Cigarettes and stories.

I decided that as there is no story, and that the only character appears to be my subconscious, that I must be avoiding the reason people have blogs in the first place. To unleash there opinions on the world. So instead of continuing this not-a-story I might just write whatever I want! It sounds more fun. As constricting things are things that I usually don't enjoy dealing with; such as tight pants and deadlines.

Here's a story I wrote; you should read it:

Standing in the cemetery his head was as scattered as the rain that pit-pattered around him like confetti. The vast grey field was dotted hodge podge with people carrying black umbrellas to match their newly purchased black suits and black hearts. Looking around at the faces of friends and family it was clear that God had been forgotten. A post-rapture fog clung with icy fingers at the tears that fell from the on-lookers cheeks. Jacob rationed his breaths as clouds of steam blew in smoke patterns, betraying the choked gasps emanating from his lips. The mere fact that the concept of God existed in such ‘advanced’ times gave him little hope for the world. Here we have people dying of man-made diseases, bullets replace words and people feel uncomfortable having to talk rather than text. In this age people have long forgotten wonder. We’re reinventing the wheel daily and then immediately come up with ways to destroy that wheel. He lit a cigarette and thought about the last time he was happy. Before his thoughts were black, before sunlight lost it’s shimmer. The last time he was creative, alive, vibrating. It was only a week before the funeral but now it seemed as if he’d been asleep for years.

Ä Ä Ä

Jacob sits legs akimbo, leaning against a weathered and tattooed brick wall. He’s losing feeling in his thighs but to passing girls he assumes it looks better than shuffling and scuffing, as he usually does when a member of the opposite sex comes within eye-locking distance of him. His fingers are rolling a cigarette on their own, as his mind isn’t assisting but meandering and his eyes are darting sporadically to cute girls who occasionally pass by. He pulls a Zippo-Lighter from the pocket of his jeans and with a puff of smoke, begins:

“I fucking hate elevators.”

Camera pans to the right and we see the cynical face of Chris, Jacob’s best friend by default, breaking fourth wall and sighing at the audience. Jacob was known for his lengthy diatribes on the ‘slow decay of humanity’. This would prove to be no different.

“I mean you get in, I dunno, it’s 10 in the morning, and you’re hung over. You’re not a bad person or anything you’ve just had a big night and haven’t been home to shower and get into a shirt that doesn’t smell like a tobacconist. But you get in and it’s always the same person there waiting for you. They’re always about 50 or 60, or 45 but the air-conditioning in the stale apartment block they live in has fried their skin or whatever. You’re standing there, humming the chorus line to some song that your best-mate played 30 times to emphasise the point that he ‘fucking loves this song’. You look over to the woman and smile, because it’s the morning and I guess that’s what people do, greet and smile and be nice. And instead of smiling a fake smile, like the one you’ve just mustered, she does this half smile, half sneer and all smug turn to the side. And there’s this awkward neutrality in the air now. I mean fuck! You’ve just been at least decent enough to be fake and nice. But she has to judge you in your current state. You don’t get to see her after some RSL ball where she’s had a few too many brandy and dry’s but she gets to witness your blood shot eyes and heavily pillowed face. It’s that look you know? It just kills me. So anyways I’m in an elevator the other day and this carbon copy Stepford Wife smugs at me. So I turn to her and start giggling. I start giggling and staring until she has to look, and clear her throat at me. So I stop. And I look into her eyes and say, “Have an amazing day”. And I smile and I let her out of the elevator in front of me. I never get to see her smile. But I like to think that she’s wearing one. I’d like to think that the next time she gets in an elevator with a kid who’s just woken up from a big night out that she’ll smile back. That she’ll see something of her grandson in them or something. And smile back. I dunno. I’m probably being naïve. You know?”

Chris knew. But he wouldn’t let Jacob know this, playing dumb was too much fun and Jacob’s need to be heard was his Achilles’ Heel.

“You know how I feel about people, man. I can’t even fake nice. I don’t think I’d want to either. It’s not something I’m trying to accomplish, is it? Nice. I think I’d rather be edgy. Yeah. Edgy sounds good. I mean, when I die and all the people who love me. Shut up, people love me. You fucking love me. Yeah, so when all the people are mourning and thinking of what to write in the paper so that they feel better about themselves, I’d like to think that edgy would make it into the top 5. Maybe around words like: mad, amazing, gentleman and I dunno… what’s a word that sums me up?”

“You self-centred fuck. Did you even get the point of my story?”

“Yeah, be nice to people even though they think you’re trash and maybe you’ll give some octogenarian a laugh.”

Jacob laughed. Despite Chris’s cynicism he couldn’t help but admire him. He could turn ever the most beautiful of phrasings into nothing more than a Mother’s Day poem on a Hallmark card. He met Chris when he moved into the city; his parents had told him that they would be having dinner with the neighbours, a horrifically dull idea for anyone under the age of 45. He had the situation pinned immediately, this ‘boy’ would be clingy, nerdy and daft and the next 2 hours whilst eating he would painstakingly paraphrase the first print of some worshipped comic book like an anatomically ignorant skeleton putting itself together. This would accompany awkward conversation: ‘do you have a girlfriend? No… never…. Not kissed? Oh. Sorry”, “go out much? Not ever? Don’t really drink? Sorry.” He was pleasantly surprised however when he saw that the neighbour before him was not the socially neglected lower being he had predicted but a guy not un-like himself presenting him with a fresh, cold beer. Instead of the awkward dinner that Jacob foresaw it was the pre-cursor to a long night out in Brunswick Street. This would be the substance-soaked tone of the relationship for the next year.

“You’re a stain, you know that? A stain. That just about sums you up. But yeah, I guess I love you. Can’t exactly help it can I.”

“Yeah, I think you’re stuck with me. Anyways you promised me a bedtime story, I have to head back in a bit. So enough of your bullshit rants, I want something at least a little sentimental tonight. Something uplifting and not so End-Of-The-Worldy this time.”

“Okay, but only because it’s D-Day tomorrow. Give me a sec.”

The air was feeling damp, like wearing a jumper that wasn’t dry all the way through, and the horizon was licking the sun hungrily. In the glisteny shimmer of the skies’ dying light a spider web was illuminated and looked as though it had been spun from silver and beads of mercury were running along it’s paths to gravitate towards the Earth in complacency. Jacob pulled his collar further into his neck and started rolling another smoke.

“Okay, there’s a girl. She’s born on Christmas in the year 2200. And even before she was born her parents could tell that she wasn’t quite right, broken. She never kicked at her mother’s belly, moved or anything just sort of; waited. As a baby she wouldn’t scream or cry or demand attention, she would just sit and stare with eyes that already knew too much. Eyes that betrayed her youth. She could talk really young, too young, but would never say much. She was born into a society that had almost forgotten how to speak, as there was not enough time. There were know thoughts of God as science ruled supreme, no war for religion was not there to be fought over and we had colonized every square inch of Earth. No one would fight over land because every country looked the same, all stamped with Sony and Mac logos, McCountries. No one is unintelligent because knowledge is gained with an instantaneous google search and there is nothing left to discover. This girl is born perfect because parents choose babies from Ikea catalogues then have them injected into there uterus like a flu shot. So with nothing to learn, nothing to discover and all wells of creativity drained so that everything is a copy of a copy she has nothing to live for, nothing to grow for. So with nothing to grow for she kills herself”.

“Hey I said something uplifting”.

“It’s not finished yet. She tries to kill herself. She walks to the park, finds a bee hive hanging in an oak and tips the bees down her throat”.

“Morbid”.

“Shut up. With that she chokes, collapses and passes out. People around the park rush to her aid and she is rushed to hospital. There hadn’t been a suicide or a death in over ten years for medicine was so advanced and people had nothing to be sad about, they were just drones. The bees inside the girl saw how black her heart was, how this girl was different than the rest, that she had a purpose, that she’d do something different. So they flew around her veins for days, swooping and barrel-rolling around her organs and her bones and coated them in hard, crystallized honey. The girl’s heart, now a shimmering, sugary gold beat with a new, natural vigour and she awakened from her sleep. “The girl that science couldn’t fix, but nature could” adorned the newspaper the following day and people were once again questioning; this was something they couldn’t look up in google. Miracle, phenomenon, spectacle, wonder, growth, nature, spirit. Words that hadn’t been uttered in years littered the pages of magazines and papers alike. People had once again found a reason to look to the sky and wonder, and question and guess. Maybe God couldn’t exist in a modern world, but the unexplainable still needs to be there. So the girl, although about to end her life, started life again for many more.”

“I like it. I thought it was going to be gloomy, but it was nice, thanks. I’ll sleep better now in the knowledge that you do in fact have a soul”.

“Ass. Get inside, same time tomorrow?”.

“Hopefully”.

With one hand on the IV drip that followed him everywhere and another on the wall he got up and walked through the sliding doors to the ICU. He turned around and gave Jacob a smile that he would come to miss in years to come, but he didn’t know that yet. Death was still something distant in his mind. Something that adults deal with, not kids. With one final wave he turned around and walked home through the park with the sweet smell of rain fresh in his nose and the weightlessness of youth on his shoulders.