Cigarette
By Liam Eicberg
I take a drag from my cigarette.
It catches me wrong, but I inhale again anyway. The smoke feels familiar, like something I’ve used up before.
Three-quarters gone. Rain presses against the street outside my favorite bar, turning light into a blur. Each drag is smaller. Each takes less of me to finish.
Pinpricks emerge from the smoke like the tinkling bells of a carillon.
Halfway.
When I take another drag, the carillon snaps, roaring the subtle pain into a feeling, dissonant and loud. The filter is soft in my hands now. Wrongly soft. I keep holding it because there is still something to hold. I never imagined how flimsy, how feeble the end could be.
A coughing fit erupts from my lungs. Blood and shards of mucus eject from my fragile body. The smoke cradles my lungs and comforts me, wrapping my intestines and heart.
Another drag.
Nothing changes.
One more.
There is a single drag left— the nub is all that remains. I take the last one slowly, expecting an end that arrives as a moment.
It does not arrive as anything.
The smoke goes in.
And does not come back out in any way I can recognize.
There is just the soft failure of the filter.
Then even that flutters to the ground.
Bio: Liam Eichberg is a writer from Tampa, Florida. He loves coffee, weird & paranoid fiction, and jazz loud enough to confuse the neighbors. He has been published in GossamerWight, Unleash Press, the talking chair, among others. He can be found on Instagram as @liameichberg.
