It was the third year of my terminal bone cancer. My ex-girlfriend, Detective Captain Evelyn Reed, stormed my cramped apartment with a squad. I relied on heavy morphine doses to get through each day. She watched me. I was covered in needle marks, twitching as I desperately reached for a pill bottle on the table. A cold sneer twisted her lips. “What, Liam? Seven years, and you’ve really sunk this low? A junkie? Where’s all that arrogance you had when you walked out on me?” Before she had even finished, I weakly pointed at the bottle, my hand trembling. “Officer… please… just give me the pills…” She scoffed, picked up the bottle, and walked into the bathroom. I heard the flush of the toilet. “You want them? Go beg for them in detox!” My body seized up with agonizing pain. She watched, unmoved, as I writhed on the floor, filming me. She said it would make a good warning video. “Set up the camera.” Evelyn ordered her team. “Get a close-up on him. I want every detail.” “This will make the perfect anti-drug PSA.” The flashlight beams flared, lighting up my sweat-drenched face. The pain in my bones was like a swarm of insects chewing through my marrow, an itch and a burn at once. I tried to claw at the sensation, but my nails only scraped the cold floor with a dry, grating sound. Evelyn crouched, her black baton jabbing under my chin and forcing my head up. “Look at you, Liam. Pathetic. Even a stray dog has more dignity than you do right now.” My vision swam. All I could see through the pain was the sharp line of her jaw. “Pills…” I forced the word out, mustering the last of my strength, and my hand fumbled for the hem of her trousers. Just then, a figure in a white coat entered the room. It was Dr. Marcus Thorne. The team physician, Evelyn’s trusted deputy, and my former closest friend. He glanced at me, his gaze lingering on the port scars along my arm-the legacy of years of chemotherapy, now mistaken for track marks. “My God, Evelyn, look at his arm.” Marcus cried out, feigning shock. “These are classic signs of long-term IV drug use. You can see the venous cord formation. His addiction must be severe.” I opened my mouth. I wanted to tell them they weren’t needle marks, but access ports for my chemotherapy. But my throat was a column of fire, too parched to make a sound. Only a raw, rasping gasp broke through. Evelyn absorbed Marcus’s ‘expert’ diagnosis. The last flicker of conflict in her eyes died, replaced by pure, unalloyed disgust. She brutally kicked my hand away from her pants. “Don’t touch me!” Her kick sent me rolling half a turn, slamming me into the corner. My bones collided with the wall, emitting a dull thud. A new wave of excruciating pain washed over me. “Announce it! Suspect Liam is getting a 24-hour live stream of his forced ‘purification’!” Evelyn’s voice echoed through the room. “Let everyone see what drugs can turn a once-promising person into-a husk, a shadow of his former self, a monster!” “Evelyn, this… this isn’t standard procedure!” a young officer beside Evelyn whispered, reminding her. Evelyn spun around, her voice thick with barely suppressed rage. “For drug dealers who repeatedly endanger lives and show no remorse, extraordinary measures are necessary!” “I want every potential addict to see this is their fate! The consequences? I’ll bear them alone! I’ll take full responsibility!”
As I teetered on the edge of consciousness, Evelyn’s search continued. She was meticulous, leaving no corner unchecked, determined to uncover all my “evidence” of wrongdoing. Finally, she kicked the bed aside and fumbled under it, dragging out a dusty metal box. My heart lurched! No! Anything but that! The things inside that box were more important than my life! “Don’t touch it!” I didn’t know where the strength came from, but I crawled toward her, scrambling on all fours. Evelyn paused, startled by my frantic behavior, then her eyes glinted with even deeper mockery. She easily kicked me aside and unlatched the box. Inside lay a tattered diary with worn edges and a police badge, carefully wrapped in a red cloth. Evelyn picked up the diary and casually flipped through a few pages. It contained my entries for every chemotherapy session, every surge of pain, every dose of medication. “March 7th, sunny. OxyContin, 80mg. Pain.” “March 9th, cloudy. Morphine injection. Hurts so bad I want to die, but I think I saw Evelyn on the street. She still looks so beautiful.” “March 15th, rainy. Increased dosage. My bones feel like they’re shattering.” She let out a cold laugh, holding the diary high for the camera. “Look at this! What is it? A junkie’s diary!” She loudly read out the line, “I think I saw Evelyn,” her voice laced with derision and disgust. “Ha, hallucinations from being high, huh? Still thinking about me? Liam, you absolutely sicken me.” With that, she tossed the diary directly into the trash can in the corner. Then, she picked up the police badge wrapped in red cloth. It was my father’s relic; he had been her mentor. Seeing the badge, Evelyn’s eyes turned stone cold. “You don’t deserve to keep this.” She stepped closer. “The son of a hero, living as a parasite. Is this how you honor your father’s memory?” I shook my head wildly, tears cutting tracks through the cold sweat on my face. “No… it’s not true…” But she ignored me completely, drawing a lighter from her pocket. Click. A cold, blue flame sputtered to life. She actually lit the diary on fire, right in front of me! She stomped on my outstretched hand, trying to snatch it back, grinding her heel down with brutal force. A sound like shattering bone echoed, and I screamed in agony. “Watch.” She forced my gaze as the diary blackened and curled into ash within the flames. “Why keep this? So the world will remember what a piece of garbage you were?” “Or do you want everyone to know that I, Evelyn Reed, was once with a junkie criminal?” The fire devoured the pages, a heat that seemed to burn inside my own bones. Marcus spoke up from the side. “Evelyn’s right. This kind of trash just pollutes the environment. Burning it cleans things up.” I lay on the floor, my hand pinned under her foot, unable to move. I stopped struggling, stopped crying out. I just watched the fire, silently, until it consumed the last page, leaving only a pile of black ashes. That diary was the last proof of my innocence left in this world. Now, it was gone.
The next day, as dawn barely broke. I was dragged out of my apartment by two officers, my arms wrenched painfully. Twenty-four hours of forced detox had left me without the strength to even stand. The double torment of bone cancer pain and morphine withdrawal had almost burned away my sanity. Outside, a dense crowd had gathered, a barrage of cameras blocking the narrow hallway, making it impassable. “That’s him! The drug addict!” “He looks so normal, so innocent… how can he be so rotten inside?” Evelyn, impeccable in her crisp police uniform, stood at the front of the crowd, her face grim as she addressed the cameras. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Liam Stone, the drug user we apprehended yesterday. A classic example of someone who fell into the abyss of degradation due to his own vanity.” The moment her words finished, someone in the crowd, I don’t know who, hurled a rotten cabbage leaf that splattered right across my face. More rotten vegetables and foul-smelling eggs followed. Someone even spat. In the chaos, the wig I wore due to chemotherapy was violently ripped off, exposing my bald scalp. “Freak! He’s bald!” The jeers and insults of the crowd washed over me like a tide. I stood there numbly, letting the filth drip down my head, soaking into my collar. Just then, an old, angry voice broke through the crowd. “What are you doing! Stop it! Don’t you dare bully him!” It was Mr. Peterson, my landlord. Wielding a broom, he struggled to push through the crowd, shielding me with his frail body. “Liam isn’t a bad person! He’s sick! You heartless monsters!” Mr. Peterson used his thin body to shield me from a fresh volley of garbage. I saw egg yolk and vegetable bits stuck in his gray hair, and my heart felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand, making it impossible to breathe. “Mr. Peterson…” Evelyn frowned, signaling to her team. “Get that old man away.” Immediately, several officers stepped forward, forcibly dragging Mr. Peterson away. Marcus quickly seized the opportunity, explaining to the camera with a’kind’ but condescending tone: “Don’t be fooled, everyone. Many drug users are adept at feigning pity to gain sympathy, especially from soft-hearted elderly people. We’re doing this for the old gentleman’s own safety.” The crowd’s emotions flared again. They pointed and jeered at the struggling old man. “Senile fool! Duped by a junkie!” “He’s probably an accomplice! They’re all in it together!” Mr. Peterson was roughly shoved, stumbled, and fell to the ground, his forehead hitting the pavement with a sickening thud. A trickle of blood already formed. “Mr. Peterson!” I shrieked, a raw cry escaping my throat. Evelyn walked up to me, and in a voice only we could hear, she threatened me. “See that, Liam?” “If you don’t want to drag this old man down with you, charged with’harboring and aiding a drug dealer,’ then you’ll cooperate. Understand?” My body went rigid. She was using the only person in this world who cared about me as a weakness to exploit. What else could I do? I could only hang my head, abandoning all struggle, letting the filth cover my entire body. In front of countless cameras, I stood like a condemned prisoner, trembling, utterly despairing.
I was taken to the city center plaza. Overnight, a massive, fully transparent glass enclosure had been erected there. Like a cage built to exhibit a monster. And I was the monster about to be displayed. I was shoved inside, and the surrounding floodlights instantly blazed, blinding me. Outside the glass enclosure, a dense crowd gathered, their faces filled with curiosity, contempt, and excitement. A forest of phones and cameras were pointed at me, live-streaming without interruption for twenty-four hours. Without morphine to suppress it, the bone cancer pain finally broke free of all restraints, exploding within me in an exponentially terrifying way. It hurt. It hurt so much I couldn’t breathe. It hurt so much I felt like I could hear my bones shattering, inch by agonizing inch. I started to roll wildly on the ground, curling up, trying every possible way to alleviate this inhuman torment. I even slammed my head against the unforgiving glass wall, dull thuds echoing through the space. I just wanted to pass out, or better yet, simply die. The crowd outside the glass enclosure gasped and jeered. “Look! He’s going into withdrawal!” “What a pathetic sight. Serves him right.” Evelyn stood outside the glass enclosure, a microphone in her hand. “Everyone, look. This is the devastation drugs wreak on humanity. Once you touch them, you lose all dignity, becoming a beast that only knows how to demand. This is the price of self-destruction.” Her voice, amplified, reached everyone’s ears, and mine. My consciousness began to blur with pain, and hallucinations flickered before my eyes. Evelyn outside the glass wall was no longer the cold, hard detective captain. She reverted to her appearance from seven years ago, wearing a white dress, standing in the sunlight, smiling gently at me, extending her hand. “Liam, don’t be scared. I’ve come to take you home.” “Evelyn…” I cried, reaching out to the phantom, using my last shred of strength to call her name. “Evelyn… save me…” My desperate plea, however, was seen by the crowd in a completely different light. Marcus instantly seized the microphone, his voice a blend of feigned regret and open contempt. “As you all witness, the suspect is in the grip of a severe drug-induced psychosis. The substance has utterly annihilated his will.” The entire internet absorbed his ‘expert’ commentary. The live stream’s chat erupted into an instant torrent of ridicule and abuse. “This guy is totally beyond saving.” The hallucination shattered, and boundless pain swallowed me once again. I finally couldn’t take it anymore, my vision went black, and I passed out. A bucket of icy cold water splashed onto my face, the biting chill instantly jolting me awake. The public spectacle of my torment continued. I don’t know how long passed. At the peak of another wave of intense pain, my body completely gave out. A warm gush erupted from my lower abdomen, soaking my pants. I had lost control of my bladder. In that moment, all pain, humiliation, and anger vanished. I was left only with endless numbness and desolation. My last shred of dignity was crushed into dust, utterly annihilated. In my fading consciousness, I felt the glass door violently shoved open. Someone burst in and seized me by the collar. Evelyn, a fury incarnate. “Liam! Get up! Stop faking it!” She was in a blind rage, her grip savage. A sharp, brittle crack echoed in the room. It was my collarbone, already hollowed by cancer, giving way under her violent shaking. Her motion ceased instantly. She stared at her hands, then at the grotesque dip in my shoulder, disbelief spreading across her face. How could a common junkie be so brittle that a simple shake would shatter bone? For the first time, her voice carried a sliver of barely-audible panic. “Liam… your bones…”
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