A quote: “Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.” ~~ Ray Bradbury
I’ll start with a story …
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1977. He stopped for gas off the highway, buying a pack of cigarettes though he had quit a year before to please Sarah. He walked across the two-lane blacktop to chase that cigarette with a beer inside a roadhouse that advertised it “ice cold”.
She was near the end of the bar, bright eyes, a smile that pulled to one side. She moved next to him as he opened the pack and shook out a cigarette for himself then offered her one. In five minutes they told each other their lives’ stories and when she said, “let’s get out of here” they walked out to his car and chased the sunset.
They parked near a field, laying on the trunk to watch the stars come out wreathed in smoke. Cigarettes measured their time as the night went on, a tangle of jeans and legs and calls to the sky, her hair spread across his jacket he laid out for her.
As dawn pinked the sky, they shared the last one from the pack. He drove her back to her car and she didn’t look back as she got into it.
2026. 52 years of marriage that had weathered everything but cancer. Sarah had made these walls home and now … he was in the attic, looking at a lifetime of memories and saw his old jacket on a rack. He reached into a pocket, pulled out an empty cigarette pack and blinked at the flood of memory. What happened to her? What had been her life? Was she still alive?
He looked around at decades of other memories. Love wasn’t always easy, but he hoped one pack of smokes was the worst Sarah thought of him.
He crumpled the pack and let it fall to the floor.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe stock standard license
Cameron says: The new manager came in and Changes were going to be made. Our workspace would be agile, collaborative and a whole bunch of other buzzwords that you get from a four year degree.
Naturally, this meant that the workforce had to be streamlined. The Old Guard were being told that they weren’t necessary. Never mind the years I put in. How my employee number was a single digit and I’d been there when this business was run out of his garage.
My terms were simple. I would design the infrastructure. I would staff it with people that I vetted. I was allowed to smoke and I only answered to him. As the company expanded, new managers would come in and try to push me around only to be rebuffed.
This guy was different. Things would go according to his vision. He gave me an ultimatum, thinking that an old man like me would fold. I laughed and wished him luck. I ignored the exit interview request and walked out the door. I even left the ashtray behind.
Two weeks after I retired, I heard how the networks were failing. Experience outranks feelings and it sounds like they are learning that.
What I wouldn’t do for a cigarette right now. Jackson Dreyer rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in a nervous habit that didn’t quite make up for the smoke he longed for.
He’d picked up the habit during his hitch in the Army. Maybe it wasn’t like back in World War II, when the cigarette companies sent their product to be included in soldier’s rations, but enough guys smoked that it hadn’t been hard to get drawn into it.
And now it was almost impossible to get any smokes. Apparently humans were one of the few species in the Empire that could handle nicotine without toxicology precautions, so there were all kinds of rules and regulations about transporting it. Not a total prohibition on the production and transport of tobacco — the Kitties were well aware of the issue of black markets — but precaution upon precaution upon precaution for what they considered a terribly dangerous organic chemical with multiple significant industrial and agricultural uses. So trying to pilfer and dry a few leaves, just to get himself a smoke, was just too much risk for a momentary reward.
Dupin says: I told her I would quit, but look at me. It was hardly past sunrise, and I’d smoked…how many?
It was her deathbed wish. I said I’d do it. Once again this morning, I hadn’t. I was trying…wasn’t I?
It wasn’t so hard to ignore the urge later in the day, but during the night’s darkness…that cold, empty spot next to me? That was different. I’d sat out here, the sky changing from starlight, predawn, and now past sunrise. The number of butts showed it.
I’d beat alcohol—I could beat this. That was a lie. We’d beat alcohol together, she and I. Together we’d poured the booze onto the logs in the firepit and lit it, the fire showing our emancipation from those shackles. I was the strong one then, keeping her straight more than she kept me sober. But now…
Without her, I was weak. I needed her help with this, but no. I’d have to do this on my own. I looked at the fire pit, dead ashes still in the bottom. She’d still been alive when we’d burned that fire to keep the cold away. A little farther away was the grill.
Still, maybe.
I grabbed the ashtray and pack of cigarettes. Opened the grill, removed the grate, dumped the butts in with the pack following.
This could work.
To the house and back, a bit of an unexpected spring to my step. I tipped the carton over the grill, unopened packs scattering.
She’d tell me that this deserved a full bag of charcoal, and soon it was there, me coughing on the cloud of black dust my sudden exuberance caused. Lighter fluid. There was a certain amount of glee I had squirting the pile of charcoal. And now, the pièce de résistance, as she would call it. I placed the ashtray gently on top of the pile and filled it with lighter fluid.
Zippo in hand, I lit it off, jumping back from the fireball, the lighter slipping from my fingers. I held my singed hand, the Zippo reflecting the flames that danced on and around it. I didn’t intend that, but it seemed appropriate for this occasion.
It was a good week to quit smoking.
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