Pink Cigarettes · Issue 858, by Tom Williams

She was still sleeping.

Sprawled and face down like a body flung from a car wreck; awkward but at peace. Her hair was November 5th orange and just like the blazes that that particular night guarantees, it spread erratically over the pillows and her pale shoulders. He couldn’t sleep again. The night was selfish; eyes met with black when both opened and closed. The room was dark save for the little light from the street which crept in timidly from the sides of the cheap and bulky blackout blind.

His years had taught him that frustration got him nowhere. He might as well embrace the darkness or be consumed by it, and yet he made the mistake of turning on the bedside lamp, an action which was certain to put off the prospect of sleep for another few hours. He didn’t care. Sleep is overrated he had always said, a safe-haven for the weak, a joke for the restless. It was at least three hours since she had slipped silently into her sleep with an ease of which he was violently envious. He took a sip from the bottle of sour corner shop wine and wished he hadn’t.

And there it was. The emptiness, the shallowness, the feeling of being the loneliest man on the planet even though the one he loved was next to him. He did love her, of course, just like he loved all of the other girls. He was getting on now, the full face of stubble he had wished for in his insecure twenties had launched a coup on his sunken cheeks; become unmanageable. His once thick head of light brown hair had lost its autumn tones to patches of the dullest grey, maliciously gaining in territory. He was not the man he was. Or, more specifically, the man he had dreamt of becoming. Sure, he was in the company of much younger girls, drawn to his tragic face and the promise of a colourful story, but each one of them was broken, each one the same and they all ended up in the same place.

He was a man of humble possessions. He had no air looms. His father didn’t leave him a watch or a pen or an antique cabinet or an old photograph with a fascinating story. Just a bastard Y chromosome.

He reached for a few scraps of paper and a silver pen and thought about how he used to be able to just write and write until he could write no more. No-one wanted to read what he wrote, though, because they all believed that writing was something that had to be taught. Fuck that, a writer should be born with it; you can’t learn it and you sure as hell can’t teach it. Unable to write a damn word he snapped his neck back onto the pillow and stared at her sad figure. He wondered if she could dream. He missed his dreams, and not just his flimsy aspirations, the ones he used to dream in colour, the ones where he was happy, the randomness of the situations they would throw him into, away from the banality of his true existence. He looked at her, so snide in her deep sleep, every resting bone mocking his overactive mind and cantankerous eyelids.

He met her at the hotel bar. A true colon of a place where the wine tasted like piss-weak grape juice and the beer only came in small bottles at a stupid price. The walls were a fire-fight of oranges and reds whilst the upholstery smacked of a quick trip to Ikea on a pathetic wallet. He had been drinking since noon and felt the friendly warmth in his cheeks and the gentle numbness in his knees and elbows. He was toying with the ice at the bottom of a glass of generic unloved scotch when she caught his gaze. Maybe it was the booze but she moved like a silent film, graceful yet sporadic, and with an air of unashamed vanity; something that he knew he shouldn’t be, but was a complete sucker for. He couldn’t remember how they got talking but he could remember, thanks to the long receipt in his pocket, buying drink after drink for her on a tab he couldn’t pay off. They talked about the lack of work in this city, dead parents, faulty watches, appalling hotel staff, dogshit, everything. He played up to everything she said, nodding in agreement even when inside he passionately disagreed, not correcting her when he knew she was wrong. An embarrassing sycophant. She smoked pink cigarettes. There wasn’t a more beautiful way to kill herself, she had said, and this made him smile. She told him that his leathery face wasn’t suited to smiling and that he should stop before someone got scared.

The next part was a blur, but he vaguely recalled heading up to maybe the fifth or sixth floor with her. The hallways were quiet but as soon as he entered her room he was greeted by the sounds of screaming police sirens and the dampened thuds from the nightclubs on the street below. His head was hazy and his stomach hated him. As she leaned forward for the kiss with her fake-red lips that matched her low cut blouse he closed his eyes tight. And then the blackout.

God only knows why he has to wait until sunrise before he leaves, but it is something he had become accustomed to. A grace granted unto them by him, their saviour. By the time the birds had come out to twitter and the ineffective blind let in the first rays of the day’s sun, he was dressed. He almost felt sorry for the body in the bed, although it was nothing a morning brandy couldn’t sort out, he had come to learn. The way he saw it, he had preserved her beauty, just like all the other girls who had fallen for that sad face of his. He loved her deeply, just like he loved all of the other girls, which is why he had to do it. Before he left and disappeared to another town he took a single pink cigarette from her handbag. A token. The most beautiful way to kill herself, she had said.

He left.

She was still sleeping.