Cigarette BreakA Story by 12.09am How do you cope when there's nothing left to hold on to? He let out a hazy groan, twisted his limbs the slightest fraction and grumbled some more. Beads of salted water dripped down the forehead of his face, and burst out across his lifeless, but sadly still living, body. With heavy breaths, he heaved an aggressive cough that sent a burning sensation across his chest, triggering a dull ache that radiated through his bones, clinging for stability at his temples. The dread and toxins in his blood boiled over, igniting a hellish inferno in the pit of his stomach. It was a peculiar sensation. Being buried alive, from the inside out. He smacked his lips in order to feel capable of some sense of movement in the present moment. In a groggy attempt to open his eyes, they flickered, quickly retracting to their sockets, like a snail to its shell. The room was blurry, not that it mattered very much, the contents of the room were far from distinguishable at this hour anyways. Nothingness pervaded the room, and in the near distance he could hear life’s cruel laughter chuckling in his face, ringing in his ears. With a growing rumble, he forced his lead like head to roll in the direction of the bedside table. It was a new habit now. The old habit would have been rolling to face the figure that possessed the other side of the bed. But he had taught himself now, that grasping at air in the early hours of the morning, triggered nothing but pain and a sorrowful anger, that was ultimately helpless. A yawn escaped his mouth as he rubbed the sockets of his eyes a bit too harsh, causing an aurora of crimson reds, deep purples and blacks to come into vision for a few seconds. He squinted at the alarm clocks deadly light rays, 3:47 AM.
The cotton of the sheets clung to his body with the sweaty glue that bound them together. He sighed and tore the blanket away from his legs like flesh from a carcass. His heavy limbs, and sluggish arms instinctively headed to the drawer opposite the bed and began to manoeuvre their way over the dull objects in search for the perfect rectangular white box, with it’s red flip top and blocked letter print, ‘Winston’. He felt a sudden ringing in his ears, as they tuned into his memory, he heard the faint crackling radio, spitting out the slogan, ‘“Winston tastes good, Like a cigarette should!’ The ringing dulled out into a throbbing, as he felt the presence of nothingness at this peculiar hour of morning. His hands continued to fondle in the draw, moving over objects, grasping them, and placing them back down again. ‘Ah, nope, coins.., more coins.., unidentifiable object.. No. No… A-huh!’ The little white and red box fitted snug in his hand, as if it jumped right in there safe and sound. A sense of relieving comfort flooded through his blood as he hazily walked in the direction of the screen door. It opened with it’s all-too familiar creaking sound, as he took a few steps, heard it slam behind him and sat down with a thud on the steps of the porch. The cold December air bit at his face, forcing his body to come alive. He felt the blood cells, rising up to the surface of his ears and tip of his nose turning them a dull red. With a flip of the little boxes lid, he placed the only happiness he could come across these days right between his lips and brought the lighter up to meet it. Watching it ignite a bright orange. He kept it lit, a few seconds longer, letting it’s flame warm his blushed nose. With slow, but deep breaths he watched the fire singe away at its strawy contents. It was only a matter of time now; lighting the cigarette was simply just fuelling his inevitable destination.
He stared out at the cobbled street, at the thin, double story, dull Louisiana brick houses, all lined up in a row. And heard nothing. Not even silence. Nothing. But, for the first time, of many early morning cigarettes, his eye’s drew attention to the perfectly, well, beyond perfectly strung rows of washing between the windows of the second story buildings. How the wooden pegs, sat, symmetrically. How the clothes, hung almost precisely 10cm apart. A cynical chuckle escaped his breath at the thought, followed by a cloud of suffocating smoke, which quickly dissipated in the early morning air. “Perfect’, he huffed in a crackled voice. Who on earth cared? Who on this goddamn earth noticed? Each day, pegged, unpegged, pegged, unpegged, pegged, unpegged. ‘How tragic’, He shook his head in disbelief; perfect pegging was the last thing to be concerned about these days.
But HE noticed. HE noticed in all of his misery, it’s beauty; it’s art, despite the pointlessness of it. And clearly, it mattered, since every house on the block mocked the same system. A neat, ordered, symmetrical line of delicately hung clothing. Maybe it was a secret art form he was unaware of.
* * *
The evening’s nine or so ‘scotch on the rocks’ sat unsteadily in his gut. It’s potent poison clinging to each taste bud, begging to linger for as long as it could. The sad honey-coloured liquid was the only thing these days that made his blood tingle and heart pump. It was coping, served in a bottle. One glass... Nothing. Three glasses... Something. Six glasses... Definitely Something. Nine glasses. Numb. Nothing. He sucked on his cigarette bitterly, his mind ticking over the irony that a half-(FULL)/(EMPTY) bottle of Scotch had commonalities with the pointlessly perfect pegs. But surely enough they did. It was coping.
The art of coping to be precise, you see, it’s something that must be mastered, too little and you think too much, too much and you can't think at all. Wether it was routine, perfection or destruction, it depended highly on the individual. But ‘IT’ no matter how big or small, really was the only thing you could cling to in the dullness of life, something that ignited your fire, and something that kept you sane.
He sat, reflecting on what life had become in those early, half-(SOBER)/(DRUNK) hours of the morning. How he promised his mother, and even himself at the meagre age of 9 that he would never touch a bottle of the poisonous rubbish. Well, what a sad promise to make, an obviously clueless promise to be exact, clearly nine year old him didn't know what problems life would throw his way. Nine year old him didn't know heartbreak, or loss. Or war. He had no idea how it felt to feel both everything and nothing in the same moment., because nine year old him never faced a problem that needed the comfort of a bottle. He flicked the ashes of his cigarette with an aggressive touch of the thumb and sighed at the naivety that came with youth. A Band-Aid from your mother's red tin was the solution to the worst of times. But as the cigarette came to an end, his early maturity taught him things didn't work like that. The only solution to this bleak landscape was death. It was the only certainty in the world of uncertainty, as he knew it. Coming sooner or later. So why not sooner, after all, it came sooner for her.
* * *
She was gone. But it wasn’t the end of the world. It was the end of her world, the world, as she knew it. The rest the population, still standing, breathing, as the world continues to rotate day by day on its axis, for the time being anyways. His eye’s flickered in a different light just for a moment. As a combination of emotions, mixed like chemicals in his gut. He pictured her, at the sink, with a pile of pristine clean dishes to her left side. Dried and Stacked. That was all she had. A house. A cold, empty, brick house, in the middle of Louisiana, husbandless. She had nothing to hold on to, nothing to cling to like the wooden pegs clung to the line. Nothing to pass the time, or mask the pain. Nothing to make life on earth meaningful enough to stay. He huffed ‘ Probably since I never gave her that goddamn child she wanted’ He paused, conscious of the thought that just escaped his head, but he persisted, in a half (QUIET/LOUD) voice ‘How could I give her that bloody baby, when I wasn’t even around for more than 4 days a month, when I could leave at any time! Or (WORSE/BETTER) Die! It would have been selfish! But, no, she’s the one who died!’ The last words lingered in the night’s nothingness as he searched desperately for a glass of honey coloured liquid nearby to clear the lump in his throat. He felt his left-eye twitch, and a boiling began within him, he was torn as to whether it was a burning hunger, or poisonous overflow of grog. Either way, he dragged on the cigarette, sucking the last bit of life from its core, and suffocated its flame next to the pile of other suffocated beings. He picked himself up from the porch with a groan to head to the bottle. All he could hear was the bloody wooden clock that sat on the fireplace, ticking at him, aggressively, as a reminder that time still hadn't stopped for him. He quickened his pace, to reach the bottle, taking a hurried gulp, then emptying its remainder, into a rather large glass with 3 and a half ice-cubes. He returned to the same place he sat before, pausing for a moment in the silence. He stared down into the contents of the cup, the thick liquid honey that consumed it, blinking rather rapidly for a split second; he drew it to his mouth with a bitter gulp. * * *
It really was selfish. For god-sakes. Now the clothesline looked like s**t. Clearly, the house was letting down the neighbourhood art display of neat and symmetrical pegs. Those damned pegs. She left him to selfishly do the job; without even leaving a set of instructions! The least she could have done was left the goddamn how-to-string-the-washing-guide!. He was betting on Mrs Francis, from across the street in number 22, shaking her head at his miserable, crippled, asymmetrical clothesline. The same clothes hadn’t even left it since she died, they went through the rain, and dried, and got rained on, and dried again, for weeks on end. She probably shook her head at the sad droop in the middle and prayed to god that he would make it look a little more aesthetically pleasing from her kitchen sink view. Well god-help him. The scotch-on-ice was finally kicking in, as he took another rather large swig from the glass.
It wasn’t the end of the world he thought. The end of the world was the end of the world. But that thought triggered something in him. Suddenly his bare feet picked themselves up from underneath him, and carried his lifeless, but still living body down the three cold shallow cement steps, around the side of the house. Standing. Staring. The line of washing smiled at him, with its low hanging slouch in the centre. As if the world was trying to make a light-hearted joke, mocking his frown. He lit up a cigarette, in an attempt to simmer the boiling in his blood, but his frown continued to crease, causing his eyes to squint at the corners. Life was laughing at him. He could feel it. He could see it. He finished the rest of the bitter poison in two large gulps, walking towards the line in a heated temper, he yanked down firmly on the beige coloured apron that hung the lowest at the slouched centre, his aggressive tug sent it’s sad, uneven wooden pegs flying up, sending vibrations through the line, flinging water droplets down into his open eyes. He grunted harshly, and crouched grasping at his face in an attempt to protect it, but it was pointless, he couldn't protect her, himself. He was on earth for crying out loud! There was no cure for that. He regained his stance, looked back up to the line and felt another rush of pain spread through his body. He saw the long hanging pants to the left side of the line, and jumped to reach them, pulling them to the ground with such force, 10 or so peg’s flew into the air like bullets. Bullets. A bullet to the head perhaps? Pew. Pew. Pew. The echoing rung in his ears, from the warfront. Thomas, Max, Saxon. YES, but no. A self-detonated bullet to the head. The bathtub flashed before his eyes, the lifeless hand, drooped like a dead flower over the side of the ceramic tub with the shower curtain half drawn.. He started grasping at his temples, running his fingers rapidly to and fro through his dense hair. Abstract noises escaped his breath, growling and rumbling and screeching. While he stood, scratching and tearing at his skin, a heat rushed to his head, making it throb so intensely he could feel his brain pushing against his skull. The yelling began, muffled words, getting loudER and loUDER and LOUDER. Not in an attempt to be heard, but as a release of explosions, that erupted in his soul, making his liver cramp. Tighter, and Tighter and Tighter. Till he sat. Legs extended in front of him on the cobblestone. Mind spinning, world distorted. His Helpless arms drooped by his sides, palms facing upward in a questioning stance. Why? His breaths shallow, short and sore. He felt a peg piercing the skin on his left ankle, only just enough to make him reach down and remove it from its place. He twisted the peg between his index finger and thumb. His cigarette had reached it’s end, disintegrated into ashes, his glass a shattered pile, near the base of the nearby wall. It was a mess. But it wasn't the end of the world.
© 2017 12.09amAuthor's Note
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