When I was first exposed the masterfully crafted piece of literature known as "The Merchant of Venice," I was but a boy stricken with a bout of Leukemia. After reading only the first chapter I was immediately captivated in the amazing assortment of consonants and vowels more commonly known as "The Merchant of Venice." Reading this was like nothing I had ever experienced before, it filled the hole in me that the Leukemia had left and allowed me to see the light at the end of the tunnel that had been extinguished so long ago. But then, devastation, my weekly checkup at the hospital ended in a terminal diagnosis and I know had only 3 weeks. This resulted in a downward spiral that left me feeling lost. I sought refuge from this cruel, unbecoming world and found it in The Merchant of Venice. I spent the days leading up to my next appointment in my bed, reading, only reading. I came to my next appointment expecting more of the same but then, a miracle, as my eyes scanned the page I was filled with joy. The results came back negative, the Leukemia was gone without the slightest trace of it ever even being there in the first place. The doctor said that he had never seen anything like it, I was truly blessed. For the first time in a long time, I was hopeful. That day, after I got home from the hospital, I was also able to finish The Merchant of Venice. Not two days after that glorious evening, it started. My health started to rapidly deteriorate out of the blue and within hours I was worse off than I had ever been while suffering from Leukemia. I was in a constant statue of physical and mental anguish, too pained to take even a single step out of bed. The next day the pain wasn’t as bad, I was at least able to get up and eat a little, but this is where the real problems began. I started to hear things, small things at first, like the scratching of floorboards that could easily be chalked up to an animal on the roof or something similar. But then the shadows started to move unnaturally along my walls, they would morph into humanoid figures and talk to me. They would laugh and cry, but the worst of it all was the screams. They would scream at all hours of the day and night, never letting up. During this state of psychosis I sought refuge in the pages of “The Merchant of Venice.” As I started to read, the voices grew quieter and quieter until eventually they had stopped completely. It was finally quiet and the shadows on the walls looked normal. Tears of joy began to well up in my eyes and I began to cry, it was finally over. With this, I went to bed, basking in the glorious silence. When I awoke, to my horror, the voices had started again even louder than before. I handled this the same way as I did the night before, I read, and with that the voices once again ceased. The Merchant of Venice is now apart of my daily routine, If I want the voices to stop I must read it at least once everyday. That brings us to now, where it has been about a month since then. The Merchant of Venice has cured all of my physical and mental ailments but as the days pass I have to read more and more to stop the voices. Right now I’m having to read it three times to stop them and I’m afraid that soon I will be able to do nothing but read.