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Five Cigarettes
Copyright © 2005-2007 by Aster Rose - All rights reserved		 

Five Cigarettes
by Aster Rose
There are only five cigarettes left in the pack. He is old, with balding grey hair, wispy like the wraith clouds of winter, drooping pouches of skin sagging about his frowning face. Sighing, he selects one with trembling fingers; his hands freckled with liver spots in abundance. The tarnished, ancient lighter takes several clicks to come aflame with flickering, pathetic fire. He inhales the delicious smoke, squandering his life way with his retirement fund.

It tastes sour, like his long dead aunt’s unsugared lemonade, which everyone loathed, and would only take a few sips to be polite, before blatantly dumping it down the rusted sink. It reminded him of distant children who never called, and grandchildren he’d barely seen. It brought up long forgotten thoughts of never-ending road trips, packed into a too small car, the humid air reeking of hate and sweat. But most of all, it reminded him of his wife. He remembered her as a bitter, pickled, stick with a mouth that stretched into harsh eternity forever complaining. She must have been beautiful once, but the memories of the woman he had happily agreed to marry were only fleeting shadows. His thoughts of her were always tainted with disgust, a subtle dislike that wormed through his brain. He’s smoked the cigarette down to the filter; his shoes covered with a light dusting of ash. The dry grass making his ankles itch, he lights another.

This one is like gum losing its flavor, sweet with a hint of stale overuse. At the back of his head there were Kodak moments like this, taken out so much to look at that their beauty was spoiled. His boyhood spent fishing at the lake five minutes from his house. Precious. But the geezer’s anger butts in, reminding him if the mosquitoes and the gnats, and the fish that would never bite. He flees to the next one, lying alone in the yellow fields as he stares up at the stars. A shooting one whizzes by, and he makes a wish. But he knows now that wishes don’t come true. He inches along to his favorite, tattered from his soul thumbing through it a zillion times. Still a shy young man in his twenties, he sits with a pretty girl on the porch. It’s not his wife, whom he hasn’t even met yet. It’s another, a sweet woman whom he is infatuated with. She leans into him, and they kiss, a short thing, but it lingers on his lips for a long time after. Now, the twisted coot knows how this foolery turns out, with a broken heart. This cigarette is gone as well.

The next one is lonely. How he felt after his wife, as much as he hated her died. He had expected an overwhelming sense if freedom, making him so light he could just fly away. But that never came. Instead, the house became listless without her bitching, without his forever calling her a useless cunt. He still calls her names, telling her he hoped she was rotting in hell. But the only answer was cracked echoes. Perhaps he had loved her, just a little bit. At her grim funeral he’d found himself hastily wiping away salty tears in the cusp of spilling down his ashen face. His excuse then had been that dust had gotten into his eyes, but now, maybe not. Even if it was a sallow, monstrous harridan, company was always welcome.

Without hesitation he takes another from the battered white pack. It is the second to last one, and he twirls it in his gnarled fingers. Despite his age, they are still agile. He smiles little; glad he’s still adept at something, even if it’s as insignificant as performing baton tricks with a cigarette. Making up his mind, he takes out the lighter. This one has the distinct taste of the moment, of now, of time slipping through the crevices. He becomes painfully aware at the people passing, in cars or on foot, staring at him in casual curiosity. He looks down at his clothes, shabby and stained. What a sight he must be, or not. He doubted he was a novelty to this crew of idle rubberneckers, merely the usual, lonely old man, something to glance at, forgotten before the evening comes. He tries to make this one last, but it peters out earlier than the others, leaving a dry place in his mouth.

Last cigarette. He knows there are more at home, but somehow this one seem like it should mean something. He takes his time lighting it, and falteringly raises it to his thin, broken lips. It tastes of the silent monotony of the future. How he knows that later he will go home and watch the smiling, sparkling mouths of nauseating news anchors. And how after that he will make himself a disgusting TV dinner and eat it with the voracity of a growing boy, though his taste buds were going numb. Then he will jerk off with a decrepit Playboy from years ago. He had thought his wife had thrown them all away, but when he has been cleaning out the attic, he had found one she had missed. The pages were yellowed, tinting the models’ flawless skin. He longed less for the pleasure the women’s bodies gave him, and more for the time from which they came, when he was young and in love, still a foolish child. He thought of how he would soon rest in a cheap coffin, cushioned by a layer of nutrient-rich dirt. His children and family would cry, and pretend they had loved him, before squabbling over his few possessions. It wasn’t much to look forward to. His life seemed so wasted now. The last cigarette in the pack ended abruptly, and he let it dangle limply from his fingers for awhile, before dropping it. He stares down at the small graveyard of five cigarettes on the ground, and sighs. He spits his dreams into the grass, and walks away.

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