write a new story | short stories

nicotine

He smokes to relieve the tension.

He's been smoking a lot lately. There's his dad, who's trying and failing to raise his children properly. There's his sister, who's been drinking way too much. It's not healthy, not okay, and she knows it. He tells her she'll end up poisoning herself. She reminds him he's doing the same thing.

He can't say it's not true. She has an infuriating habit of always making a point. He just wishes she cared a little more - for her own health and safety, for her family, for her life. He wishes everyone did. It's just that the world doesn't care anymore. It doesn't care about anything. No one cares that the harm they inflict on themselves destroys not only them, but wrecks everyone around them from the inside out. No one cares if drinking their troubles away causes endless problems for their family. No one cares that half the world is oppressed and starving. No one cares about leaving ten little kids bleeding out on dirty school floors, and even if they pretend to, it's forgotten soon enough. No one cares if others are actually hurting. The world is selfish and cruel, concerned only with personal gain and insignificant issues.

No one cares, and neither does he, not anymore. He isn't anyone special. He never was.

He slides down the filthy brick wall into a sitting position. An unlit cigarette hangs from his mouth. It's his fifth terribly cheapy one in two days. He shouldn't light it. He does nonetheless.

As smoke fills his lungs and he puffs out the first bit of it, the sound of screaming reaches his ears. He winces at the cuttingly harsh noise ringing in his ear. Surely the entire building can hear it as well. He would think the residents of the other apartments would be worried, fascinated, or, at the very least, annoyed by the clearly violent noise, but he knows better by now. He knows exactly what the people who live in the other apartments are doing, and exactly why they don't hear a thing, and don't care if they do.

The two gay guys on the first floor are too busy either making out or going further than he wants to think about. The lady in 2B is having another book club meeting - she's the only one who doesn't know that everyone comes for the wine, not the books she chooses herself. The guy on the third floor is likely passed out on his kitchen floor, empty bottles of hard liquor littered around him. There's that one teenager, or maybe twenty-something (he honestly couldn't care less) up on the fifth floor, on their own in the real world for the first time, wrapped up in video games with friends or working too hard for their age. 

Up on the sixth floor of the complex, he can practically hear the giggles, see the sharing of opiods as if they're candy. He shakes his head in disgust. They have no idea what is coming for them.

And, of course, the seventh floor. Another yell grates at his hearing. He inhales the smoke.

The familiar sensation of nicotine floods his senses, and he merely sits and experiences it for a good while. For moments that feel like hours, all he does is breathe, inhaling and exhaling what the cigarette gives him. In, out. In, out. Clouds of gray smoke form above his head, and gradually his shoulders, his chest, his hands, his everything begins to loosen. 

He's weighed down, worn out, damaged goods. But the cigarettes take that all away. The nicotine is the only thing keeping him sane.

Sane. He laughs, and it's a harsh, cackling sort of sound. God, he sounds like he's been smoking for nine years or something. It's only been three.

He wonders how many truly sane people are left in the world. He doubts there's many. Most of the time, sanity stays intact, but there's always moments. Always moments when one spirals out of control, inconsolable, lost in a world that doesn't exist, where nothing makes sense. He knows this well.

Sane. No one is, really. Where are the psych wards when you need 'em, huh?

The shouting stops for a moment, and the boy freezes, wonders if someone might be coming to join him. He readjusts his cigarette, exhales another breath of smoke. He remains blissfully alone, and the screaming resumes. Worse this time, but now he sees it coming. Now, he doesn't flinch.

Three years ago, he would have flinched. Three years ago, it would've made him cry until his pillow was soaked. Three years ago, he wouldn't have been out here, against the cold, hard brick wall, smoke in his lungs. The boy had been much more fragile back then. His sister hadn't drank as much. His dad had been better, back then. Three years ago, it had only been until they sobbed.

He doesn't sob now. He hasn't in a very long time.

The sounds of breaking glass and the sensation of cracks in the pavement accompanies the shouts now that they've started up again. This isn't too typical. Maybe he should be worried. Maybe something's wrong.

But something's always wrong. The nicotine makes it better. Not entirely, of course, but it fools him. It fools him into thinking, believing it's all better, and sometimes the vague, blurry trickery is the only thing saving him. 

He thinks maybe that's why she driinks. For that trick, that belief that everything can be okay, if only for a short time. For the feeling that one's head is filled with fluffy, floaty cotton, a protective layer against the many cruelties of this world. It's why he smokes, too, but he can't help but think it's different. The nicotine and the alcohol both meddle with minds, they erase, but one is more powerful than the other.

For through the haze, the inopportune fog, the boy is still himself, the same as he always is. Through the clouds of toxic smoke, he is himself at the core. But his sister is different. The alcohol has changed her core.

They have all been changed, since that night when everything became worse than ever, the worst it had ever been.

He doesn't want to think about it, and so he doesn't. As the night darkens, as the temperature decrease, he sits against the brick wall of the apartment complex, continues to smoke, and thinks of nothing at all. He sees nothing. Hears nothing. Senses nothing. He doesn't register the sirens.

Maybe this will give him lung cancer. Hell, maybe it'll even kill him. He knows smoking is self-destructive. But the clouds of smoke look almost beautiful in the pale light of a faraway street lamp, and they are the only almost-beautiful thing he has seen in a very long time. They are all he can see. Perhaps, for three years, they have been the only thing he has seen.

The nicotine could be destroying him, right at this very moment. Destroying him from the inside out. In fact, he knows it is.

But he isn't anyone special. He never was. And so, he doesn't care.