Air was cold and smelled like gasoline. Faint rainbows of oil in puddles. Sky was blank up above the clouds. No moon. Street lit up with halogen bulbs. I'm alone and I'm walking. Fingers itch for a cigarette. Only part of me thats warm is my legs. Rest of me is a frozen layer of flesh. Car goes by, kicking up wind. It is eleven pm, and I have lost her.
Bridge across the highway. Silence. No cars on the road now. Feel something tickle along my spine. I look out from the light, into the night. Rain started falling.
---
She told me that she'd leave me when I first met her. Sitting in a coffee shop waiting for her, a blind date. Set up by a friend whose face is blank in my memory, eyeless and sinister. She showed up late, soft and serious.
"So I should tell you something before I order." She said. "In six months, four days, two hours, and eleven minutes, I'm going to fall off the face of the earth. Not you or anybody you know will ever see me again. Telling you so we're square."
I sipped by coffee and shrugged.
"Fuck it." I said. "Why not."
---
Bridge disappears behind me. Faint smell of pot, passing by a bus stop. I can almost hear laughter. Smell people. Warmth. I've been walking since noon. I'm halfway across the city. Second pack of cigarettes. She smoked constantly, chaining them together like words. Blew rings and French inhaled and punctuated her sentences with it. Smoked them from a little steel case. Never could tell the brand, and she never bummed me one. Not even when I was hard up.
Sirens, off in the distance. Sky hanging over me like so when I look up I feel like I'm hanging over an abyss. Heart skips because looking up through the trees I think I've caught her scent, but it's only my cigarette burnt down to the filter. I toss it aside. I'm empty. She's gone.
Something is following me. The thing that took her or that she gave herself to. Or it's her, pale and red-haired, with hollows under her eyes and her fucked up teeth in a big grin. I can almost hear her cough behind me. I can feel my fingers curl, remembering her against me.
It isn't til four blocks later that I realize I'm crying. Sloppy tears running down my cheeks. Hand comes away wet when I light another cigarette. I think its tears at first but it ain't.
It's blood. I'm crying blood.
Something tickles up my spine, and I hear her laugh, but I'm alone.
It is eleven fifty. I have ten minutes to live. I wipe the blood off my face and walk into a bar and sit. Order a glass of top shelf whisky. I'm not going to be paying for it. I pick it up and sip. A fleck of cigarette ash floats in it.
---
Lying in bed with her, neon shining through the window. Blankets twisted around us. Sweat slick and the air humid. Late summer.
"So, where're you going?" I ask. She looks at me, her face in shadows.
"So, where're you going?" I ask. She looks at me, her face in shadows.
"Baby, I'm going away." She strokes my cheek with one hand. She's smoking with the other.
"Yeah, I got that." I kiss her hand, briefly. "First thing you said to me was that you'd leave, and when." I pressed against her, she giggled. "But not why."
She put her cigarette out and cupped my face with both hands. "Because I can't." She said, her voice slow and earnest.
"Why the hell not?" I said.
"I made a deal." She said.
---
Whisky tastes like smoke and sweet. Someone hands me another glass and I knock it back. Sitting at the bar. People talking all around me, fading to a dull buzz. I can feel it coming.
First it's just my body warming up, recovering from the cold. Then it's the liquor burning in my stomach. Then its me burning up from the inside.
Agony ain't the right word for it. I lift my hand for another drink. I can feel the whisky boiling on my tongue. My hand falls away and smashes on the bar, a smear of soot. I'm thinking of her while my body turns to ash. If I'd found her, maybe things would've been different. Maybe I would have lived. Last thing I hear is screaming. I'm on fire, burning hotter than any fire man has ever built. I open my mouth to speak, to tell the people around me that I made a deal, but no sound comes out. My lungs are cinders.
I'm burning ,and I take the bar with me.
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