It All Began With A Midnight Cigarette (CK)

[Izulde]

My wife and I hadn't been getting along lately.

I'd like to say it all started when I lost my job in the great tidal wave of the economic crisis in the last few years of the '00s, but that would be a lie. It really began earlier than that. Even before I started smelling a cologne that wasn't mine and she began to smile now and again for reasons that had nothing to do with me. Maybe it even began, in some small way, before we were married. I don't really know. When it's been this long, the past and present mingle together in a confusing, tangled mass that even simply cutting the whole thing in two won't solve.

I suppose five years isn't all that long to be married, or maybe it is, in this day and age. All I know is, back then at least, even with the not talking that crept into our marriage, the kind that was worse than fighting all the time, I was still old fashioned enough to believe in working at and trying to make it work.

But I'm getting off track here. This isn't so much a story of how things were, although you can't talk about the now without first figuring out how the then lead up to it. This is a story of how things came to be as they are now. Some people, maybe even a lot of people, will call me crazy. Others will say I'm an outright liar. But I promise you that everything happened exactly how I say it did, even if some events seem too fantastic to believe.

As I said, my wife and I weren't getting along and hadn't been for a long time, to the point where we'd say maybe ten words to each other the whole day, two of which were "Morning." and "Night.", three of which were "What's for supper?". It frustrated me, this not-talking, so I would do things to try and upset her, the little things that you learn really irritate your spouse after you've been married a while. Like not wiping down the counter after I made toast, or scattering the newspaper sections on the floor around my chair after I was done with them, rather than stack them neatly so she could reach and read them easily after she got up.

But what -really- ticked her off would be when I'd get up in the middle of the night, especially when it was cold, and go outside for a cigarette. In the winter, I'd come back to bed with a chilly body that'd immediately wake her up out of her warm, cozy sleep, and it'd be a good hour and a half before she could fall asleep again.

And so it was, on one particularly, near-wintery late October night, around 11:51, that I woke up, threw my coat on and went outside with a smoke and a lighter.

What happened just a few minutes later started the chain from Then to Now.

[Izulde]

As I lit my cigarette and took the first exhale, I thought about how, just hours before, these sidewalks were overrun with kids of all ages in different costumes, trick or treating as the sun slowly set. It was hard for me to pick a favorite every year, as some of them had some really cool get-ups, but I think my favorite that year was the kid dressed up as jelly bean. I don't know why; maybe it's because he was a sour apple jelly bean and that reminded me so much of my wife.

Cassie didn't like trick or treating and she hated Halloween. Every October I got to listen to her complain about the price of candy, the money spent on costumes, and the weight she gained from eating leftover chocolate. She did that even when we were dating, but at least she'd go to parties then. After we were married, she wouldn't do anything at all, not even eat the candy we had left from the trick or treaters.

Not even when it was her favorite, 100 Grand bars, which I always thought odd.

It was a chilly night, as I've said, and there was a bit of a wind to it, too. I had to keep taking pulls so the cigarette wouldn't get blown out. Smokes always taste worse when you have to light them a second time. Gives you that really oily feeling in your mouth that's hard to get rid of.

I turned and looked at our house. It was a sprawling, dark green and brown monster, built sometime in the 1800s in a style that could only be described as plain ugly. I didn't even want to live in it, but Cassie's father gave us a really good deal on it. He wanted to move out, retire down to Jamaica or the Bahamas or something where he could lay on the beach all day, drink rum and listen to calypso music. It was his appeal to me that he wanted to keep it in the family that got to me. I'm a damned sentimental bastard about things like that and it was a dirty trick he pulled.

As I looked back out onto the barren street, I reflected that if nothing else, divorcing Cassie would get me out of that awful looking place and to somewhere more my liking. The West Coast maybe, or hell, maybe I'd go join Earl down in the Caribbean.

I went to throw my cigarette in the gutter when I caught a flash of movement.

I turned to look and there, under a streetlight, was a young woman all in white.

Only she wasn't just all in white. She -was- all white. And she was floating.

My eyesight never being the greatest and her being across the street, and all this whiteness of body and light and all, I drew closer to try and get a better look.

She was in a long, full, large dress and her hair was pinned up.

Before I could look closer, she turned, stared at me with large eyes, and wept, tears cascading silently down her cheeks and into her bosom.

Then she vanished.

And only then did I realize that my skin was burning, black char marks on my fingers.

I hadn't thrown away the cigarette.

[Samdari]

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[Izulde]

Originally Posted by Samdari

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Thanks. I'll see if I can update sometime next week.