#008/100 Smoke

May 29, 2011

He would smoke and smoke and smoke until his lungs are in stitches. They would hurt--tenderly--while he savors the shortness of breath. Every inch of his body would sing its delirious songs like burgeoning fireworks--they would crack and splinter over his swirling eyes. What joy!

Another man would inhale and exhale with circular arm motions as if he was exercising to the national anthem at the flag-raising ceremony. Like the sports fanatic in the university dorm who ran 2000km in a green tracksuit around the sports ground at dawn, every morning without fail. Through the windows he looked like a phantom of optimism, multiplying his selves between running, jumping and stretching his legs by the fences. Those long and thin legs, so smugly clad in green, were early morning strikes the other freshmen could not take. Life was not to be wasted away in such discipline and conviction! Let those fanatics with great mission crawl their way back to life, if they pleased. 

Back in those days he still had the look of the frontman of an up-and-coming rock band, the one that promised to be the great revolution of post-rock-cum-shoegazing scene. Which meant blow jobs at the backseat and a girl sticking her head out of the window to spit. But it was over the morning when he woke up with blood on his pillowcase, his gum inflamed by marathon pot smoking and whiskey and pussy sucking, or just that giant fall from grace he had foreseen. The degenerate in him taking over when he woke up to see--everyone in the apartment had left, the drummer, the lead guitarist, the bassist, the whores squatting and vomiting by the backdoor of the club that they had rescued from the night. 

Now he only smokes cigarettes because he can't be fucked to get anything else. But even cigarettes are getting too expensive. He doesn't get those pictures of rotting foot and skin and skeleton on the packaging either. Who gives a fuck when we would all end up like that, anyway? He would smoke and smoke and smoke and get himself in stitches. 

Inspired by Day 3 - stitching and story - by Eryn Gilchrist.