Short Story: GHOST SMOKE

‘It’s on the packet.’

START

I

It was dark and Lachlan lay on the forest floor, prayer hands for a pillow. He was waiting to die. He was bit.

It seemed inevitable now. Death was circling, and it was tireless. It walked, it hunted. It had a human body and attacked with the full force life once possessed. A perfect inversion.

Scared as he was, what Lachlan truly needed was a cigarette.

I’m going to die lying under a log in the forest without a cigarette.

He tried to remember his last smoke.

Nothing came. It was just some anonymous, forgotten smoke.

Lachlan had lived his whole life assuming he’d die of lung cancer. The apocalypse had robbed him of this. Truth be told, this new death coming would probably be faster and less painful, but at present, all Lachlan could latch onto was the disappointment.

He could have enjoyed smoking more, if he’d known all this.

Goddamnit.

It also meant his roommate Keith was wrong. Gloriously wrong.

Tutt-tutting Keith and his warnings.

‘I know all that dick head,’ Lachlan would say to him. ‘It’s on the packet.’

It was true. Back then, smokers were all experts on dying.

No now.

Now everyone is.

II

The dawn sun felt close. Half asleep and half awake, Lachlan looked over the log. The forest was empty. He stood, scanned around. There was a clearing in the distance, like a moat surrounding a tall broken tree stump. From behind the stump, came the image of a horse. It was an impossibly clean-looking animal.

Lachlan had not seen a horse in years. His mother had horses.

He started towards it. When it saw him, the horse stopped, but it wasn’t startled.

Lachlan moved closer.

He reached out. His hand passed through the horse’s coat like water, like a ghost’s hand.

‘You’re not real,’ he said.

The horse looked at him.

Maybe I’m not real?

Lachlan had no idea why —shock, perhaps— but he decided this horse could carry some part of himself. That it contained a message. Lachlan reached into the horse again, and put his hand around every hope and desire he held for this deceased world. He made a wish and filled the horse with all his promises.

‘Now shoo.’

The horse bolted.

When it gone, Lachlan unclenched his fist and there, on his palm, was a single white cigarette.

END

— IAIN