Cigarette Man

	The doorhandle turned with a click, and the man who was slouched on the bed looked up.

	'Good morning, Mr. Millard.' Said the man who had just walked through the doorway. He wore a black suit with a black tie, and held a clipboard. 'How are you today?' The door echoed closed behind him.

	'Who are you? Some fuckin' cop?' sneered Millard, swinging his legs off the bed and onto the floor. 'I already told them everything. Why else do you think I'm here?' He looked around at the plain, poorly washed sanitarium walls.

	The man in the suit inhaled. 'Yes, I understand the police have already questioned you. But all they said was you kept telling them that you didn't 'actually' do it.'

	Millard rolled his eyes. 'They don't understand. The first cop I talked to didn't listen at all, just kept saying how I was gonna get the chair.'

	'I see.' The man in the suit pulled the grimy wooden chair from its place at the desk and took a seat on it. 'Well, I haven't come here to harass you, so you can tell me as much as you'd like.'

	Millard stared at him for a moment. 'Fine. D'you at least have a cigarette?'

	The man reached into his pocket. 'I thought you might ask.'

	As sunrays shone through the high window and began to dance in the smoke clouds, Millard spoke. 'Okay, I'll explain. I didn't kill Linda, but I did kill something that looked like her.' Millard looked to the man, whose expression had not changed. 'I felt like something was wrong with her for a while, maybe a couple days. I dunno.' He paused to take another drag on his cigarette.

	'So, when did you plan to kill this thing that wasn't your wife?' The man in the suit asked, after looking up from his notes. 'There's no denying it looked quite premeditated.'

	'I was starting to get scared the day or two before the argument, the one our neighbours heard. But I didn't plan anything until that morning.' Millard cast his eyes around the bare room, letting them eventually come to rest on the smoke rising from his hand.

	'You were afraid?' The man leaned forward slightly.

	When I realised it wasn't Linda, yeah, I was.' Millard closed his eyes. 'It's kinda hard to explain. The feeling that someone isn't who they were a few days ago, and I mean literally not the same. Like they were replaced by some fuckin' replica. It was the worst fear I had ever had.'

	'What sort of replica?'

	Millard sighed. 'Who fuckin' knows. Maybe that's not the right word. It's like, if you have a coffee mug, and you throw it out and replace it with one that looks the same. Everything seems fine on the surface, but you know that it's not the same mug, not really.' 

	'I see.' The man had his nose down towards his clipboard again. 'And the argument, what was it about?'

	'I tried to talk to her one last time. I already planned what I was gonna do, but I had to be sure. I tried to drill it into my head that it really was Linda, and she was having some sort of mental issues, or that maybe even I was.' Millard set his gaze towards the locked steel door in front of his bed. 'I tried to be as compassionate as I could be. I talked to her like I always did, but it was no use. She just gave some bullshit response she'd never say, and I knew for certain it wasn't really her.'

	'What did she say?'

	'I don't remember. Nothing specific. Something like "I am okay, you do not have to worry." ' Millard moved his arms mechanically, dropping ash on the concrete floor. 'But I was so confused, so afraid, I just started to scream at that thing, demanding it tell me where Linda was.'

	'You think Linda is somewhere, right now?' The man locked eyes with Millard.

	'She's got to be somewhere, right?' He took another drag.  'And I don't want to believe she's dead.'

	'What did you do after you yelled at it?'

	'It tried to leave. I don't know where it was gonna go, but I grabbed it. Like I said, I already made my plan, so I had the duct tape and zip ties in my pocket. Tied it up, took it to the basement, and cut its throat.'

	'It must not have been that good of a plan, if you got caught so quickly?'

	Millard smirked. 'I didn't mean to yell so loud, and I didn't think the neighbours would call the cops. I should have guessed, though. They were always nosy bastards.'

	The room was silence except for the scratch of the man's pencil on his notepaper. Then he stopped writing and looked up. 'Well, Mr. Millard,' he began, standing up from the chair. 'I think gives me all the information I need.' The man pushed the chair back to its spot at the desk.

	Millard looked up towards him. 'You're gonna talk to the doctors, right? You know I'm telling the truth, don't you?'

	The man absentmindedly checked his watch as he moved towards the door. 'I'm sorry Mr. Millard, but I'm not sure there's much I can do for someone with your condition.'

	'My condition?' Millard jumped up from his seat on the bedside. 'I'm not some fuckin' lunatic!' He dropped the cigarette to the floor, creating a gentle pop of sparks. 'You understand, I know you do!'

	As the man pulled the door open, he looked back over his shoulder. 'Get well, Mr. Millard.' He left the room, and the door closed with a metallic echo. As he walked down the florescent-lit hall, the man heard Millard shouting and pounding on the door, but he could not make out the words. At the end of the hall stood a woman in a suit, with long, dark hair.

	'Is he a risk?' She asked, as the man approached her. 

	'He knows,' the man began, taking another cigarette out of his jacket. 'but who would believe him?'