Saturday's Storyteller: "The UNICEF survival kits only had cigarettes."
by Belinda Roddie
The UNICEF survival kits only had cigarettes. So we lit one up each and sat around in a circle, letting the smoke sprout in gray blossoms around our heads. Around us, the grass was black with decay, and the water that touched the bank was toxic green. There were six of us in total, and we must have been the last people on this continent. And here we were, with cancer sticks.
The UNICEF survival kits only had cigarettes. So we lit one up each and sat around in a circle, letting the smoke sprout in gray blossoms around our heads. Around us, the grass was black with decay, and the water that touched the bank was toxic green. There were six of us in total, and we must have been the last people on this continent. And here we were, with cancer sticks.
"Least we can kill ourselves faster," quipped one of the six, sucking on the cylinder like it were candy. His nametag said BORIS. I was sitting on his right. He smelled like roasted garlic. Everything did.
The airplane we had been flying over the scene was now a gross, skeletal husk on the horizon. Twisted like a dead contortionist's body, it almost looked human the way it rose up from the crater it had made in the earth. Its wings looked more like broken legs, metal kneecaps reaching toward the sky as a howl appeared to emanate from the corpse. Maybe you could hear it weeping, if you dared come any closer to it. It probably still had blood in its innards. And the smell. That odd, dusty culinary reek wafting around us that not even the odor of tobacco could mask. I didn't even know where it was from.
Was the end of the world meant to smell like an abandoned Italian restaurant on the side of the road?
Boris had finished one cigarette and was starting on the other. Across from us was Emma, Strom, Nancy, and Willard. Emma has let her stogie burn all the way down to her fingertips. Her nails looked greasy. Her hair was still clotted with her own life fluids. Somehow, we had survived the crash with very minor injuries. They just looked gruesome. We looked gruesome.
With the curved part of my palm where my thumb met my wrist, I pressed upward, hard, on my jaw. The popping bone reminded me that I was alive. We were all were. Opening up boxes meant to help children in Africa or Polynesia or something. Finding manufactured nightmares instead to chew on. Light up. Thank God for Willard's lighter. He had managed to sneak that past security. The TSA agents all liked him for some reason. I dunno.
We kept smoking until all of the packs were empty. Then we all stood up and looked for something to clean ourselves up with. The water was too hot to touch. The air was stifling. The post-apocalyptic landscape was enough to make Nancy vomit. Strom said nothing. And we all smelled like garlic.
Garlic and flatulence and decay.
This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.
Was the end of the world meant to smell like an abandoned Italian restaurant on the side of the road?
Boris had finished one cigarette and was starting on the other. Across from us was Emma, Strom, Nancy, and Willard. Emma has let her stogie burn all the way down to her fingertips. Her nails looked greasy. Her hair was still clotted with her own life fluids. Somehow, we had survived the crash with very minor injuries. They just looked gruesome. We looked gruesome.
With the curved part of my palm where my thumb met my wrist, I pressed upward, hard, on my jaw. The popping bone reminded me that I was alive. We were all were. Opening up boxes meant to help children in Africa or Polynesia or something. Finding manufactured nightmares instead to chew on. Light up. Thank God for Willard's lighter. He had managed to sneak that past security. The TSA agents all liked him for some reason. I dunno.
We kept smoking until all of the packs were empty. Then we all stood up and looked for something to clean ourselves up with. The water was too hot to touch. The air was stifling. The post-apocalyptic landscape was enough to make Nancy vomit. Strom said nothing. And we all smelled like garlic.
Garlic and flatulence and decay.
This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.
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