I know I’m here in this waiting room. I know it’s two-fifty-nine and my appointment’s at three. I know my heart’s beating a million miles an hour as I pretend to read this issue of TIME. Yep, TIME makes me look intellectual. Reading TIME no one will notice that I’ve chewed my nails so bad they’re bleeding. My breath’s catching, catching on each intake so I’m sounding like an old steam engine, and now I’m shaking as I watch that second hand tick fatefully forward reading TIME.

I imagine I’ll be rescued. There’ll be an accident and that clinical bitch sitting at the counter, busy filing her nails and talking on the phone rushes over. "Excuse me Sir", she’ll say - she’ll call me Sir ‘cos she’s noticed I’m reading TIME. "There’s been an accident so I’m putting this lady before you." She’ll look deeply into my eyes as I lower a corner of the magazine, staring coldly back toward her. "You see it’s an emergency!"

I’ll smile slightly with that tight-lipped, James Dean smile where I curl my lip on the outside, then wink as I stand up to leave. "Sure Babe, knock yourself out," I say as I collect my jacket, then walk toward the door.

And as I slam it behind me, I know I’ve just escaped the Chair. A last minute phone call from the Governor. I’m walking free. Free into the street…

I grin to myself whilst replaying the scenario over and over.

"Mr. Buzowski? Mr. Buzowski? Doctor Lard will see you now"

"Shit!"

I contemplate movement and it feels as though my legs are glued to the seat. Every muscle in my legs has frozen so I rock forward, attempting to throw myself out, out of the chair. The chair’s padded with fake leather and it’s steaming hot and sticky ‘cos that damn rotating fan is plain useless! Useless! My legs stick to the chair as I fall forward so I hear a sucking suction sound from that damn fake leather, so it feels as though a layer of my skin has been left behind.

She walks before me with a clipboard, into the consulting room, toward the Chair, which she caresses like a model: lowering its arm then clipping it immediately upward once I’m inside. Closing it with a clink. The Chair reclines and I feel as though I’m on a conveyor. Next she reaches across me with that little, that little…that little green bib, securing it with a clip, rubbing her breast into my shoulder. Kinky bitch!

She’s making small talk as though we’re in a bar. I politely smirk and nod as she hands me a cup of foul pink liquid, telling me to swirl it round and round. I feel a spasm as my whole body convulses in protest to the taste.

"Now spit it out," she says, like a dominatrix as she points toward the drain which sounds like a Goddamn cappuccino machine gurgling away.

In the background I can feel his presence. I can’t see him but I can sure feel him 'cos the temperature's just dropped and my skin begins to crawl. And I’m certain that he senses fear ‘cos predators can smell it you know. You know? Survival of the fittest, and all that shit. I hear his voice and I feel his stuttered footsteps. Next I smell his breath. It’s soaked in mints that mask the smell of heavy Monte Cristo's that I've seen him smoking in the street. ‘Cos on the street he looks kind of normal. A regular guy standing on a corner smoking those cigars that cost $25 a piece. And he looks very innocent with his small subtle frame dressed in a plain black suit with old suspenders to stop his pants from falling to the floor. His face is thin with sagging skin that’s splotched in places with red pigment and small and pointy ears holding those heavy black rimmed spectacles that sit upon the venous nose with the cavernous nostrils that I stare into each time I’m in the Chair. And that’s about all I can see from down there, the nostrils. The Goddamn nostrils!

The nostrils prod and poke me. They drill me and stick me with needles. It’s the nostrils that talk to me at night, catching me with in their silver hairs, like an anemone…

"Nice to see you Mr. Buzowski. It's been a while!" he says as he sticks a mirror and a scraper into my mouth.

I look up into those nostrils and the hairs sway with each hypnotic breath.

"Oh no, no, no," he says as he prods at the molars. "Still grinding I see."

The question is rhetorical, yet I shake my head up and down for fear of retribution. He pokes the scraper into the heart of a molar and I feel the filling. Snap.

"Oh no, no," he says as he lowers his head toward me until the nostrils enclose me until I’m trapped inside them, a deep dark cavern with the hairs reaching toward me like an anemone. I scream and lash out at them until they grab hold of me: gripping me, suffocating me until everything's black.

I’m not sure what’s happened. I’m guessing I fell asleep ‘cos everything’s quiet and calm. There’s bright lights in here and there are people that stand over me with clipboards. I hear machine's somewhere in the distance, beep, beeping all about me. I try to move but I feel restraints all about my arms and legs. Even about my head - they’re the tendrils I guess.

Faces appear above me from time to time. They speak to me slowly, softly as thought I'm in a dream. "Why?" they keep asking "Why?"

And although I don't know what it is they're speaking of, I've a feeling there's something wrong. It’s funny that they’re here at all ‘cos I never even thought that there’d be other’s living in Dr Lard’s nose. Well, I’m just guessing they’re other patients like me. And it’s not so bad a place ‘cos from what the voices tell me, Dr Lard is no longer with us, which I understand. I guess that I’ll never see Dr Lard again now I’m living up his nose…