Title: Sean and the Smoke Screen

Sean was forty angry and alone. He lived in his mothers council flat with the curtains always drawn and the TV stuck on angry men shouting about lost greatness. Online he called himself BritProud88 and spent his days posting venom between microwave meals and half hearted trips to the jobcentre.

He had never worked. Never wanted to. Why should I slave for peanuts he would mutter when immigrants are handed homes and benefits just for turning up. It never mattered that none of it was true. In Seans world facts were optional and outrage was everything.

He had never had a girlfriend either. That too was someone elses fault. Western women are brainwashed he would say. They go for thugs and foreigners. It never crossed his mind that it might be the stained hoodie the hollow eyes or the bitter smell of disappointment that pushed people away.

Then came the cough. At first he ignored it. Probably just the damp. But then there was blood. A reluctant trip to the GP led to tests and then scans and then the news. Advanced lung cancer.

He sat on the edge of his bed stunned as the nurse spoke softly about options. All Sean could say was Must be the fumes from that new Halal chicken place down the road.

As the tumour grew so did his hatred. NHS is too busy treating foreigners he said to his mother. No wonder I waited two hours for chemo.

He never noticed the irony. His oncologist was from Pakistan the nurse from Romania the cleaner from Nigeria. They cared for him gently without flinching at his words.

His mother cried alone in the kitchen most days. Sean did not see. He was too busy blaming the world for a life he never built and a body that was falling apart.

Near the end a hospice volunteer came to sit with him. Young quiet Algerian roots. Sean looked at him pale and gasping.

You do not have to be here Sean said.

I know said the volunteer. But someone should be.

And for the first time in years Sean had nothing to say.