The tv casts its dull blue light into the room around him
The dim light casts shadows like purgatory
Stretching out to unresolved eternity
He stares without seeing as shapes and colors flutter across the screen
Pale light glides, flickering around him
The cascading glow of the television plays across his face
His mouth is slack, a pocket of darkness
His skin is pale
Sallow
Sunken
He eyes stare at nothing
He sits unmoving
An ashtray adorns the table beside him
Dressed in streaks of blackened ash and shimmering light
Caked with eons of vice
Littered with crushed out cigarettes
A thin tendril of smoke whirls lazily out of it
Dying
A tumbler of watery amber stands next to a lone empty bottle
A sigh escapes him as he grabs at his chest
Finds the pocket
Finds the pack
Withdraws a cigarette
And lights it
He inhales deeply through the filter
Smog flooding his lungs
He leans his head back and stares at the ceiling as flickering shapes dance back and forth across it
As he exhales, light from the TV intermingles with the cloud as it rises
A shame filled voice escapes his throat in a croak as he addresses the fleeting shadows on the ceiling
“You have your own life to lead. It has nothing to do with me now.”
He takes another drag from his cigarette
Another
“I don’t belong in it anymore.”
Another drag
The ash on the end of the cigarette grows threateningly long as he continues to smoke
“I don’t belong anymore.”
As the cigarette smoke clings to his lungs
As the whiskey mixes with the pills in his stomach
As the man slides into the sleep of the damned.
He pictures her face
Her smiling face
One
Last
Time
$title =
Absence
;
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