(no subject)
the start of something
It’d been 5 years between cigarettes and the first thing Vincent did when the news came was start right back up again. Shocked and mildly amused, Vince watched the effects of the news slowly unfold around him on the walk to the corner shop.
A distant gunshot, various shouting voices in both anger and sadness, a couple (“probably strangers until a minute or so ago” Vincent thought to him self in his semi- daze) desperately and enthusiastically fucking on the side of the road, a woman in her late 40’s blankly staring ahead and shambling like a zombie, a not entirely empty coffee cup hanging from her loose fingers. More than a dozen people leaped out of their second storey windows, in front of his very eyes.
The first pang came as he walked though the corner shop’s open door and caught sight of the owner. Hands placed shakily upon the counter, breathing raggedly and staring at the place between his hands as if it held some grand truth and yet refused to give up the goods.
The same news report Vincent had watched on TV was now playing on the radio behind the counter.
“…uh ….hey…” all those years of pointless small talk and he’d never learned Mr Shopkeeper’s name.
For what seemed like a good few minutes, nothing. Mr Shopkeeper’s eyes madly running back and forth over the linoleum woodprint counter “…Oh god….my children.” Mr Shopkeeper slowly, shakily raised his head and moved his mad, glistening eyes in a vaguely Vincent-esque direction. Never actually focusing on him.
After a few seconds Vince began to squirm then finally.
“Take whatever you want….my children” and with that Mr Shopkeeper sprinted out from behind the counter knocked over several magazine racks and stumbled the rest of the way out of the shop and Vincent’s life for ever.
With only the smallest of hesitations Vince calmly walked around the edge of the counter, grabbing himself two cartons of smokes. After another brief hesitation picked up cartons three, four, five, a hand full of lighters and threw them all into a plastic shopping bag hanging on a hook with its neat little family just below the surface of the counter.
“Might as well go back large” Realising he was talking to him self, Vince gave a little coughing smirk.
Sitting down on the top step of three, and feeling the cool morning breeze across his left cheek, Vince lit up his first smoke in five years. Amid the accompanying swim-y thing his head was doing he noticed the tears had come on.
A small green weed that had worked its way through a crack in the cement held him rapt. His attention drawn away sharply as the cigarette burnt down to his fingers.
Absent mindedly swearing as he flung it away, he noticed she was looking and childishly smiling at him.
She was another regular at the corner shop that he’d noticed but never talked to let alone learnt her name and over the course of the last year had watched her wither down from an unusual but attractive looking woman into a bright chemo-eyed husk.
“I’m Melanie, what’s your name?” as she reached into the bag beside Vincent and took out a quickly lit smoke.
“Vincent… Vince”
“Well why so glum Vince? You’d think it was the end of the world or something”
It’d been 5 years between cigarettes and the first thing Vincent did when the news came was start right back up again. Shocked and mildly amused, Vince watched the effects of the news slowly unfold around him on the walk to the corner shop.
A distant gunshot, various shouting voices in both anger and sadness, a couple (“probably strangers until a minute or so ago” Vincent thought to him self in his semi- daze) desperately and enthusiastically fucking on the side of the road, a woman in her late 40’s blankly staring ahead and shambling like a zombie, a not entirely empty coffee cup hanging from her loose fingers. More than a dozen people leaped out of their second storey windows, in front of his very eyes.
The first pang came as he walked though the corner shop’s open door and caught sight of the owner. Hands placed shakily upon the counter, breathing raggedly and staring at the place between his hands as if it held some grand truth and yet refused to give up the goods.
The same news report Vincent had watched on TV was now playing on the radio behind the counter.
“…uh ….hey…” all those years of pointless small talk and he’d never learned Mr Shopkeeper’s name.
For what seemed like a good few minutes, nothing. Mr Shopkeeper’s eyes madly running back and forth over the linoleum woodprint counter “…Oh god….my children.” Mr Shopkeeper slowly, shakily raised his head and moved his mad, glistening eyes in a vaguely Vincent-esque direction. Never actually focusing on him.
After a few seconds Vince began to squirm then finally.
“Take whatever you want….my children” and with that Mr Shopkeeper sprinted out from behind the counter knocked over several magazine racks and stumbled the rest of the way out of the shop and Vincent’s life for ever.
With only the smallest of hesitations Vince calmly walked around the edge of the counter, grabbing himself two cartons of smokes. After another brief hesitation picked up cartons three, four, five, a hand full of lighters and threw them all into a plastic shopping bag hanging on a hook with its neat little family just below the surface of the counter.
“Might as well go back large” Realising he was talking to him self, Vince gave a little coughing smirk.
Sitting down on the top step of three, and feeling the cool morning breeze across his left cheek, Vince lit up his first smoke in five years. Amid the accompanying swim-y thing his head was doing he noticed the tears had come on.
A small green weed that had worked its way through a crack in the cement held him rapt. His attention drawn away sharply as the cigarette burnt down to his fingers.
Absent mindedly swearing as he flung it away, he noticed she was looking and childishly smiling at him.
She was another regular at the corner shop that he’d noticed but never talked to let alone learnt her name and over the course of the last year had watched her wither down from an unusual but attractive looking woman into a bright chemo-eyed husk.
“I’m Melanie, what’s your name?” as she reached into the bag beside Vincent and took out a quickly lit smoke.
“Vincent… Vince”
“Well why so glum Vince? You’d think it was the end of the world or something”