The man paced restlessly in the darkened apartment, illuminated only by the television set he marched in front of.

It was a sparse apartment; a worn chair with tears in the armrests sat opposite the television, with a small table to its side, covered with newspapers and pill bottles and empty soda cans surrounding a lamp with a porcelain base bearing a red floral pattern. A few pictures hung on the wall- pictures of the man as a child with his family, pictures of the man’s graduation ceremony, pictures of the man with a dog, a black german shepard.

“Our top story tonight: coal! Coal coal coal! Coal is booming like never before!” The sharply dressed woman on the television said. This got the man’s attention, halting his pacing.

Coal wasn’t ‘booming’- it was dying, he thought. He had been working at one of the only coal mines left in the entire country for the past 6 years, and it was only getting worse by the day. Pay was being cut, workers were losing all their benefits and dying to black lung, and product yields had never been lower.

With a newfound interest in the story, he walked over to his chair and took a seat, keeping an eye on the television all the while, careful not to let it out of his sight. As he sat, his body instinctively sank into the familiar crevices he’d come to know in the old, worn chair. As he rested his arms on the armrests, his fingers naturally found themselves prodding through the torn fabric, poking at the foam-like material underneath.

But as he did this, as he had done a million times before, he was stricken with a sudden sense of pain. He pulled his finger away from the armrest to reveal a pinprick of blood at the tip of his right index finger. He bent his head down to peek inside the armrest, but it was too dark to see anything. But he didn’t need to see anything- he’d rested his fingers in that position countless, innumerable times, and that had never happened before.

“But don’t just take our word for it- we talked to these folks at just one of the many prosperous coal facilities in our great nation! Take a look!” The television said to him, immediately drawing his attention away from his bloody finger.

The television displayed a bustling facility, with lots of workers and coal yields like he had never seen before. All the tools and machines were glistening with newness, and all the workers had big, white smiles. ‘Fayateville, North Carolina’ appeared on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.

That couldn’t be true. That was where he worked, that was where he worked for the past 6 years. Even during the best of times, it was never like what they were showing on the screen, not ever. He leapt up from his chair to resume pacing once more, his hands covering his face.

When he removed them, he saw something strange. He stared at his wall for a long, lingering moment before approaching it, cautiously.

He stood in front of a framed picture of himself with his dog, hanging on the wall next to pictures of his family and his youth. He ran his hand along the picture- a picture he’d seen every day for years, leaving a long smear of blood across its surface.

Letty, his dog, his german shepard he’d raised from a puppy that had passed away 2 years ago, was no longer in the painting. In its place was a golden retriever. He had never owned a golden retriever, he didn’t know this dog, or why it was in this picture. Tears began to stream down his face as he pawed helplessly at the picture in confusion, until blood was smeared across the entire surface.

He looked to his hand- what was once a pinprick of blood was now a large, seeping wound encompassing most of his hand.

“We spoke to one miner who’s been working diligently at the facility for 6 years!” The television continued.

He froze. He couldn’t bear to look. He knew what he’d see, somehow he knew.

“Things are great, better than ever!” He heard his own voice boom from the television. “It’s never been a better time to be in the coal industry. We’re making money hand over fist! Not to mention the great healthcare benefits, and getting to work with folks that I consider my family now. It’s a very special, rewarding job, and things are better than ever! Coal is booming!”

He turned to face the television. His face took up the entire 67-inch screen on what was once a 32-inch television. His worn chair was gone, replaced with a fine leather recliner. The walls of his apartment all looked freshly painted, and the room had been tidied- it barely looked like his apartment at all.

He took a step toward the television, only to slip and fall onto his back, staring up at the ceiling, or what should have been a ceiling, but was instead… nothing. An endless black void, reaching into the cosmos.

He felt warm blood pooling beneath him. He lifted his hand to his face only to realize he no longer had a hand- just a grim stump of bone and sinew spurting forth a fountain of blood over himself.

He couldn’t hear the television anymore- it just sounded like a loud buzzing. He lay there, growing warm and cold, for a while, and then stayed there for a while yet longer.