Death in a paper roll.
She has one cradled in the palm of her hand. She's watching a small, yellow flame settle, and when the end of her cigarette glows she puts the lighter into her ruck-sack. She's sucking all of it in and her cheeks pull in so tightly, her bones stick out like scrawny chicken wings. Her eyes are closed and so deeply sunken into her fore-head that you can barely see them. When she breathes out, her whole body shudders and I can't help but wonder why. Pleasure? It's hard to tell. Even though the cigarette is buried beneath her lips, she is smiling, the dimples at the corners of her mouth becoming visible. She places the cigarette inbetween her middle finger and her index, and blows out a small cloud of grey smoke. She coughs.
Once ... twice ... three times.
Now she's doubled over, clutching her stomach and coughing so hard, I think she might get sick.
Good.
It's stopped now. The coughing, and she's sucking on her cigarette again, pleasure floating over her face and settling somewhere in the back of her eyes. But they're closed again. Her eyes. I close mine too, I try to visualise the tar clinging to her lungs and slowly luring her to death, I see the smoke smothering her heart, enveloping it in grey dust. You'd wonder how something so small can do so much wouldn't you? I mean it's only a tiny thing. Maybe two .. three inches? And it does it all. It's practically death in a paper roll. I open my eyes and find her eyes are open too, and she's watching me. Our eyes lock and still holding my gaze, she takes a long, slow drag and puffs out the smoke as if to my face. She's disgusted by me, and I by her. But that is how it should be, how it must be. She looks away as she watches the cigarette flutter to the floor of New York's city sidewalk.
At last.
Suddenly she's reaching inside her ruck-sack and before I can turn my back on her, a cigarette is in her hands again, a lighter in the other. My eyes close in on the contents of her hands and then, I start walking towards her. Faster. Faster and faster, until I'm running. Until I'm there. Right beside her, so close I can see the acne she's covered up by her make-up and the stubble underneath her eyebrows where she's in need of another wax. She smirks, a defiant little scoundrel.
"Give up."
And that, is the last thing I ever hear her say.
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