Delay, Depose, Deny
Body Count
“How can you still smoke?” Diane asked him. After a quick kiss from which she tasted old smoke.
“You mean cancer and all that?” Sean responded, looking at his watch. She knew he was so addicted to nicotine that he revolved his life around the time and his smoke breaks. Just another aggravation she weathered in their troubled relationship.
Although she agreed to meet him on his official smoke break, he wasn’t smoking. Not yet. Why was he waiting? she wondered.
“No, I wasn’t talking about cancer and death and chemotherapy and heart disease and all that. I meant how can you still smoke with the cost. How much is a pack of cigarettes nowadays?” She swished some saliva in her mouth in an attempt to dilute the smoky taste as she thought about how they had to cancel their weekend due to the cost.
“I guess about five bucks a pack, y’know, for the bargain brand.” Sean checked his watch again. Diane grimaced.
“A bargain? Right,” snorted Diane, stifling some anger. “Now, for you, what? about $300 a month?”
For us, $300 a month, she seethed to herself.
“A bargain for what?” she pressed. “Death? That’s a bargain, f’sure.”
“I knew it! I knew you’d get there,” Sean said, gainsaying. “I submit that death’s cheap; way cheaper than life, at that.”
“Depends on where you live,” Diane added, invoking the morning’s news of the mass graves just discovered in some third world’s killing fields.
“Breaking news,” Sean agreed. “Yep,” he said, checking his watch yet again.
“Big difference between suicide and homicide,” Diane offered. Do I want a part of either? she asked herself.
Sean checked his watch again. “Yep,” he agreed, like a lemming agreeing to walk off the edge. “Cigarettes—those things’ll kill you.”
“Each cigarette takes eight minutes off the end of your life, I hear,” Diane pointed out. Our life, she thought.
“That’s what they say. But it only takes four to smoke it. I struggle with the math.”
“You’re getting ripped off,” Diane told him. “Four minutes at a time, then.”
“You would think. But the math, like all equations, has to follow the order of operations.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I’ve got it all figured out.”
“Yes?”
“Those eight minutes…”
“Yes?”
“They’ve got to be the last eight minutes of your life, right?” Sean asked.
“Well, duh!” Diane agreed. “It’s not like you’re taking away some middle eight minutes of your life. You don’t die for eight minutes and then wake back up.” She said.
“I know I don’t. Hasn’t happened yet,” Sean boasted. “Still, those last eight minutes.”
Our last eight, she thought. He checked his watch again. A tone sounded, and he immediately fished out a cigarette and lit it up.
“Did you forget to smoke all this time on your smoke break? Is that why you have an alarm?”
“No. I don’t need an alarm to remind me to smoke. My withdrawal does that.”
“So?” she goaded him.
“I use the alarm to tell me when to smoke.”
“You smoke on your smoke break,” Diane declared. “That’s what the break is for.”
“Not automatically. I wait.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“For eight minutes,” he answered.
Am I betrothed to a man whose personal best at forgoing self-indulgence is only eight minutes? What kind of provider could he possibly be?
“And why is that? Why eight minutes? Wait! I get it. That’s your way of savoring eight minutes of life now for the eight minutes you lose at the end?”
“Nope,” Sean corrected her.
“Then what?”
“If, every time I want a cigarette, I wait eight minutes…and every time I smoke one I take off eight minutes of my life—the last eight minutes—that’s the crucial point—if when I light it up, finally…then I’m just taking off eight minutes from when I would have been dead anyway.”
Diane eyed him with disapproval.
“So,” she said, “if I waited an eternity to ever have sex with you again, then…”
“Aha!” Sean blurted. “Boy, try to introduce a little adventure in your sex life! That’s what you meant the other night when you said, "‘Over my dead body.’”
“Yes,” Diane responded, “exactly. Savor the moment.”
“Smoke?” Sean offered.
“No thanks. I’m trying to quit.”
“I was kidding. I know you don’t smoke.”
“Who says I was talking about smoking.”
Smoke break was over. And so were they.
For FLASH FICTION FRIDAY, from Scoot’s GIBBERISH June 6, 2025 challenge, “Up In Smoke” (prompt, Write about a smoke break).
“Throw me somethin…” is a way to offer a one-time tip to support my work. Or not.
LSMFT
He's picking smoke over sex... something's wrong with that young man!