Are you my son Jasmine?

It's dark in here.  I can hardly see.  Who is that?  Jasmine?  Come closer, son, if that's you.  Come closer, whoever you are, regardless.  Maybe I'll be able to tell who you are.

Let me feel your hand, Jasmine.  Aah yes, there's that rough skin I associate with Jasmine.  Although other people have rough skin, always have.  Are you still working at the pizza factory?  I can't really hear you very well, the winds are howling.  Close the window, if you're not too hot.  Squeeze my hand if you still work at the pizza factory -- aah, you've dropped my hand, to close the window, I hope.  Be nice to that Mr. Pepperoni.  I know he works you hard, but he's a good man at heart, and he's lived a tough life.  He only came into owning that factory by accident, and he does not like pizza.

Mr. Pepperoni got you that job as a favor to me, Jasmine, you do realize that, don't you?  It was not easy securing you a position at the factory of such an important member of the community.  I know he can be a difficult boss.  What you might not know is that I worked for Mr. Pepperoni too, years ago, before you were born.  You didn't know that, did you?  We were just school-boys then.  He started a business in the neighborhood, giving haircuts to shut-ins.  We'd go around to all the apartments of neighborhood shut-ins with scissors and a mirror and hair cream and an apron and such and cut their hair.  He was the one who cut their hair, the "barber-boy."  My job was simply to carry the scissors and hand him the cream when necessary and sweep up the hair when the job was done and stand still when he was working.  The "scissor-boy."  If I moved or flinched or made a face he would have to pause the haircut and take me into another room and slap me with a wet, rolled-up barber-boy's towel.  As they were being delivered, I felt his punishments were overly severe, but in the fullness of time I've come to recognize that such measures were necessary to keep a disciplined work force and run a profitable business.  And the business was profitable, because he barely had to cut any of the shut-ins' hair, because hair doesn't grow well when you never go outside, and because they had a poor grasp of time, we could give them haircuts every day, sometimes twice a day, and charge a lot for them because they forgot how much haircuts cost.

Don't kick the bed.  Stop.  Stop kicking the bed.  Is that you?  Stop kicking the bed.

So give Mr. Pepperoni a break, and try to remember that he has reasons for everything he does.  Are you listening to me?  Kick the bed if you're listening.  Ok, that felt like a kick.  That's what you never understood about other people -- they have reasons for everything.  Mr. Pepperoni treats his employees roughly because he needs to to get the best out of them.  I named you Jasmine, over the objections of your mother and the doctors and nurses because I thought it was a beautiful name.  And it is.  Why is it that we give our daughters beautiful names, like Jasmine and Jennifer, and leave our sons with dull, ugly names like Gerg and Guff?  You were a beautiful boy and I wanted to give you a beautiful name to match.  Jasmine is a lovely flower and an attractive and masculine shade of yellow.

I still can't see you, so if you aren't Jasmine, then please convey these things to my son Jasmine at your earliest convenience.  And who are you, anyway?

It was originally a grain factory when Mr. Pepperoni bought it -- the pizza factory where you now work.  Ground-up grains.  He bought the grains, and then he ground them up.  Then he shipped them off, to his customers.  It was a thriving grain grinder, but as soon as Mr. Pepperoni bought it, his business dried up.  I told him no one would ever buy grains from an Italian.  Not that people don't like Italians, they'd just never bought grains from one before, they didn't know to trust the grains of an Italian.  You want to buy your grains from a German or a Scot -- ask Mr. Pepperoni, next time you see him, where he buys the ground grains he uses to make his pizza dough.  I can't ask him.  As you know, we had a bit of a falling out.  He wouldn't accept my counsel and turn the factory into a pizza factory, until he did, almost too late, and then he was too prideful to credit me with saving him.  Oh, he hated that I was right, just as much as he hated that pizza he still manufactures, disc by sauced disc.

Who's that, who just came in?  Aah, Mr. Pepperoni!  I can see your face as plain as day.  Come to finish me off?  To silence me once and for all?  To kill me off and rewrite history without me?  Go ahead then.  Wrap your fingers around my throat, yes, like that.  No, Jasmine, let it happen, if that's you.  Let Mr. Pepperoni put me in my grave.  Let him erase me from his successes.  Let Mr. Pepperoni finish the story.  Just know, Mr. Pepperoni, that I never begrudged you your success, and I never told a lie about you.

But the kind mister pepperoni did not kill me and instead the cowardly old man (me) apologized to him for lying cheating stealing piggy-backing and ankle-biting to his success and he laughed at me in his supreme position earned by his own hard work and nothing more and left me to die alone which I did shortly thereafter with my own fingers imprinted upon my neck because I had grabbed it in fear earlier THE END.