Author's Note: This was just me messing around with a creative writing assignment! xD Enjoy!

Eying the cigarette box in my pocket in distaste, the doctor informed me it would only be a routine checkup—nothing more than a casual vitals test, an uncomfortable examination, and a brief nasal scan.

I’ve seen this all before of course; they had the same tortuous tricks in Vietnam. They locked me in a white metal room and watched as I slowly went mad, rocking myself to sleep in a dazed stupor. Sometimes, they would pull me out, grabbing my arm and strapping me to their operating table. There, they cut me open and pulled out my organs, injecting me with noxious chemicals and irrepressible diseases. They made us eat worms, forcing them down our throats until we choked on our own spit. Once, someone asked to see my scars, and I told him the Vietnamese were tricky that way- they knew how to operate without leaving a trace of their work behind them. Yet now as if called to life by memory, I could feel the chemicals they put into my body once more churning, ready to finish what they started. However, while the nurses poked and prodded and patronized me, I confronted the traumas of my past and sat completely still through the awakening of old nightmares.

The next thing I knew, they were asking for an MRI, another one of their high end medical procedures designed to take all your money to tell you you’re going to die.

“It’s the cigarettes, good man,” the doctor said, once more staring at my pocket. “I’ve told you that you should have quit when you had the chance.”

Twenty years ago, I had gathered with my other friends behind the school, one of us staged at the corner as a lookout for the teachers. Browning had unearthed a stack of crushed cigarettes from his backpack, tossing each of us one.

“Those cause cancer, you know?” I had said it as a question, nervous and trying to fit in.

“Whoever told you that was a moron,” Browning replied, snapping on the lighter and gesturing toward me. “Light ‘em up.”

So here I tell the doctor what Browning told me, and in return the man shakes his head and faces the ground. “You likely have stage 4 lung cancer,” he says, and the words hit the ground between us.

I think about for a minute before I nod. “Makes sense. It wasn’t the cigarettes, my friend,” I say, mimicking his jovial tone. “It was the worms who gave it to me.”

“You’ve never even been to Vietnam,” the doctor replied, exasperated. He had heard this tale a good many times, for it explained every malady of my body—especially as I was an incredibly healthy person before I left the country.

“You weren’t there; it was a despicable place,” I say, before lighting a cigarette and leaving the flabbergasted doctor alone in the room behind me.