The silence in the room caused William Randolph Sloan’s ears to swell with the echo of his own rapid pulse. The noise sounded like thousands of soldiers marching on sandy beaches to reach the front of the battle. His eyes closed and the darkness quickly gave way to brilliantly colored dancing shapes, purples and deep blues and bright with white flashes of electricity that repeated an unending pattern. Without breaking their firm seal, the eyelids of William Randolph Sloan whisked the hot flow of tears quickly from the surface of his bloodshot eyeballs. The salty tears quickly navigated their way through the corner of his tightly squeezed eyes and down whiskers of his new beard.

Suddenly his legs had no strength. The legs that supported him as a young boy sorting paper in his company’s mailroom; the legs that walked into a smoky board room as a young man and proposed the idea that sensationalism resulted in profit; the legs that had served as the base of his strong, robust torso. Now they were nonexistent. Yes, they were there, but their purpose was no longer useful and quickly the core of William Randolph Sloan’s body gave way to the force of gravity.