Daniel W. Thompson His Last
It was July so it was hot and so were his fingers. The paper grew wet against their moisture. An itchy heat, like sunburned skin aching for relief. He had rolled the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger for thirty minutes, lifting it every couple minutes to smell its musty leaves. The sweet aroma cut open his salivary glands and he wiped the corners of his mouth. The thought, no one will know, pecked on his brain. This one, he promised himself, would be the last one. Just like the one this morning after Sandy left for work. And the one last night after Sandy went to bed. One more last one, but god dammit, definitely the last one. Just then their brown lab, George, snapped through the dog door, and John dropped the cigarette onto the decking boards. It rolled into a crack and lodged half-way. The fire inside turned to ice.
He had crushed his last pack of cigarettes leaving this one literally his last, at least for the night. John curled his broad body over the stuck stick and tried prying it out with his pinky but the beefy finger was too swollen in the heat. He knew much of any movement could shift the weathered boards and swallow everything. His cigarette. His sixty-two years. Three children. A wife of almost forty years. The insurance company. Three club championships. It all hung in the balance, suspended over that dark crack. He’d have broken the bones in his hands to squeeze a finger into that crack. But thankfully he remembered the grill spatula hanging on the deck post and gently lifted the wet and dirty cigarette from the perilous edge. His hands shook so badly he had to set the cigarette on the grill counter and find his breath. His lungs