Cigar Smoke version 8.9 (Part I) – Working Title

I sit here staring blankly at the screen, fingers hovering above the keys, I stare so blindly, so numbly at the little white letters, the "R" starting to wear at the top, and I wonder. How did I get here? How did things become so strange? So foreign? Every step an unsure event, carefully planning where next to flee, so you don't become caught unaware. How did it all go so wrong? I look up at the clock, it stares 03:13 back at me, almost threatening me with it taunts of alarm clocks going off in just a few hours. I stub out my cigar and watch as it body crumples under my violence and it reminds me of the night a spider foretold of this all, warned me, only I didn't listen. I thought myself crazy, I mean a spider revelation?? It was only a dream right? A mere waking dream of a crazy insomniac.

It came to me on a winter night, the air frosty, and the wind loud at the windows. I was about to fall asleep when the spider dropped from the ceiling, stared into my eyes, though I got the feeling its gaze went far beyond my eyes. I froze momentarily and then jumped out of bed into the cool, damp air of my dungy basement suite deep in Brooklyn. (Since the War of Ages, there hasn't been much of anything in New York or anywhere on the eastern seafront of North America, or what was formerly known as North America anyhow, I don't think it has much of a name now.) I turn the light on, shake my head and though the spider is gone, there is an energy like I have never felt; it is like a body was beside though no one was. I didn't know what it meant at the time, how could I? I never did quite sleep well that night. The next week, the spider was there, nagging at me, I tried to drown it in a glass of whiskey I looted from an old convenience store; it just seemed to illuminate the memories.

It was a week after the dream when I ran into a rather gypsy looking old woman, she seemed out of the stories of my youth; grey hair wrapped in a dirty blue bandana, eyes watering, voice course with age and trauma no human should ever bare. She was staring at me while I meandered through an old store once known for its famous clientele. She started following me, whispering my name over and over and over again. Startled and suddenly frightened I quickened my pace through the destroyed aisles, trying to distance myself from this seemingly psychic woman. I darted around a corner and ran straight into the woman. Frightened and confused, I faltered and she spoke "You must not ignore the message. You must heed the spider."

I snapped out of shock and managed a weak "What?"

"If you don't listen to the spider ….

 

……. To Be Continued