Echoes of Lost Boys and Cigarette Smoke

Sometimes these things just happen. So slowly that, without anyone detecting it, it sneaks up on you, ethereal in the dead of night. A pair of ghostly hands so transparent that one moment you’re oblivious to its presence and the next it’s crushing your esophagus. It’s killing you so softly that you’re barely aware of it until your last breath falls off your lips.  
 
It just happens and it's done and you’re left to wonder when the fuck did it get this bad without you noticing.  
 
The wisps of smoke coil in the stale air, choking the musty oxygen that struggles to survive. Flicking the end, burnt ashes fall onto the dusty floorboards. I bring the cigarette to my lips. My eyes absorb what’s become of my life, between these four decaying walls: cigarette butts and soiled sheets, empty alcohol bottles and used condoms littering the floor. His devilish eyes twinkling with amusement.
 
I wonder if five-year-old me would be proud.
 
I can feel the tobacco destroy my lungs, my trembling fingers finally coming to a rest. The chaotic storm that has set up address in my mind comes to a stand-still. I revel in the sliver of peace that is always too quick to pass.

“You’re awake?”
 
Another puff of smoke floats past my mouth as half-lidded eyes coast towards the door, finding the half-naked form of my worst nightmare.
 
I don’t answer. I don’t really need to, anyways, by the way the fiendish smirk curves on his face. My words are useless, as trivial as the dust dancing in the dull sunlight pouring in through the window.
 
I am nothing.
 
He throws a new pack of cigarettes in my direction and I catch them with one hand, blowing out. I know what this means. I know what this always means.
 
I wonder if I’d stop myself, less than a year ago but feeling more like a lifetime, from taking that first drag. With all their eyes stationed on me, pushing it closer to my lips, beads of sweat forming on my forehead, I wonder if I should’ve just said no. Just be the lame freak I'd always been.
 
I wonder how things would’ve turned out different.
 
He sits across the room, a limp wrist resting on his knee, the smouldering cigarette burning that familiar orange. The only sort of colour that fights against the monochrome of our lives. The mischievous grin never falters off his lips.
 
We both know what happens next. It’s a scene we’ve rehearsed time and time again, like failed actors that are clinging for some sort of rebirth. Over and over, the disgusting cycle of my life.
 
Seventeen years old and I’m still the same little bitch back then, except with more bruises and more ribs and less dignity. Less worth. Less meaning.
 
I wonder if five-year-old me would spit in my face.
 
With careful eyes, I soak up everything that is Tristan: a monster made up of broken promises and careless words and cursed brown eyes. I soak up everything that is my worst fear and my greatest defeat, my only source of life.
 
I bring the cigarette to my chapped lips, inhaling deep. Meet his gaze across the room.
 
“You think Christopher Robin ever grew up?”
 
He smirks. I shiver. Shame and smoke weigh down the surrounding air.
 
“He’s probably chocking on some fat guy’s dick crying for Winnie to come save him.”
 
Was this grown up? I wonder, am I still that lonely and broken kid, or was this being an adult? Was this just some fucked up version of “house” that kids dreamt of living one day?
 
I couldn’t say when and I couldn’t say how, but I wasn’t a kid anymore. I wasn’t the innocent and naive little boy that I had once been. I wasn’t grown up though, not yet. Just lingering in this sickening limbo with my only dying hope being the nicotine highs and his breath trickling against my neck.
 
Tristan crushes the cigarette into floorboards, crawling over to the mattress that has become my sanctuary.
 
I’m not done with my smoke yet.
 
He grabs my hand and steals it away from me, murdering it into the glass ash trays amongst it’s other dead brethren. His mouth hovers above mine, continuously smirking, staring into my dead eyes.
 
“Why, do you want to play grown ups, Noah?”
 
Before I can reply, his mouth crashes onto mine, pushing me back down onto the sheets, looming over me. As I part my lips his tongue slips passed, ravaging inside, sloppy and lust-filled. He tastes of cigarettes and regret, which only fuels the sparks of desire within me.
 
One moment I was only a simple boy who liked to watch movies and play video games, and the next I was sleeping in a stranger’s bed with cigarette smoke curling off my lips. Needing it like oxygen, dying to get my hands on my eventual suicide. Doing absolutely anything, giving absolutely everything, for a single smoke.
 
 Sometimes these things just happen.
 
When he pulls away, a string of saliva connects our lips together, and he grins. His hands begin to fumble with the buttons of my jeans, but it’s only a moment, because practice has made perfect. As his hands slip beneath the waist band of my boxers, his mouth once again smashes against mine.
 
The nicotine high mingles with my raging hormones and it’s a sick sort of bliss I’ve become addicted to.
 
As his lips migrate down my neck, my eyes find the ash tray, filled to the brim with my murdered smokes. I wonder, addiction, if that’s what it’s become. With every fuck comes the promise of another cigarette on my lips.
 
The only problem, I wonder, is which one am I addicted to?