The Smoker (Pt. 1)

He’s really starting to get to me now. Four times he has appeared to me, and four times I’ve been left struck. He just stands there, with his fag in his mouth, grinning.

It happened first three weeks ago; I remember the moon was at its fullest and illuminated my room through the prism of my bare, curtainless window. For reasons I do not know, and wish I could explain, I found the exact shade of grey-silver light irresistible, and found myself almost floating out of bed, towards the window.

Looking out at the vast, grey sky, I found myself surprised at how dull the full moon looked, as wispy grey clouds wafted over it. Looking back now, I believe with my full heart that the magical light was not created by the moon, but the figure that I saw dimly lit by it.

Behind the two storey flats is a stone wall five feet high, encompassing the greenery below. Opposite the wall is a number of fences that guard the gardens of houses in a small housing estate. Between these two boundaries is a lane; a long lane of dark blue tarmac that stretches from my flat and winds towards and along the river for about a mile.

Stood - almost rooted - in this lane, no more than forty yards from my tired eyes, was a man, perhaps maybe a figure, squat and dark. He was surrounded in shadow but lit by the lunar light, giving him a greyish, foggy quality. Faint colours mixed around him and changed with every glance; sometimes reflecting the deep dark blue of the tarmac beneath his feet, sometimes incorporating (or emanating?) the moody indigo hue of a neighbour’s vibrant garden forget-me-nots, trembling in the breeze; sometimes the earthy brown and life-giving green of the nearby grassy soil or alder leaves mixed with him, giving him a mossy sheen or slime in the autumn mist.

I stood there, utterly transfixed with fear and anxiety, for a time that could not be judged by humanity’s precious attempts to gauge time: a brief eternity. The wisps of cloud thinned, and the increased illumination of the moon revealed a cracked, craggy, round face, weighed down by a strange nautical type of hat I’d never seen before – part top hat, part sailors’ hat. He stood thirty yards away, but I could make out a thick, oily, brown liquid leaking from the interior of the hat down the side of his face, revolting me. He wore a long, black mackintosh that reached down to his thick black boots, boots that seemed to almost sink into the pavement.

Somehow, perhaps by his design, I had moved from the safety of my room and out onto the balcony. I noticed immediately that there were no sounds, however slight, of the wind, or birds that regularly chirped even in the small hours. I felt that I was not awake, but in a vivid dream. I never know I’m dreaming, so I knew this was real, but not too real. The smells were slightly off, the colours were slightly off, the feeling of the balcony banister against my hand was slightly off. It is as if I had entered a different place but stayed where I was, or he had brought me here.

Then I realised, why? Why did this man, or thing, arrive here, stand there, and stare at me, with blurry eyes. As if answering my self-question, the figure’s face contorted in a bright, yellow-toothed grin, rummaged in a pocket and brought out a dark red cigarillo case. He flicked it open in his hand and inside were a dozen fags, led solemnly in their satin lined coffin, ready for cremation. He took a fag and put it in his mouth, returned the case, rummaged in the same pocket and revealed a dark red zippo lighter that dropped out of his baggy sleeve which landed delicately in his calloused hand. As though it was a part of him, the mackintosh man flicked open the zippo – embossed in white with the logo of a swan – and lit the object clamped between his chewed lips.

Suddenly, he gave an enormous drag of the cigarette, reducing to a beige stub in seconds; his cheeks inflated simultaneously. With a flutter of the lips, as though playing a magical woodwind, the pale cigarette smoke seeped out of the mouth. The gas like smoke looked lost for a moment, floating in front of the figure’s face in a gentle swirling motion, before slowly floating towards me. The cancerous vapor made me cough involuntarily, which seemed to offend the figure and the smoke. Suddenly, I noticed that parts of the swirling grey were flitting off from the main form, and as they did so they were themselves forming peculiar shapes.

Words. They were forming words.

I watched this painstaking process for an age, before the smokey sentence completed itself. To my horror, the words spelled out this:

If I were you, I’d be shit scared, boyo…