Smoking

Here's another installment for Three Word Wednesday. Today's words are delicate, night and jaded.


The day was lived for the time when she could finally settle into the wide armchair that faced the couch. Every night she stared across the room at those flowered cushions that sagged like old boobs, sipping the drink, listening to ice tinkling in the glass while the Flesh Lump was kept alive by the methodical piss of an oxygen tank.

The amber-colored photograph on the wall showed a different woman, one who had married a soldier filled with promises and big dreams that didn’t include becoming a Flesh Lump. The woman in the picture hadn’t known she’d get pregnant three times or that the third would be lost to a back-alley doctor because she couldn’t bear the thought of another. Nor did the woman know later in life she’d lose the first child to cancer and the second to meth and the third child might have still been. But after the loss of the second, her life had fallen into jaded numbness and she knew the third was better off as it was.

She pushed herself out of the armchair long enough to check on the Flesh Lump, then stopped by the gaping door of the spare room on her way back to the living room. A silvery shadow cut the darkness. She pushed the door a little wider and hallway light fell across the extra oxygen tank.

The valve twisted too easily and the delicate whisper of oxygen escaping followed her into the living room, where she settled into the sagging boob couch and dug through her purse, pulled out a new pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She tore off the crackling cellophane, pinched a filter in her mouth, lit the smoke. Waited.