The Space Between Us

I open my eyes and look to the farthest corner of the room. That's where he sits, hollow, shriveling into himself, pale and terrifying. His eyes seem to sag right out of his skull; his skin seems like a thin leather drape, cloaking the archaic frame of what once maybe was a man.

He slowly withdraws a single cigarette from its pack, shivering madly all the while. The nic-stick quivers in his hand, continues quivering as it's lifted to his mouth and he begins puffing. Without lighting the joint, smoke begins to pour from the tip, from the gaps in his mouth, eyes, and ears, veiling the room within moments until our shared space becomes a den of putrid exhaust.

At this point, most of the space around me has become smoke, with pockets of air hanging sparsely in the midst. It's all that I can breathe, and I feel pains all throughout my throat and the roof of my mouth, from deep within my gut and the sacs in my lungs. But I'm utterly unable to cough, and so I steadily consume the smoke as though it were pure oxygen.

Then, my body begins to evaporate in a flurry, assuming the shape and form of the surrounding clouds. I watch as my skin fades away and the murky gray replaces it, transforming my coil into a gaseous blur, and taking with it my thoughts, my hopes, my memories.

I look up from the fragments of flesh and across the room, to the man in the corner. He's been watching me disappear, and I can tell from the wide smile on his face that he's found it amusing. By now my vocal cords have been replaced with the smoke, and I am unable to form any indignant response, unable to shout in terror, or cry out my final prayers.

Instead, no sound escapes me, and I fall back into my corner. The man is still smiling as he too is devoured by the smoke, fading slowly into the space between us.