Lifespan Hospice, London
A fter the Dude drives me to the Pillar’s location, he guns the Corvette into the streets and disappears, leaving me with my mouth agape, staring at the hospice where I am supposed to find the Pillar.
I enter, not sure what the Pillar is doing here, so I ask the receptionist about him.
“Oh, Mr. Pillar,” she cheers “Such a charming man. He is in Ward Six.”
“Charming indeed,” I mumble, a little envious of everyone finding him so, not pointing out that he is utterly bonkers—and a serial killer.
Inside, I try to smile at everyone I pass by in the rooms. I mean what consolation can you give to a dying person, though I totally respect the work done here.
Then there I find him, in Ward Six. He is standing on top of a patient’s bed, dancing with his cane up in the air and the hookah in his other hand. I can’t hear what he’s saying since I am behind glass. But I can surely see what the other patients are doing.
They are simply dancing as well, half of them smoking hookahs—and coughing ferociously afterward.
I rap on the glass but no one’s paying attention. The Pillar’s dance moves are imitated by each person in the room, all of them standing on their beds.
Pushing the glass door open, the first sound that attacks my ears is a well-known song, booming out of an eighties cassette player that most youngsters of my generation only see in old movies. The player is crackling with a badly equalized version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
I call out for the Pillar, but still, no one pays attention. Everyone is dancing and smoking as if they’re reckless teenagers with no respect for what time does to us in this world. None of them look like they’re dying soon, actually.
“Listen. Listen!” The Pillar waves at them. “We’ve danced enough.”
“No!” They pout.
“Seriously.” He coughs with beady eyes. “I need to tell you something.”
“That you’re handsome?” An old woman, who ripped her IV from her arm, giggles.
“Thank you, darling, but I already know that,” he says. “What I want to tell you is a phrase, which I want you to repeat whenever you feel your time has come and that you’re about to die.”
The room falls silent. Even the song ends on its own.
“Don’t worry,” the Pillar tells them. “When death comes creeping up to your bed, under the sheets, telling you it’s time, all you have to say is the following…”
The patients’ eyes are all on him.
“You say, ‘I will die when I say so,’” the Pillar says, and I feel embarrassed. The man must have smoked too much and now is only talking nonsense.
But the patients surprise me by loving it. They all start saying, “I’ll die when I say so!”
Rolling my eyes, I pull at the Pillar’s trousers while he is standing on the bed. He kicks me off, grunting. “What do you want? Get out of here.”
“Seriously?” I say. “This Chessmaster is threatening to kill the leaders of the world and you’re playing games with these poor people?”
“He isn’t fooling us.” The old woman glares at me. “Carter is one of us. He knows how we feel.”
I shrug, speechless, unable to comment. What does she mean? Is the Pillar dying?
“Wait outside, Alice,” the Pillar says. “You have no idea what’s going on.”