I’m Livin’ For Givin’ The Devil His Due
art by Joana Solá
Kathleen smoked cigarettes to where white paper met tan filter. Each coffin nail would be held between the first two fingers of her right hand, never with her thumb. Sometimes she liked to pull apart the filter. She’d run her fingers through the fuzzy white stuff that trapped nothing from her lungs. She didn’t care. Her teeth were an ochre not natural to dentistry. Her lungs wheezed like a leaky concertina and burn holes dotted her clothing like a blackened lace doily.
This last pack of butts was to honor death’s deliverance from awful boyfriends. Ciggy number one was for Gerry who had two other girlfriends in two different towns, one with a baby on the way. Little Gerry would be spitting and shitting his way through life like his lying papa.
Cancer stick number two was for Paul who badgered her to move in with him. The apartment they settled on had a rhododendron flower in the front garden. A few weeks before move-in, he began to treat her like garbage and made her believe she deserved it. He worried she wasn’t right for him. She signed the lease. At exactly 9:20 p.m. the night before move-out, brown boxes surrounding her like the Moais of Easter Island. He couldn’t, he shouldn’t, and we won’t. That cigarette she smoked past the stubby filter like the lost dollars to first, last and security. She’d had nowhere to go and no money to do it with. After that, Kathleen exhausted all neighboring couches where no one wanted her to smoke. She instead stretched out in the back seat of her beloved green Impala because at least she could smoke in her own damned car.
The last puff was for Jeb, whom she had loved completely, effortlessly. He sucked that up by the bucketload. The family even insisted she join them for their holiday portrait. She huffed two butts for taking him to Vermont for his birthday. His eyes stayed hidden, and no nothing was wrong, stop asking me woman! She lit a third cigarette from the second for the stupid question that never should have to be asked, “How come you haven’t said that you love me?”
Kathleen dragged a little too deeply on the last cigarette. Coughing brought up stuff that shouldn’t be outside of the body. The Devil would soon get his due. Jealousy and failure were the ashy end of this last cigarette. Kathleen was ready for hell, to personally backhand the Devil. He’d get his due when she punched the lights out of Mr. Spike-Tailed-Horny-Head. He’d pay for the hell she put herself through with Jeb’s answer. The alarm in her chest clenched nice and tight as Kathleen fell to her knees, choking for breath, lighting one more to crush the pack.
