SMOKER

A cloud of smoke billowed into the night air—the stench of burnt tobacco, the fizzle of burning embers. A satisfied sigh, an utterance of exasperation. Smoker stood at the end of the driveway, a cancer stick in his mouth, a toxic plume drifting into the dark.

He seemed to be enjoying it with a relish usually reserved for the first cigarette of the day or that satisfying smoke after sex. The excitement, the adrenaline and anxiety, the stress—all of his emotions had reached a peak and then descended to exhaustion. I didn’t smoke, but even I could appreciate how good it must have felt.

He coughed, the harsh noise like a clap of thunder in the silent night; a pillow of smoke erupted from his lungs. Unperturbed, he took another draw, then another, and another, all in a quick and hungry succession. He smoked it right down to the filter before he finally flicked it away, watching as it hit the wet tarmac and instantly fizzled out. Only then did he turn, his eyes coming face to face with mine.

“What—” A grunt, a groan, another cough. His eyes lowered from mine. He took a half-step backward. I moved with him. He looked at the knife lodged below his rib cage—the hilt pressed tight against his torn sweater, the blade angled upward—and then back to me.

There was a question on his lips, in his eyes, but he was incapable of processing it. He just stood there, immobile, idle, dumb. I drove the knife in further, my knuckles pressing against the moistening wound around his sweater, the blade piercing his lungs.

“You told her you didn’t smoke.” I yanked the knife out, a move that required force, a move that hooked more flesh and organ tissue on its exit. “Whatever happened to honesty, eh?”

I stabbed him again, the sharp blade driving into his abdomen, piercing his stomach, his intestines; and again, aiming for his chest, cracking a floating rib, sucking the air out of his lungs. He grasped at the knife and at the blood gushing from the wounds, his eyes on mine, his pupils wide. It was as if he was caught in a nightmare, unsure what was happening and how to react. Desperate to wake up.

I shook my head, showing him my disgust, and then stepped back. I expected him to drop to his knees, to look me in the eyes—a pleading, despairing, questioning look. But his attention turned to his wounds, his hands lapping up the blood as if desperately trying to stop a leak, his panic intensifying with every passing second. Moments later, his body gave out from underneath him, and he dropped to the side, folding like a paper doll and collapsing into a heap.

“Did you just stab him?”

A potbellied man wearing a dressing gown and holding a lit cigarette stood at the side of one of the houses, his eyes switching from me to the body on the ground. I shrugged, making little effort to hide the knife from him as I slid it into its sheath under my jacket.

“You did—You—you.”

I dug through Smoker’s pockets, looking for his keys and my escape as the neighbor continued to fluff his lines and glare in disbelief.

“The cops are coming, you know?”

I straightened and stared at him, smiling as he took an almost instinctive step back, even though we were separated by at least twenty feet and he was closer to his house than he was to me. “Now, why would you tell me that?”

“I—I—” The neighbor was dumbfounded, even taking a break to puff on his cigarette. “They’re going to arrest you.”

“Uh-huh.” The keys were in Smoker’s back pocket. I rolled him over and noted that there still seemed to be life in him, a flickering of electrical activity, a faint whisper of breath, but he was on his way out. He was a brain without a body; a husk without a soul.

“Such a shame. You had promise,” I said with a wink, tapping the soon-to-be-corpse on the backside.

I noted that several houses in the street were alive, even at this late hour. Curtains twitched; nosy neighbors made brief appearances. Only one of them had the gall to stand outside and face me, but all of them had probably called the police and I didn’t have a lot of time to waste.

As if to confirm my suspicions, the sound of distant sirens cut through the still night air as I entered Smoker’s car and quickly made my escape.