Resting Kitty

            “Lester!” The voice is horrified, as he knew it would be, and with a great sigh the boy gets up from the couch where he had laid for merely a moment or two before his mom came home and saw him. There is no use hiding the cigarette in his hand, so he takes one more drag of it to steady himself, to prepare himself for the war ahead.

            “Give me that right now.” Her voice is high-pitched, hysterical, and for a second Lester feels bad about doing this to her. But then he remembers her turning away at Kitty’s funeral, remembers her refusal to buy the roses instead of the tulips because they cost too much, remembers her blatant denial that Kitty had confided with her the terror she felt around her new boyfriend who would soon become her murderer as well as his own. Remembers the fact that she didn’t give a f**k about her own daughter, and that she is trying to make up for it by lecturing him about this now. It makes him sick.

            “Sure.” She seems taken aback by his instant, easy agreement, of his out-stretched hand offering the cigarette to her. She reaches out to take it, too, but is frozen by his next words, casually tacked on to his sentence after a pause or two. “But I have more hidden, you know? Taking this isn’t going to change anything.”

            He hopes she takes the words as personally as he meant them. By the look on her face, she did.

            Her hand falls and any argument she could have made dies on her lips. Standing there, in the middle of the living room in a posture that should be defiant but was instead defeated, Lester came dangerously close to pitying her again.

            Instead, he brings his cigarette back to his lips, takes in a deep, deep breath, and holds it until he has walked outside that room and outside that house and into the silent street, holding its breath with him, waiting for something, anything to happen. He lets it out, and the smoke billows out around him, whipped around by the wind that the street blew out when his smoke was visible, and in the trembling, flimsy scraps of grey floating and disappearing and twisting in the winter air, Lester is almost able to convince himself he can see her face.

            “Rest in peace, Kitty.”

Author's Note

A flash fiction inspired by an exercise at writing camp. Some language.

(c) Neko Green 2010