Flash Fiction: Smoking and Writing
Smoking & Writing (another Chuck Wendig Flash fiction)
I sit at the desk, my body awash with the soft white glow of the monitor. Cigarette curled in my fingers, currently unlit. Fingers of the right hand are moving across the keyboard like it’s a piano. Stop a bit to sip whisky neat, feel the burn in my throat the warmth spreading from my gut to my limbs to tell me that it’s working. A few more words and then a few more words and then a few more words. Another sip of whisky. Rinse wash repeat.
It’s late and my eyes are bleary and bloody, body and soul numb from the act of writing. And then I’m there, that part that I was dreading. I light the cigarette with a cheap Bic. Inhale deeply, hold it in my lungs. Slowly exhale. Both hands on the keyboard know. I pull from deep within. Her smell, her feel, her sex. Her eyes, her hair, her breath. The smoke from the cigarette curls around my head, seeps into the paint of the room, infects the carpet. Half the cancer stick down, but I’m nearly there. I feel the climax coming, remember how she moved when I pushed her down and took her.
I’d quit if I could, but it’s the only way I know how to summon it. The rough sex arrives by adhesive smoke. And that smoke baby, it’s all I’ve got left at the end of the day. A few more drags, got it down to the filter. I knock back the rest of the whisky, drop the butt in the glass, twin smoke plumes out my nose. I lean back, stare at what I wrote. I hit save. Time to call it a night.
I sit at the desk, my body awash with the soft white glow of the monitor. Cigarette curled in my fingers, currently unlit. Fingers of the right hand are moving across the keyboard like it’s a piano. Stop a bit to sip whisky neat, feel the burn in my throat the warmth spreading from my gut to my limbs to tell me that it’s working. A few more words and then a few more words and then a few more words. Another sip of whisky. Rinse wash repeat.
It’s late and my eyes are bleary and bloody, body and soul numb from the act of writing. And then I’m there, that part that I was dreading. I light the cigarette with a cheap Bic. Inhale deeply, hold it in my lungs. Slowly exhale. Both hands on the keyboard know. I pull from deep within. Her smell, her feel, her sex. Her eyes, her hair, her breath. The smoke from the cigarette curls around my head, seeps into the paint of the room, infects the carpet. Half the cancer stick down, but I’m nearly there. I feel the climax coming, remember how she moved when I pushed her down and took her.
I’d quit if I could, but it’s the only way I know how to summon it. The rough sex arrives by adhesive smoke. And that smoke baby, it’s all I’ve got left at the end of the day. A few more drags, got it down to the filter. I knock back the rest of the whisky, drop the butt in the glass, twin smoke plumes out my nose. I lean back, stare at what I wrote. I hit save. Time to call it a night.