Cold Turkey

He cigaretted the space between his fuck-you-finger and the one he used to use to point at things he wanted. It was his last cigarette, the last cigarette, an American Spirit, their apparently ethical farming practices weren’t enough to save the bees it turns out. “Should I half it?” the complex question arises with enormous implications. “I could save the short for later when it gets really bad.” He takes a long full drag and watched the ember eat the paper and touch the eagle's wing. A big exhale adds grey smoke to the brown-black landscape. “I miss green.” Now the only greens are the useless bills that sometimes blow across the soil and can’t buy kale. Horrified he watches himself take another lusty drag off the ultimate stogie and the eagle turns to phoenix whose final form is ash. He tastes the cotton fiberglass filter and wretches at the golden band. Tossing the pretzel butt feels familiar, stomping the heat out of habit though nothing’s left to burn. “It's quittin’ time.”

Smoking two packs a day for eleven years would leave a big hook in anybody and there’s something about quitting that makes you really want to smoke. Especially with the end of the world and all, it’s a stressful time for everybody.

He coughed again; he feels the bounce of his locket against his chest. Heart-shaped resting over tar lungs. He pulls it out from under his only shirt left. He traded the last of his clothes that weren’t on his emaciated body for a pouch of beef jerky, a can of sardines, and a pack of cigarettes to an old treacherous woman with no qualms about taking advantage of his addiction to nicotine and food. He opened the locket to look at his mother and sister, it’s the only image of them left in existence. “This heart can’t beat, and neither can theirs.” He feels a pang of shame in his stomach for thinking such a cheesy uninspired line. “Candy helps I hear.” but candy’s with the dodo’s and so is the tobacco.

“If I’d known bees pollinate tobacco plants, I would have been an activist. Hindsight’s twenty-twenty.” He thinks of two packs. “Walk it off.” and he walks, fiending, scanning the Earth for ground scores like he’d do back when he had the luxury of being broke in Chicago surrounded by people wasteful enough to toss half a cigarette on the sidewalk for his hand-me-down fix. “Gutter punk croutons” he used to jokingly refer to them to mitigate embarrassment.

He walks on, short of breath and longing, there’s a canopy in the distance.

As he approaches the tent he recognizes an old woman wearing a familiar t-shirt. “I’m with stupid” with an arrow below the text pointing left towards no one. “Does that have a proximity clause? Can the guy a hundred miles in that direction feel this woman’s poor opinion of him” he wonders pointlessly. When he owned the shirt the world was a much more crowded place with more immediate examples of people lacking intellect. It’s that kind of stupidity that killed the bees.

“I got water and canned food.”

“Cigarettes?”

“You’re in luck, guy just came by and traded his last one for a jug of water. What do you have to trade?”

“I have this shirt.”

“Can’t do that. Clothes don’t go anymore. It’s heating up. That’s a pretty thing around your neck.”

“That’s not going to happen. I mean, there’s just no way. I’m not trading my last piece of meaning for seven minutes. Ah... what’s a picture?”

He pulls the locket over his head and tosses it to the old lady. She opens a dusty tin and takes out a perfect white tube, no regrets, he grabs it from her bony fingers. “You should quit those things.” he hears her say as he walks off. He digs into his shorts pockets for a lighter and holds it up to his eyes. On it is the symbol for Capricorns, he’s a libra. He lights the end of his cigarette, a thick mint hits the back of his throat. “I hate menthol.”