The Fall of Alique

The cigarette smoked, curling around her lips in the windless night. Soft embers nibbled at the burning paper holding the fading bits of tobacco as Alique took one final drag on the cigarette. She spat the butt from her mouth, watching with semi-apathetic interest as it cartwheeled down the rooftop. It rained orange onto the shingles before bouncing off the gutter.

Her tongue slid over her smooth teeth as she looked over the tops of the slums.

It wasn’t fair. Nothing ever was but this seemed so much worse. A life without Benny. Their fifth anniversary. Spent without him. Alique worried her lips between her teeth. She hated anniversaries. She hated this anniversary.

Fingers numbed by the cold air of winter reached into the breast pocket of the torn-apart jean jacket. Fumbling for the lighter with one hand, she stacked the fresh pack of cigarettes against her leg with the other. She hissed in pain as the slap of the cigarettes stung her cold legs.

Covered only by fishnet tights, jean shorts, and mid-calf boots the skinny legs struggled to maintain a steady temperature. Stacking the cigarettes against her thigh brought blood back to the area. It burned. Sniffing, she drew one white stick out of the pack.

The cigarette flamed to life. Alique leaned farther back on the roof. Smudged makeup darkened her sleepless eyes and reddened her already chewed lips. She sucked smoke from the cigarette like venom from a snakebite. It felt good. Never as good as the hard drugs had, but she wasn’t about to quit this. One bad habit kept her rooted. She swallowed thickly. Or maybe it kept the insanity at bay. The all-consuming urge to find Benny in the afterlife.

She had once done drugs but those days were gone. Swallowed in time like this anniversary. The cigarette slowly turned to ash as her mind wandered.

He was gone. Dead. What use was an anniversary now? Alique rubbed her free hand across her eye, watching geometric shapes liven up the darkness.

They had spent their teenage years together and the fresh budding years as young adults finding comfort in one another’s arms. Nothing had been easy and nothing had been nice but they had endured together.

And then they hadn’t.

She dragged the cigarette across the roof, leaving a small trail of ash behind before flicking it high into the city night.

“Maybe you’ll stumble across better luck than me, huh? Some poor sap’ll probably light you up again.” She shrugged and turned her eyes down. “Can’t be too hard to find better luck than mine.”

She had been unlucky. But then again, so had Benny. Sitting on the rooftop, her mind traveled to the days of Benny, the days that still felt pure.

“Benny. What a kid.” Her voice drifted into the bustle of the sleeping city.

Benny played guitar and Benny liked blue-haired chicks. Benny also snored something fierce and never remembered to vacuum the corners. Alique sighed heavily.

Those days had been bad but she had grown fond of them. The bars and alleys had originally been for getting high and chasing the blissful feeling of nothingness but the fuzzy memory of Benny had changed that over time.

“Do you remember?” she asked the cool air. “Do you remember how we met at sixteen?”

She could remember clearly the dilapidated bar, Celeste, with its faux star ceiling and lightning clouds that caught spiders and smoke in equal amounts. Her fake ID was tucked safely in the front pocket of her bell-bottom jeans, kitty-corner to a pack of cigarettes in her back left pocket. The normal duty of the night, to get smashed beyond memory and maybe score some dope, was capsized suddenly by a loud laugh.

Benny’s laugh.

Alique had stopped dead. She had never seen such happiness in a bar. Most of the time it was full of sorry saps who were trying to forget their misdeeds. This was an ancient, run-down bar. The ritzy ones were where people drank with a smile and relaxed into the night. Celeste wasn’t known for being one of those fancy places. It was part of the slums. An integral part, it served as a wallowing place.

Benny didn’t fit in. And Alique had to know why. She had to taste that happiness.

In the smoky corner of the bar, Alique had stepped on his toe, opening his mouth like a trashcan, and kissed him all the while slipping her number into his pocket and snatching his wallet.

That was seven years ago when blue still streaked through her air. The blue had framed her eyes and graced them with a similar iceberg blue. Now, she was sitting alone atop what had been their special place. Looking up at the stars she frowned.

Plopped down on the roof only one year ago, they had split a bottle of whiskey and tried counting the stars. They staggered around on the roof together, celebrating the fourth year of their relationship. It had never occurred to them that they could fall. And besides, if one went over so did the other.

Except that when Benny did fall, Alique had been pickpocketing patrons of bars.

Acidic tears welled up as her frown intensified. Alique didn’t believe in crying, especially over the dead. It didn’t bring them back and it didn’t ease her suffering.

Liquor, however, was a different story. Cheap whiskey burned the caverns of her mouth. The bottle kissed her lips.

I should have been there for that idiot. I should have been there instead of scrounging around for some lousy fifty bucks and a watch.

Alique shook her head wildly from side to side. It scattered the tears like angry raindrops across her face. The thoughts remained. She and Benny had been an unmatched team of excellence. Benny had done drugs often in the beginning, harder ones than Alique ever developed a taste for, and she had pleaded with him to stop and promised that she would stay safe and keep her hands out of people’s pockets in return.

He had promised. And so had she.

Life was harder after that.

They were evicted almost immediately by chance, forcing them to the streets. Several nights they curled against one another in dark alleys, letting visions of townhomes and children fill their sleepy heads. Alique lived without much for the majority of her adolescence. Baggage, of the physical kind, didn’t follow her from place to place. She had a small leather bag that held a few articles of clothing and gifts from Benny.

It kept her warm when he was gone.

The handle of the large satchel now hung around her ankle. Alique opened the front flap, revealing a small pocket closed by a zipper. She opened it and pulled out a small container almost emptied of its cologne. Bringing it to her nose she fought back tears. Benny’s scent filled the night. He used to watch her smell his clothes and called it her cheap high. She laughed but never denied it. Placing it back, she toyed with each of his three gifts, a small dog collar for the puppy they dreamt of buying, a key to their first apartment he had stolen, and a winter scarf he knitted for her birthday.

Alique put them all away and let the emptiness of the night fill her again.

Emptiness haunted her world since Benny’s passing. Faces blurred together and the world passed by as a sad, beige disaster with a few specks of varying colors thrown in. Liquor and smoke filled her being as much as the grief. On nights of clarity, she laughed saying, “I’m smoking out the bees in my knees, Benny.”

The laughter always degraded into hysterical sobbing.

She loved Benny though she only told him when his eyes fluttered with sleep. Every day for four years and some change she kissed his forehead, cupped his beard, and whispered “I love you” against his lips. Speaking it created a sense of realness and Alique learned that real things can be taken.

“Benny. Why did you have to go? You stupid, stupid kid.”

Alique began screaming and slamming her hands against the rough shingles. Bits of flesh stuck to them and her hands began to bleed. The whiskey bottle shimmied from side to side as she struck the ground near it. Howling at the sky, Alique dreamed of grabbing the universe by the scruff and beating it until its bleeding could not be stopped.

The fit passed. She drank more whiskey.

Her eyes slid shut and she hung her head low. With each inhale her chin kissed her chest. Anorexic arms hung over protruding kneecaps as she rolled the empty bottle off the building.

“Why do I keep living,” she whispered. “Why do I keep fighting?”

She hugged herself more tightly as hot tears slid down to her knees. “I didn’t know, Benny. I didn’t know I was breaking a promise.”

The night Benny died, rent was due. They had already been evicted from somewhere once and were determined to let it be a one-off. Together, they had scraped up nearly enough cash between the two of them but needed another hundred dollars.

Alique offered to get the money. Benny took her up on it. When she left, he injected bad drugs and died. The high took him up too fast and dropped him just as quickly. As she pulled the last wallet from the man’s pocket, Benny hit the floor dead.

Alique returned with five wallets and a shining Rolex sure to sell for a pretty penny. With the goods in her hands, she walked up to the door. It was wide open. The police saw the wallets bunched in her hand with the watch and swiveled to face her. Her eyes dropped to Benny’s gray, frothing figure behind their looming figures. Benny was face up on the carpet covered in his own bubbling spit.

He was blue.

The EMTs had only just begun to straddle him and begin compressions when she had arrived. A feeling of filth washed over her as she remembered how fast she ran from the scene of his death. With her head still in her hands, she sobbed, “I couldn’t say goodbye. I’m a no-good thief and I couldn’t say goodbye.”

In a fit of sadness, she jumped to standing. Maybe this was okay. She had enough of living, fighting, whatever it was she was doing.

Swaying slightly she peered over the distant edge of the roof. The slanted roof seemed to undulate beneath her feet and before she could decide not to, her body pitched itself forward towards the edge. A hand snatched her shoulder and roughly yanked her back to her feet.

She would recognize those hands anywhere.

“I’m hallucinating.”

“No, you’re drunk.”

Benny stood before her still clutching her shoulder. Alique shrugged him off. This was not Benny. It was a police officer, having been called about noise from below. Or maybe a sad janitor who had seen her at the right moment. Benny was dead. This wasn’t him.

Besides, Benny wouldn’t wear shined shoes and suit pants, the only things she could see with her gaze cast at the ground.

One hand lifted her chin.

A disappointed rush of air left her. Maybe it was Benny, but not the Benny she knew.

The mop of hair she stroked while he slept was kept neatly in line with gel. Eyes that used to squint were covered by thin glasses with thick frames. The soft cotton of his well-loved tees had been replaced with starched shirts and ironed suits. This wasn’t Benny.

“I’m not dead Ali, I’m here.”

Alique twisted her head farther away at the use of her nickname. The stars were bright tonight. She could see them clearly despite the lights of the city.

“Ali, please.”

She turned her face to him again. This time he could do nothing to hide his cringe. The corners of his eyes crinkled for a moment, his head twitched to the side, and his lip instinctively began to curl. Alique wrapped her arms around her body. Benny, this one at least, seemed to find her vile. His eyes ran down her body, hiccuping at every visible bone and glancing away at every hint of scandal.

“Christ, I ruined you.”

Benny had never reached out to her for fear of slipping into bad habits before he was strong but he couldn’t stay away from their special place on the day of their anniversary.

“I don’t have the whiskey anymore but…” she shakily offered him a cigarette. “It's still your favorite, isn’t it? Marlboro Reds right?”

A breath of strangled air escaped his throat as he half nodded, half shook his head. “I don’t smoke.”

“Oh.” Alique looked down at her feet again. “Good for you, I guess. Big deal.”

“Uh, you know…”

“Benny, will you hold me? Give me a hug? Something…” She laughed nervously. “Pretend you like me?”

“Y-yeah.”

Alique crashed into him. Her petite arms flung themselves around his waist and her head buried itself deep in his chest. God he smells so wrong, but it’s him. God is it him. Tranquility stole away the strength in her legs and unknown to Benny, the entire weight of her person rested against his stable core.

“Ali, listen. I meant to reach out. I did. I was going to find you right away, call you as soon as I got out of the hospital rehab program but things just happened, you know? You can understand. I meant to.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered into his chest. “You’re here now.”

He made a strange noise in his throat. Alique bit the inside of her cheek to keep the tears at bay. He was disgusted with her.

“Are you…are you using? Sleeping around?”

She shook her head. The tears were hot against her cold cheeks. Benny, her beloved, sweet, never judgemental Benny was trying to figure out just how filthy she was. How used. How broken. How tainted. She sniffled slightly before steeling herself. She had waited this whole year and lived with only one regret.

“Benny.” She pulled her head back and flashed her beautiful smile up at him. “Benny, I love you.”

Benny scrambled away from Alique. Skidding momentarily against the shingles, he touched his fingers down and regained his balance. He was more concerned with the wrinkles on his suit jacket than with Alique who in her drunken stupor had snagged the shoulder strap of the satchel with her foot.

Her body pitched itself towards the open space beside the high rise. Terror exploded across her face as Benny stood at the top of the building, watching her fall.

The pain in her heart burst and quiet tears fell upwards as her mourning wails were wrenched out of her mouth by the speed of her air. Alique slammed her eyes shut as she fell, ignoring the man standing on the top of the high rise watching her fall with dull interest. Alique’s thoughts raced then stopped altogether, zoning in on one last revelation.

He pushed me.

Benny screamed in unison with Alique as she slipped out of sight as he shot his hand out to catch her several seconds too late. His outstretched hand threw his balance out of whack and he began slipping down the roof. As he neared the edge he peered over it and saw Alique smack the pavement.

The monstrous crack of her spine against the dirty alleyway cement struck his ears. His hands scrabbled at the shingles as he landed on his back, skidding toward the edge.

He tipped over the gutter with one last haunting thought.

Oh God. I pushed her.

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Silver Serpent Books

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Let me know what you guys think of this one. It's darker and a touch more unrefined but it's also from years back. I just finally got around to polishing it up.