into the sand and thought, for one frenzied second, that he had somehow found some of his pills, but was relieved to find that medication was just a bunch of non-prescription rocks. His laughing fit having subsided Cohen sat back on the sand and stared up at the still gray sky. How lucky, he thought to himself, that the rain had stopped at least a little, making his shames just a little more bearable.
Cohen could feel himself begin to nod off, the rigors of everything that had happened finally taking its toll. But just as his mind began to slowly shift into the gray world of giant strides and vast skies, Cohen thought he felt a buzzing sensation in his ear. Raising his head Cohen quickly realized the sound was muffled, and was coming from somewhere nearby. Rising to his feet slowly, Cohen closed his eyes and let the ocean breeze wash over him. Between the sounds of the gusts he was able to catch bits and pieces of the blunted noise. Walking slowly; Cohen stopped and squatted low. Were they voices? Was the breeze playing tricks? Had his mind finally broken itself, in spite of or because of the medication?
'-ster 'en, -eeling, -en'�'� Cohen recognized it, and was more than a little surprised to find it here. Thrusting both hands deep into the sand, Cohen began to dig frantically. At first he didn't notice the strain but when the sweat of his forehead began pouring into his eyes, he then began to realize that just maybe whatever he was looking for had some kind of importance he didn't know about.
'Hello Mister Cohen,'� greeted the voice. Tossing away the last fistful of sand, Cohen gently brushed some stray grains of sand and rocks away from the black boxes' red eye.
'I suppose this means you're real,'� Cohen said, a tired smile of unrecognizable origins crossing his face. The red eye flared a few times before speaking.
'All 'this' means is that you are naked on the beach, away from the hospital.'� The voice stated. Cohen sat back on the sand gently lifting the black box out of the beach front property.
'So, I'm out? Is that it? Treatment or not, right or wrong, I'm out?'� Cohen asked.
'That is exactly it. Given your wants and needs you chose to believe the correct lies,'� the voice said. 'You realize you may have been being helped back in the hospital?'� the voice asked. Cohen was more than a little taken aback. Though he been asked questions by the voice before, they had never been this near, personal, before.
'I guess I'd rather help myself, whatever that means now,'� Cohen said. The two rested there, black box and medicated human, both watching the gray skies and white seas. On a whim, Cohen tugged the box, and found it was attached to the sand. Looking it over, Cohen found a calculated mess of wires and cords bursting from the back of the box like a growth of weeds and plants, carrying power and data from someplace Cohen could only think was his mind. It was too odd, this thing, this box couldn't be real. What a power the mind has.
'I won't bother asking again whether you're real or not,'� Cohen said.
'That's probably for the best, you wouldn't like the answer,'� the voice responded. Cohen put the box down and looked out towards the sea again. After a pause, Cohen spoke.
'I'd believe the opposite anyway,'� Cohen said. 'Can you'�swim?'� he asked.
'I do not believe so,'� the voice responded. If a machine could conceivably emote, or if a voice through a microphone could somehow reach through the intangibilities that separate speaker and spoken too, than the voice, at some level was trying, or maybe Cohen was deluding himself in that way as well.
'Than I guess that's it then,'� Cohen said. Gently, he put the black box down. Standing up slowly, Cohen carefully bent over and began tracing lines in the sand.
'What are you doing Mister Cohen?'� the black box, this particular black box asked. Cohen continued drawing, spelling out a 'K', followed in suit by an 'A' and several other letters until finally, in giant letters, next to the black box was the word, the name: 'KAHANE'.
'Just letting anyone who sees that I was here, and that you're my own particular neurosis,'� Cohen said. The box did not respond, in fact, the red eye had stopped glowing.
Cohen began to open his to utter something, maybe the word 'box'�, to finally give credence to this thing, which, indirectly or not, had helped him. But he couldn't in the end; he couldn't surrender that last shred of whatever one might call it, sanity, denial, the right to tell a funny joke about someone more unfortunate than you. Whatever it was, he held it back. Then, without haste in his step or pause in his stride, Cohen walked calmly into the blue and white sea.
'Hey buddy, you alright? Wake up, Joe. Man, get him some water and blankets.'� Cohen thought he heard more voices. But these were different, human sounding, full of error and doubt. Feeling the creak in his eyes as they opened, Cohen found that his bare back was no longer skimming waves, but actually on something solid. Focusing his vision Cohen realized he was looking straight into the eyes of a man, a man in patchy and blotched clothes with barely a trace of white on them.
'What's happening?'� Cohen asked, less as a cry for help than as a salutation.
'Oh, you're awake, thank the Lord,'� the man said.
'The man's alive? Damn it all, he's blue all over,'� another man said, presumably Joe, walking in with water and blankets.
'You cold? You must be cold, let me help you up there,'� said a third man who slung Cohen's arm over his shoulders and hoisted him to his feet.
'What is this, a ship?'� Cohen asked.
'Well I hope so or I showed up at the wrong place for work,'� the man who Cohen saw first said. When Cohen didn't respond in the way he was supposed to, the man sobered up a tad. 'My name's Simon by the way, that guy over there is Joe, and the guy holding you there is Mitch,'� Cohen acknowledged this all with several nods. Mitch then brought Cohen over to a separate room and sat him down gently on an old looking chair. Cohen winced and grimaced a bit as the old wood and planks squeaked and moaned under his weight. Mitch spoke a few words that Cohen didn't register and then excused himself. Left alone, Cohen spied a set of clothes laid out, apparently, for him.
Later, Cohen emerged from the room, dry and dressed like a weekend sailor on holiday. Taking in his surroundings, Cohen saw Simon manning the wheel and approached him slowly.
'Did you sleep well?'� Simon asked, taking his eyes from the sea. Cohen noticed over his shoulder that Joe and the other one, Mitch were both setting up tackle boxes.
'I didn't sleep,'�
'Oh, well that's a shame,'� words didn't pass between the two for a time. 'Do you have any family nearby, maybe at that resort on the beach?'� Simon then asked.
'Resort'�no I was there on my own,'� Cohen answered. Simon nodded as he moved to drop the ships anchor. Then, as if struck by divine remembrance, he jerked his head up to look at Cohen.
'I almost forgot, when we found you,'� Simon said, suddenly searching his pockets. 'You were holding on to this thing, it's yours right?'� he asked, holding out a black box with a trail of ripped out wires dangling out the back of it. Cohen looked at the box, then at Simon. Slowly, he extended his hand to take it from Simon's outstretched arm. Quizzically he turned it over in his hands a few times.
'Nah, this thing isn't mine. Used to have one just like it though,'� Cohen said as he lightly tossed the box over the bow of the ship. A strange feeling washed over him as he heard the splash the black box made before it sunk into the azure depths of the ocean. Looking out over the sea, Cohen was confronted with his reflection, and couldn't imagine himself looking anything like he did. He swore was a different person, with different colored eyes and a significantly different voice. Quite suddenly, Cohen felt like an invader in his own body.
'So Mister'�'� Mitch began, walking back with a giant fish in hand. After a pause.
''�Cohen.'� Cohen responded.
'Mister Cohen, how do you feel?'�
'I feel'�a little beside myself,'� Cohen answered. The sea breeze then kicked up again, gently guiding Cohen's head and eyes towards the nearby coast. For just a moment, Cohen felt he could see into every city, every door way, every room, into every mind, past every urge and inclination, every intention and desire. Once past all this, Cohen could see only what he saw in the water, a man he wasn't, a foreigner to his own mind, a black box sinking in the ocean.
-2007

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