by Verian Thomas
The wind plucked his last cigarette paper from his fingers
carrying it high in the air and depositing it in the pond. He sat back on
the park bench and let out a long sigh, even nature was against him now. A
quick check of his coat pockets confirmed what he already knew, no papers,
no money, no chance. He had already been putting off his last cigarette for
hours and now the nicotine craving was becoming unbearable. Logic was
shouldered brutally aside and replaced by the need.
With a brain that was having slight, almost imperceptible, seizures due to
withdrawal he decided on his next action. It was simple. Get a cigarette, a
cigarette paper or something closely resembling either of them. Having a
goal, a target, helped to take his mind off his fidgeting fingers, dry lips
and more than anything, off his need. He hated it when he was this way,
dependent, after all that he’d been through something as inconsequential
as the lack of a cigarette paper shouldn’t be capable of dragging him into
the depths of despair.
Running out of tobacco was so much easier, then there was no way out, the
outcome already set, papers where so cheap that a lack of them and the money
to buy them was a much more difficult thing to deal with.
Once he had been strong.
At night, when he closed his eyes to deceive himself into thinking that
he slept, the images would creep from a suppressed area of his mind and play
themselves back against the inside of his eyelids. A cinematic re-run of his
descent. It always began with the party. Smiling, laughing, drink in hand
and his wife, his beautiful wife, by his side. Then there was the argument
before they set off home. He insisting that he could drive, that he hadn’t
drunk too much, she, making a grab for the keys, missing, then sitting in
the car not speaking as he pulled out of the driveway.
It was alright for a while, he was managing just fine, then the drink
began to really take affect. He never saw the truck or the red light, he was
concentrating too much on proving himself right and his wife wrong. She won,
as usual, but didn’t live to enjoy the victory.
The next time he saw her was in the mortuary. He was glad that her eyes had
been sewn shut but could still visualise what they where saying to him
"this is your fault". It became a chant in his mind, repeating
itself over and over again in her voice until he left her there for the
morticians to deal with. The chant kept coming back, as it was now, when he
was weak, needing.
Despite the lesson that drink had tried to teach him, he had failed to
learn it. His drinking increased in direct proportion to his fall. He drank
to forget but never forgot to drink. First it was his job that went, then
the house, the car and all his possessions except those that he stood up in.
He was off the drink now. Living in a caravan and working a menial job in
a fast food restaurant. Still he clung to life, despite the daily despair,
his despondency and his lack of a will to live. Suicide was out of the
question, he wasn’t yet ready to face his wife. To hear her speak those
words aloud, "this is your fault".
Perhaps he could still salvage something from the life he had left to
live, maybe even forget, occasionally at least, that his wife was waiting
with St. Peter to cast him down into the fire and brimstone. Yes, maybe he
could rebuild his life that had once been successful, he was a somebody once
and could be again. Despite the guilt that still pressed down upon him he
knew that he had finally learned his lesson and could at least try and lay
the first brick in the rebuilding of his life. With this realisation he
found that he no longer needed the cigarette, not right now anyway, the
craving would return but maybe this would be another brick. Giving up the
drink was really the first, cigarettes could be the next.
He stood up purposefully and went in search of the price of a cup of coffee.
He never saw the truck as it ran the red light.
