Even as I write this, I’m sure that I’m not going to finish this post in 24 minutes, and that writing this will take far longer than that. I’m supposed to start teaching in 23 minutes and so rather than search for an idea that’s original, I decided to do another reddit writing prompt, which will be seen at the end of the piece, so as to not spoil the plot.
_________________
Sapphire looked at him with a critical eye as he pulled the cigarette up to his mouth and took in a long heave. He returned her glance with a smirk.
“You’re not gonna tell me that this is going to kill me now, right?”
Her eyes narrowed. Then with a lunge, she took the fag out from his between his fingers, examining it, then bringing it to her mouth.
“Hey!” Marky said with a protest. “Just because –“
She huffed from the rolled up paper until the length of it burned ashen and disintegrated in the wind. Removing it, she let out a cough from the exertion.
“Dumbass.” she said.
The two looked at the ground. It was all dirt, speckled with the occasional white pebble. Sapphire reached out with her hand and clung onto the chain-link fence they were loitering beside and she gave it a little rattle, the sound echoing slightly as traveled away from the epicenter of the ripple.
As they looked away from each other, they both ended up looking at the land beyond the fence, a long, brown plain of dirt, covered by wide canvas of dirty grey sky.
“What a depressing sight” Sapphire murmured.
Marky shrugged.
“It’s usually more blue. Today’s not even that bad and it’s better than being cooped up in a room all day in any case.”
Sapphire turned to him but he didn’t look at her. She hugged him from the side, her left arm looping around his neck, her right meeting it from his waist. She held on tightly while Marky continued to talk into the air.
“You were always complaining about being bored and cooped up, right? That you never had anything to do.”
There were little diamond sparkles in her eyes as she withdrew from his shoulder.
“I lied, Marky. I was lying. I always had things to do, people were always looking for me. I just…” Sapphire broke off and looked down. She watered the dirt with little droplets.
“I knew. Someone like you could never be alone. You make people gravitate towards you. Most of never know why we do, but we do.”
From out of his trouser pockets he withdrew another cigarette and a steel, dragon engraved lighter. Putting it to his mouth, he began to draw from the flame when Sapphire struck the cylinder from out of his lips. Some of her hair clung to her face as she did it.
When he tried to light another cigarette, she did the same thing. Then the same thing happened with the third attempt, and the fourth. When Marky finally reached his last cigarette, the ground all around the pair was littered with white sticks, as if it was Autumn and humans shed tar-filled cigarettes. He gazed into Sapphire’s glare, opened the lighter to reveal the flame, then closed it. He retracted the cigarette and slipped it back into his pocket.
As he was walking away, he turned around and walked backwards, holding up the lighter between four of his fingers, his little finger not in contact with the stainless steel.
“You know,” he called out, “most of the people watching really wanted this. Someone actually took it, but they gave it back to me, just for one day!”
He threw the lighter in a shimmering arc and it landed in the dirt amongst the cigarettes. “Keep it!”
When Marky was gone, Sapphire knelt down and collected each dropped roll one by one and pocketed the enamelled lighter. Back home, she smoked each cigarette gingerly, rocking back and forth in her grandmother’s rocking chair. Her man was being executed today. With every click that released the lighter’s flame, Sapphire couldn’t help but wonder with every clack that extinguished it, if she was yet to be called alone in the world.
-j. NG
So as I thought, this took 1 hour to write (exactly 1 hour). Good thing my student was working on an essay and needed to cut words, otherwise… Anywho. Writing prompt was: “Two best friends are each smoking a cigarette, knowing that when they are finished, they will never see each other again. What do they talk about?”
As usual, I took the liberty to change the subject matter a little. Word count, 610.
for the sake of flow 