old geezer ·
10 September 04

I was slouching rather than sitting down. Aside me sat a woman, a face I couldn’t see, but a voice that boomed advice like a megaphone taped to my ear. On the otherside an old man. A crazy old man, with skin that was hanging off his rather than being a part of him.

Wedged between them, this was not private fantasy I had pursued. The room was dark, with a musky smell that was too prominent not to notice. The woman complained that the smell was making her dizzy, the old man however was pursing his lips together, as though he was being fed invisible food. I’m guessing his reaction was natural when you get to that age. Dentures were not in place, so everytime he talked he sprayed my face, and the room at large.

His eyes were glowing, like the light reflecting the eyes of a cat. His face was coarse, rugged, a desert that had frozen over. No flexibility, no moisture, just open pores big enough to cause a death to anyone that fell inside. He looked down upon me, I noticed, and shrugged uncomfortably, looking at the film ahead. It said City of Angels Starring Al Pacino. It was raining in the picture, water pouring down, done for effect no doubt. I focused on it with all my might, avoiding eye contact with the man who would be a desert.

She told me to offer him a cigarette. I took out a golden box, it glittered with the little light that shone from the TV screen, like a bar of gold, containing every disease you could muster in your mind. I unwrapped the film around it, and ripped open the box. The vomit colour butt ends stuck out like whores in a brothel requesting immediate business. Apply within. The cigarettes gave me a strange feeling, as if they were watching me. If I picked one up, would it contain a watchful eye, one that would see into my soul?

I offered a smoke to the old man, his hands flapped around the box like a dying seal, punching and gripping the box held firmly in my hand. He seemed to want kill the box, perhaps a momentary reminder in his head of someone who he hated, someone he wish he had killed. The cigarettes became squashed and bent. It pissed me off, but I kept my nerve. He grunted and then hit my hard in the stomach. I coughed, the pain reaching me a few seconds after the impact, but reaching me severely and presently. I look up at this bastards face, he smiles and laughs saying he hates cigarettes, but takes one anyway lighting it with his thumb, which glows so bright my eyes are hurting.

The cigarettes in my hand no longer look like a new packet. I want kill the bitch next to me. Are they related? What the fuck am I doing watching this film with these two nutcases? I can’t even see her, a face, a body, only a silhouette sits next to me, a shadow that speaks. Her nails claw into my neck, the pain increasing as the nails go further in, I shunt forward, and pull out one of the nails which got stuck in my neck. My blood isn’t red, it’s black. It smells like tar, and feels hot and sticky, drying into a hard plastic substance as I press my thumb and forefinger together.

Looking at the packet, with the two hellish people next to me, I decide to take my mind off this and smoke one myself, I still have reservations, however. Something creepy and wrong enters my mind as I burn the cigarette, and inhale the poison, as it instinctively waves hello to the inside of my body and sprints across my veins and hugs my heart. As I take away the cigarette butt from my mouth, I noticed that the butt has turned green and porous. The cigarette burns on both ends, and the more I inhale, the more the butt turns green and porous burning itself away, and there, somewhere in the pores I see the snake eyes peering at me, the mouth smiling. Nothing is spoken, as I fall back and fade.

The eyes open, the silhouette next to me talks. I see the old man on his hands and knees, crawling across the floor, running behind a white picket fence, and then running behind piece of card made to look like grass. The bright yellow and green stripes not particularly convincing me or anyone else I imagine. Where we stand sits a house, as fake as the grass that sits behind the white picket fence. The house is red in colour, with the pattern of bricks imprinted. The white picket fence extends around the perimeter. The ground we stand on is green in colour, none of this makes sense. I watch the old man disappear.