Cigarettes, Crickets, Idiots
Title: Cigarettes, Crickets, Idiots
for:
sciathan_file's writing challenge #2; and here is the posting thread
a/n: I didn't know how to title this one, but anyway! This was written for
sciathan_file's writing challenge (... I think I screwed it up , becaues it turned out with more of a character focus), and it's actually the first time I've posted an original fic . I'm a little nervous, actually. I think it's nice, and then I think it sucks. @_@ Ha ha.
Gentle criticism is welcome!
He wonders that the night-noise could be considered deafening, after such a long winter. After such a long time cooped up in hospitals, though her release is not much sweeter. Tonight he can feel a warm breeze to accompany the cricket choir. It probably doesn’t make her feel better.
It seems to give her some relief, though. Only maybe that’s her cigarette. Its smoke flows up and dissipates. and her eyes stare blankly out. Like the area beyond her deck is the Great Beyond and not just her weedy, muddy backyard.
He clears his throat.
She doesn’t bother turning, or inclining her body toward him, or even shifting her eyes in his direction.
“Jordan,” he says, “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it.”
She takes another drag.
“You should really stop smoking, you know,” he adds, far more matter-of-fact and not so gently.
She continues to ignore him, except he can tell from the way her lips are pursing up and the way her eyes are sharpening, she knows he’s there and it irritates her beyond what’s reasonable.
He continues to stand in the doorway, while the light chatter of her remaining guests wafts through to where they stand.
“Close the door,” she finally says, and he obeys.
Now it’s just the crickets’ silence. A shiver rolls up and goosebumps his skin, he thinks, it’s dropped a few degrees. There’s a wetness in the air, too, the feel of moisture on his neck. “Why did you come so late?” she demands.
“You only called me yesterday,” he replies softly, but still matter-of-fact.
She scowls, although still at her neglected backyard and not at him. Somewhere in his brain, he involuntarily notes it - she won’t look him in the eye. As if the cowboy boots, the top that shows too much cleavage, the smoking, and the empty (two) beer bottles beside her weren’t enough evidence already of what he’d suspected - no, known.
“You haven’t changed a bit.”
He vaguely wonders why he even came back.
Her cigarette stays between her fingers. Kind of stiffly. Like it’s frozen there. Its smoke continues billowing up, but not another part of her moves.
“He was like my dad,” she says, but her voice isn’t hoarse or sad. “He was like a dad to you, too.” She shakes a speck of ash off her cigarette.
He unconvincingly delivers a contrite, “I know and I’m-“
“I never thought of you as a brother,” she interrupts coldly. Only he can hear the double meaning, but, come again, everything Jordan has ever done seems to have two meanings.
Had her voice gone hoarse?
“I always thought of you as a sister and more,” he replies honesty.
She doesn’t snort (surprisingly), but still looks disdainful.
“Why’re you wearing a suit?”
“I thought it was an occasion.”
“Save it for the funeral. Oh, wait, you missed it.”
“We just talked about this.”
“I want to talk about it again.”
“You know you’re just going in circles. It’s no good. You beat it over the head too many times, and it’s you who’ll end up dizzy.”
“Oh, spare me. When did you get poetic? I thought you were a businessman?”
“I am.”
“Shut the hell up.”
He doesn’t.
“Jordan, just stop. Stop it. Come inside. It’s getting cold out here.”
“He wouldn’t have liked it if I smoked inside.”
“Then don’t smoke. And, anyway, he’s dead now, isn’t he?”
“Shut up.”
“You’re being terribly irrational.”
“God, will you just shut up? Leave me alone.”
A chill-wind blows up, with impeccable timing. Her messy brown hair flies around her face, erratically, to match her near-frenzied expression. The cigarette almost blows out.Like an unhappy birthday candle.
He can feel the chill, and the goosebumps strike again with a vengeance.
“Sometimes I wonder if you even remember my name. I call you, I send you Christmas cards. You never call back. It took this to get me back into town. You finally called me, remember? Or don’t you? I guess you don’t, but I shouldn’t be surprised. You couldn’t tell whether the voicemail was directed toward me personally or was some kind of mass message you sent out to everyone. But, no, I think it was just for me, because no matter how damn irresponsible you might be, it’s only me who’d get the message too late to fly over here in time for the funeral, and it’s only you who would do it on purpose.”
He sounds terse, but more than anything he actually sounds sad. (The hypocrite, the bastard, he thinks he has the right to sound sad.)
Her lips purse up so tight and hard he thinks they’re going to go white.
Her eyes are steely.
“Go back inside,” she says, almost flippantly except that there’s anger seething underneath each syllable.
“If you want,” he replies, quietly, so he opens the door and for a second she can hear the chatter, but then it’s slammed shut and she’s cut of from all that.
There’s the crickets and the owl and the wind, but all she can hear is silence.
“Travis,” she mumbles, with some concentration. “Travis. Travis.”
The last time, it comes out sounding weird, because there’s a lump in her throat (Yes, she knows. She knows she’s crying, okay? What do you expect after everything that had happened this week… in the last five minutes…?)
She kills the cigarette by pushing it into the deck rail. It leaves an angry, destructive burn mark, but her eyes are still apathetically blank.
She throws it down into her pit of a yard without giving a second thought to being eco-friendly.
“Idiot.”
There is, as usual, more than one meaning to what she says.
More than one idiot.