Famished

When she first started smoking at sixteen it was her way of saying ‘Fuck You.’ Not to anyone in particular, but to the world in general - the world that wanted her to conform and have a nice house and a clean job and no problems. And she didn’t have problems, really, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t rally for the cause of those who did. For those who society disregarded with disdainful glares. And so she smoked, a symbol of her rebellion against all things government and capitalist and consumerist, even though her money went straight back into the pockets of those people anyway. She didn’t care. Her curves were full and her hair was dark and she hadn’t a trouble in the world past how she hated her school uniform, because all she wanted to wear was black.

When her parents found out they raised living hell. She was doing the teenage thing, blowing smoke out of her window, watching it stream out into the cold night air. She tried to blow smoke rings and breathed out her nose, feeling like a dragon. When her parents asked to enter she closed the window and sprayed perfume in the air, and it might have almost been okay except that she left the packet of cigarettes on the bed, the SMOKING KILLS sticker staring up at the ceiling.

Their faces purpled as if they were the ones who couldn’t breathe, and they yelled with saliva flying from their mouths. It only made her stronger.

“Why are you doing this?” her father asked, shaking with rage, and she sneered in response.

“I can do what I like, old man.”

They tried to impose a curfew upon her, and God knows what they thought that would accomplish, but the more rules they gave her the more she broke. She was strong and invincible and nothing could hurt her.

As she aged, she aged gracefully. She was as slender as a whippet and her skin remained smooth. She was glossy and the epitome of class. She got a job as a secretary; spent her days typing in revealing skirt-suits, and spent her nights on the town. Dancing her way through her 20s, she worked hard and played harder. Smoking led to other things, and she would spend every weekend not sure where she was, and waking up in different cities, before going back to work on Monday. When she went to dinner she would blow smoke from pouty lips, and she was beautiful and dangerous. Smoking gave anyone class.

Now she smoked just because she could, and it kept her sane. When the stress of having an affair with her boss threatened to overwhelm her, and his wife came into the office, it would help her keep calm. And when her mother died in a car accident it gave the face that people wanted to see. Where once she smoked to challenge people’s perceptions, she now did it because she needed them to think she was okay.

The worst times were when her friends started to get pregnant, their stomaches growing and stretching, and the skin on their bellies swelling and glowing. They said she couldn’t smoke around them anymore, and she accepted this, but it reminded her of the facts that she’d rather forget.

On one occasion, one of her friends with pale gold, silky hair had appraised her carefully, frowning.

“What?” she asked, and the other girl clucked her tongue and rubbed her Buddha belly. She looked too young and pretty to be pregnant.

“Don’t you ever worry that you’re killing yourself?” the friend asked.

“There are faster ways I could kill myself,” she replied, laughing and sweeping a strand of hair off her face.

“But it’s still going to kill you,” the friend stated bluntly.

There had been nothing truthful to say to that.

“I’m fine,” she assured her friend. “I’m fine.”

Slowly, she changed. Gradually, over time, and one morning she woke up and she looked old. Her skin lost its lustre and her hair wasn’t so shiny. Grooves formed between her nose and her mouth, her mouth and her jaw, and valleys grew across her forehead. Her skin lost its elasticity, and no amount of expensive cream could save it. She held cigarettes in between yellow stained fingers and teeth, and men no longer looked her way. She grew as skinny as the cigarettes she rolled at home, and her curves gave way to bonier prospects. She looked famished. The other drugs took their toll physically and mentally, and sometimes she was so sick of herself she felt she could vomit. But she always went back. A husband came to her, and then a child, both with fire-red hair. She called the daughter Ember, and she glowed with life. Eventually the husband left and all she saw of him was a cheque in the mail once a month. She started coughing up lumps of black goo, and she spat them down the bathroom sink.

The doctor looked at her and shook his head.

“You have to stop this, you know? For your daughter’s sake if not for your own.”

She was too ashamed to speak.

“There’s help you can get. Programs you can follow.”

She went home, but she never called the number he had given her. She took to smoking outside in the driveway, early in the mornings. It was cold then, and it reminded her of being a teenager and blowing smoke into the night air, imagining it was just her breath making the air steam. Ember never paled, but she started to develop a cough. Weak little breathy things that sounded like they were coming from mice.

One day, she was smoking on her doorstep, and she saw a dead crow in the middle of the road. Standing over it was its partner, sampling its love’s guts, baked in the sun like dried black worms. Love couldn’t stand in the way of hunger.

She was as skinny as a cigarette, and looked famished.

S

AN. Constructive criticism seriously appreciated. I’m not sure I really went anywhere with this, but it was mainly meant to be a portrait. Also, I really didn’t want to show smoking as being negative OR positive, but I think I was “preaching” a bit. Any ways to make it sound more neutral and objective would be appreciated.