The Cigarette's Breath by Nicholas Conley

     As he waited for his guest to arrive, Matt Duvall took another drag from his cigarette.  “One year.”  That’s what the creep had written on the wall, exactly one year ago today.  One year.  One lousy year.  Yeah, like a year was enough time to get his act together and fix everything. 

What a load of crap.  Matt scoffed at the whole idea as he sucked in the rest of his cigarette.  He carefully placed the butt on the shelf, in the small pile of butts he’d created next to the stash of half-eaten apples.  He quickly lit another one.

     Looking back on it, it seemed like his life had only really started when he’d tried his first cig.  It’d been like losing his virginity.  He’d been 16 years old, another fidgety teenager trying to fit in with his friends; yeah, yeah, the same cliché story everyone’s heard a million times.  What set Matt’s story apart was that, well, it wasn’t the feeling of the smoke in his lungs that he loved.   Nah, that was just an added bonus.  Matt loved something else.  He loved the cigarette’s filter. 

Or, well…to be more exact, he loved the sensation of that soft filter pressing against his lips.   

There was something amazing about it that he couldn’t explain.  It wasn’t just a physical feeling; it was mental, emotional.   It was a sense of control he’d never had before.  Suddenly, he knew he had the power to put anything in his mouth that he wanted to, no matter what anyone told him.  Not only that, but he could keep anything he put in his mouth. 

It started out as a small, silly habit.  Matt never threw away a single cigarette butt, and he kept them in a small drawer.   Soon, it turned into several drawers.   A closet.   By his senior year of high school, it wasn’t just cigarette butts anymore.   Matt Duvall desperately tried to keep a small piece of every single object that his mouth touched, whether it was a popsicle stick, a beer bottle, a coin--the touch of cold metal against his lower lip was very calming--a spoon, a plastic cup or a straw.   When he finally got his own trailer to live in, the layout began as a neatly-organized library of items and rapidly evolved into a cluttered garbage dump.   That was fine by him, though.  Totally fine.  Well, except for the fact that his eccentric collecting habits had a bad way of making him forget that somewhere along the way, he’d fathered an infant son named Eddie.

     Ah, Eddie. 

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.  That kid was the reason all this crap was so complicated now.  Matt finished off another cig as he continued waiting for the guest.  By now, he was shaking in anticipation; even the nicotine couldn’t take the edge off.  The guest was getting close.  He could feel it.  He wasn’t normally one to believe in any kind of supernatural claptrap, but when it came to the guest…

     Eddie stood up in his playpen across the room and waved his arms in the air.  The baby learned this trick last week, and he loved doing it.  Eddie looked over at his dad, his chubby little face gleaming with a giant, malevolent grin.  He was a quiet baby, but his amazingly emotive expressions were loud enough to make up for it.

While the baby was smiling, though, Matt shuddered at the way his son’s lips pressed up against the side of the playpen.   Like father, like son.  Ugh, it wasn’t fair that little Eddie was stuck with a father like him.  Matt Duvall’s life was a miserable, unfulfilled existence, no matter how big his collection became.  What if Eddie followed the same path?

The very idea of it drove Matt crazy with guilt; way to set an example, man.  Kid’s going to grow up being the same screw-up you are, chewing on pencils and then keeping the remains in a specially labeled box.  He couldn’t help it, though!  Could he?

     There was a loud knock on the door. 

No, not a knock.  Something was beating the hell out of the door, like a wild animal trying to break in.  A wild animal; a vicious beast. Then again, calling the guest a “wild animal” wasn’t too far off, now was it? 

The beating continued, louder.   Matt shuddered again.  He was here.  No.  It was here.

     Matt desperately tried to refocus his attention.  He pressed a rusty quarter up to his lips.   Maybe if he ignored the guest, maybe if he kept quiet, he’d go away?  After all, he’d done better this year, hadn’t he?  He’d promised the guest that he’d do better, and that’s what he’d done.  He’d thrown away nearly 1/8 of his collection, for Christ’s sake!  He couldn’t be perfect all of the time…or well, not even most of the time.   But dammit, he was trying.   Didn’t that count?

Apparently not.

     The door flew open.  The guest stood in the doorway.   Slowly, the demonic personage crept inside. 

All of Matt’s illusions about hiding disappeared immediately.  The guest stepped closer.  Matt nearly fell from his chair; he’d forgotten just how appalling the guest truly was.  He’d forgotten how intense the animal’s glowing red eyes were.  He’d forgotten how they burrowed a deep hole into the darkest pit of his soul.

     Those eyes.  Those damn red eyes.  Since the creature was headless, those red eyes were set right in its chest.  Its shiny black body resembled a giant, humanoid moth, its enormous insect wings currently folded behind it like a cape.  It glared at Matt and slowly extended one arm forward, as if beckoning him to the gates of hell.    

     Matt shook tensely.  There was nowhere to run.  This was real.  This was happening.  This was real.  He threw the quarter away from his mouth and quickly lit up another cig.     As he inhaled, he desperately squashed both lips against the filter for comfort.  The guest continued advancing toward him.  It clenched its hand into a fist.

Immediately, Matt’s throat erupted into a rough coughing fit.  His lungs burned as if they’d been set on fire; as if the horrific beings’ red eyes were melting his internal organs.   As he closed his eyes, he found that all he could picture was his lungs.  They were charred and yellowish, resembling a crumpled old newspaper.  Residing inside the chest of a 23-year-old were the lungs of a withered corpse.

He opened his eyes.  The pain subsided, momentarily.  The guest gestured toward him in an eerily human manner.

“So did I do good enough for ya?” Matt asked, panting.

The answer was no.

The guest opened its wings, blasting the room with frosty, bitter air.  Every shelf in the room toppled simultaneously, sending a lifetime of collections to the floor.   The guest reached one clawed hand forward again and twisted its wrist; Matt’s chest tightened, completely at the guest’s mercy.

     He coughed again.  There was thick mucus in his throat.  Cold, phlegmatic blood.  There was blood in his chest.  In his nostrils.  On his lips.  There was invisible blood on the cigarette’s filter. 

I’ll quit, he said to himself.  I’ll quit all of it.  Right here, right now.  I’ll throw everything away.  I can change. 

How many times had he told himself that silly joke before, though?  How could he ever hope to accomplish it?  His unique form of self-destruction was the only thing that’d ever been constant in his life.  When his mother died, it was there.  When his girlfriend cheated on him, tore his heart out of his chest and trampled on it, it was there.  It’d always been there, like the most faithful woman in the world.  The kind of woman that he’d never get in real life.  The kind he didn’t deserve. 

The coughing subsided momentarily.  Matt spat at the guest’s feet angrily.  Out of spite, he relit his cigarette.  Go to hell, insect.  Go to hell.  He breathed in the nicotine and let it become a part of him. 

Like an enormous bat, the guest opened its wings again and shrieked.

Matt’s chest seized up completely.  He couldn’t breathe.  He collapsed to the floor, instantly dropping the still-burning cigarette.  He gasped for air.  He cried out for help from the lungs he’d been abusing all these years. 

Eddie collapsed in the playpen.  Legs crossed, the baby stared out at his dying father with terrified eyes.  He started crying.

At this, the guest turned to face the child.  No!  Matt tried to crawl forward and do something, but his body was too weak.  The guest stared down at the dropped cigarette and reached for it.  Smoke drifted out of its cherry, into the air, and it twisted upward into the creature’s palm. 

Matt beat on his chest until his arms were exhausted.  He couldn’t stop coughing.  Grey drool dribbled down his chin.  His vision darkened.  His lungs felt like water balloons, just waiting for a needle to puncture them.

The guest manipulated the smoke in its hand like clay.  The demonic creature then let go of it; the smoke crawled through the air like a snake, right in the baby’s direction.  Eddie sobbed even louder as the smoke coiled around his head.

“Ed…E…Eddie…I’m trying, I’m…” Matt sputtered out, between coughs.

He reached out in agony, but he couldn’t move.  He couldn’t speak clearly.  His lungs wouldn’t stop coughing.  He’d realized, too late, that he could’ve done this year differently.  He’d been warned.  God, he’d been warned!  He could’ve lived.  He’d always told himself, “tomorrow,” but tomorrow had finally come.  Procrastination finally caught up to him.  It was too late, it was too…

The coughing stopped.  Suddenly, the guest was gone.

Air flow returned to Matt’s lungs.  He could breathe again.  He pulled himself off the ground; the air had felt never felt so crisp.  He’d never felt so alive.

He looked around worriedly.  He couldn’t believe that the guest had actually let him live, a second time.  The monstrous animal had disappeared from thin air…but not without a reminder.  There was a new message burned into Matt’s brain, echoing through it repeatedly; the guest’s lingering voice.

Six months.  This is your last chance.

Matt took the crying baby into his arms and rocked him back and forth.  He’d survived another ordeal.  Both he and his son had survived it, together…but only because they were lucky.  Matt knew that.  Next time, he wouldn’t be so lucky.  He had to change.  This wasn’t about him anymore; it was about his son.  He had a child that needed his father.  This time, he was done.  This time, everything was going to change. 

But as he told himself this, he couldn’t help but realize that even with his newfound resolve, he didn’t feel any relief.  There was no sense of salvation, no sense of redemption.  Instead, he felt as if he’d cut off his right hand and was never getting it back.

Matt looked out the open front door that the guest had been standing in moments ago.  He examined the enormous garbage dump around him.  Remembering those terrifying red eyes, he wondered if six months would really be long enough.