Smoke Ring for My Halo [Open]

[Kasimir (DELETED 6478)]

He's supposed to be quitting. Nicotine has its talons in his skull, pressing right behind his eyelids, and Kas is getting old, so his doctor told him to quit. "Keep it up, and you'll get lung cancer like your father!" Jewish doctors have no tact. When Kas wakes up, some nights, his cough is a hacksaw that whets itself against his ribs. He has to lean over and hug his knees, which used to be so strong, and wait for the storm to pass. And it does, and he drinks a glass of tap water, and goes back to sleep. "Keep it up, and you'll follow your father right into the grave!" Even ten years later, his father casts a looming shadow over Kasimir's life.

He's supposed to be quitting. Instead, Kas trades in his nicotine patches for a scotch and a pack of Marlboro reds. When he was a kid, they called them cowboy killers, and it seems like death always follows him around, anyway. Even before, helping the kids on the streets, talking to parents -- birth or adoptive or foster -- trying to see eye to eye with those stuck in the grooves of life's boot, death stalked him. How many kids had died while he tried to show them a better path? All those years, and Kasimir Metzger isn't even sure there is a better path. Even with his college education, even after trodding the ground for sixty-one long years, he isn't sure if his footprints will last longer than his life. Isn't even sure if he wants them to. Even now, retired from social work and picking up the mantel his father left him as a butcher in the Jewish side of town, death sleeps curled at his feet like a hungry dog.

The cigarettes and booze don't do anything to help the cloud over his head. The smoke rises above him like a halo in the bar, a little too dimly lit, a little too dark to see all the features of who you're talking to. Not that Kas is talking. These days, he only has to talk to those who come by the shop, looking for kosher cuts of meat. No pork allowed. He loves bacon, but feels guilty for eating it on the Sabbath, despite the fact that he hasn't been to a temple in nearly three decades. His ring finger is bare save for scars and stories pressed into the wrinkles. His father turns in his grave, disappointed.

At least he has his siblings. Imre, who's been married for twenty-seven years, with three beautiful daughters. Lawyer. Look how he shines. And Elisa, who will be retiring from teaching in just a few short years, with a beautiful brood of her own. Even at fixty-four, she looks as lively as she had at twenty. Then there's Kas. Kas, the oldest. Kas, the one who refused the family business until their poor, late father died. Kas, who never married, who never had children. At least the family name can continue with Imre. Praise the Almighty for that.

Kas swallows down his scotch and motions for another. It's hard not to get into your head, when you're sixty-one and your doctor keeps warning you about lung cancer. It's hard not to look at your life and see the struggles of others, and wonder how you fit in. His parents survived the Holocaust, and moved to this beautiful city to start a new life. They pumped out three kids, expecting each to grab life by the balls and milk it for all its worth. Two succeeded. Then, there's Kasimir. The cigarette burns out, and he lights up another. With each inhale, he can feel the delicate lining of his lungs blackening, can feel the intricate areolar tissue withering away. The bartender slides his drink in front of him, and he holds it delicately in his hand, like a new father holds the head of his baby. Cradled. He sips it, and it soothes like a salve down his throat. His cigarette burns bright in the dimly lit bar.

He's supposed to be quitting. He has the patches, and the Nicorette, and his doctor won't shut up about it. Next time, Kas will tell him where to shove those patches. Next time, Kasimir Metzger will tell his doctor the truth.

He's supposed to be quitting -- but Kas has a death wish.

[Zodiac]

One of the skills that comes with one who truly embraces a profession like hers was the skill of observation. The cards gave clues as always, but so did the one seeing the knowledge the cards could provide. Hints in body language, the tone of voice, how ones eyes did-or did not-move. Did their fingers twitch? Did they sit solid as a rock or constantly change positions during the reading. The quality and timbre of their voice and how attentive they were. The cut and quality of their clothing, their hair, face, grooming. It all added up into a massive pile of clues most saw, but often ignored in the passing of day to day life.

The gypsy mystic had paused in her nightly travels and sat quietly in a darkened corner of the small bar. Her face lit gently by the tablet she was using to check on the remainder of her stops for the night. A untouched drink sat by her right hand as she tapped away. The few patrons in the place were either curious or totally indifferent to her presence. Both was fine with her. The curious would eventually come to her and speak and she would smile and hand them her business card. An invitation to come explore the past, present and future with her as their guide.

The indifferent were what they were and she could do nothing to change that.

As she finished her work on the tablet, her eyes once again focused on the older man at the bar. She had been watching him for a while now in silence. She was looking at the end results of a long life and it was painfully obvious the trip to this point in time was not all the man had hoped it would be. The way he moved suggested he had given up and was simply waiting till the reaper came to escort him to wherever people like him ended up in the afterlife. She closed her blue and violet eyes and shook her head sadly. What was his story? She was always curious when she encountered such people but not, perhaps it didn't matter. She could see the end result of it all.

His inner light was nearly gone. Mentally she compared the man to her own grandfather, who-at over 80 years of age- still had an inner light that could blind a person if they knew how to see it. Even on his deathbed, he glowed like a warm summer's day until he took his final breath. In comparison, the man at the bar held a dying ember within. Like a bit of charcoal almost to ash, a tiny blip of heat ready to blink out at any second.

What was the story? Perhaps, she really didn't want to know. It might break what was left of her heart.

Her own cigarette touched her lips. The faint taste of menthol breaking the monotony on her tongue. When one could only enjoy the taste of human blood now and forever possibly, any distraction was breath of fresh air. Her eyes left the man and swept the room as others had taught her to do. Looking for potential threats or situations before they happened, but they always returned to the sad old man at the bar drinking and smoking away.

"What happened to you?" she thought in silence.

[Mathieu LaPatite (DELETED 6490)]

"Can you spare a cigarette, old boy?"

LaPatite dropped his duffle bag at the bar next to a brazen looking bloke sipping scotch and smoking like a trooper. An old Junior Kimburgh record played softly, a thin fog of cigarette fumes stretched across the joint, listless beneath the dim lamplights; a hellhole for non-smokers. LaPatite flagged down the barmaid and ordered the cheapest whisky they had. No shame in such a request, money was scarce for Mathieu. Taking off his haggard baseball cap LaPatite caught eye of himself in the bar; his face looked worn like he hadn't slept in months and his scraggly beard shone beneath the ill light revealing fiery hints of copper and red. He slicked his hair back and slipped two dollars across the bar towards the old gent.

"C'mon man, maybe I'll even buy next round, so long as you don't mind drinking the **** I'm gettin'."

LaPatite held the glass up to reveal particles dancing around inside the rusty paint stripper he was about to knock back.

"Here's to new beginnings."

[Kasimir (DELETED 6478)]

Kas has a lot of cigarettes. He has half a pack, and he doesn't need to smoke the whole damn thing, because he can hear his doctor chirping away in his ear. Lung cancer, heart attack, varicose veins. He already has the last one, and his cough keeps him up at night, so he's probably going to get the first one. As for the heart attack? His ******** of a heart thumps away as strongly as the day he came screaming into this world.

The smoke hangs heavy around him. It feels like a sheath from eyes, but that can't be true, because he can feel a gaze on him from across the room. When Kasimir looks up, he sees a woman peering at him, and there's pity in her eyes, and he thinks he hates her for that. Pity for an old man. He's sixty-one, not dead, and his eyes have never wavered. When he was little, he thought about being a pilot, but was called instead to the streets like some manic preacher. Teach the children, hold their hands. They have no one else. The children break his heart, which is why he retired. Every night, when he came home, he thought of the hordes of children out there, without families. Thought of how ungrateful he was for his own. His father haunts him like a ghost, and his siblings cast a shadow on their older brother. Kas wants to appreciate them, because he's seen the look of longing in an orphan's eyes, but he can't.

He's ever the hypocrite.

Someone sits beside him. Younger, but most of them all, especially in this part of town. Seems like the streets are filled with people who are lifetimes younger than him, who will live forever and never see a wrinkle. He's sure that they've seen hardship, but somehow it isn't written on the lines of their hands, like it is for him. Hardship. He's in his head again, circling around his own thoughts like a starved vulture, letting the storm clouds settle around his temples. It's not like him. Wasn't like him, before recently. He used to live for life's sake. Used to breathe in the park air and feel one with nature. He likes people, introverted though he is, but now it seems like a burden. A pack on his spine that weighs him down. The boy -- not a boy, a man -- sits beside him, asks for a cigarette, offers to share his drink. Kas is finishing with his scotch, and he wants more, because alcohol lights a flame in him that he often thinks is stamped out, so he agrees.

"I have enough to share," he says, and slides the pack between them. He lights up another for himself, and sets the bic parallel to the pack. The girl across the bar looks at him as if she can see right through him, and he shivers. It's warm in the bar, thick with the smell of people and smoke and sweat. "I'll drink whatever's in front of my face, though my doc won't be glad to hear it." Kasimir Metzger is old, but he looks good for his age, with a head of grey hair and a beard that he has to tie in a net while he cuts meet. His hands are large and wrinkled, but they do not tremble. His clothing is precisely picked, though a few years old, and when he glances up at the stranger, his green eyes, the kind of unassuming green that people rarely noticed, were bright.

They get their drinks, and Kas holds it up for the toast, and laughs, even, when he knocks it back. It's terrible. Really, really terrible ****, but it gets the job down. It doesn't soothe down his throat like scotch does. It burns like Hellfire, and he can smell it in his nose, burning his nose hairs. When he sets the glass back down, he has to clear his throat of a cough, and he rubs his hand along his beard. "You're right," he agrees, after taking a drag of his cigarette. "That is ****."

[Zodiac]

She finally catches his eye. For a brief moment they lock before her turns back to his drinking. He was resenting her 'intrusion' so to speak. She saw it in his eyes. It was not something simple like 'What the **** are you looking at?' she usually got but he did not have the 'I wanna punch the gypsy girl in the face. I don't care if she is a girl!' glare others did at times.

Did she disturb people so much? She imagined so. Her silence some found unnerving and adding to it how she could stare without blinking far longer than a normal person could she could see how some would react. It was traits she had incorporated into her 'act' for the customers she attracted. When one basically told fortunes for a living, presentation and quality walked hand in hand. Dressing and acting the part was one thing, but to able to weave an air of unnerving as your eyes appeared to look at and through, to the depths of one's soul and out the other side to see how well your hair was groomed from behind was a cure and blessing all in one. Her pale, alabaster skin made the dark make up she surrounded her eyes with stood out and in turn lifted her eyes to a point most could not help but look into them.

She saw another join him now at the bar. A younger man. Automatically she was picking up clues from him as well. His demeanor suggested he had seen some experiences and had learned to roll with the situations sometimes. A scrapper? Possibly. Perhaps this is what the older man needs this evening. Who knows? Perhaps she was seeing two points in a life in play here. Where one began and where one was ending. It was a harmless mental game she played within herself. When one was born unable to speak, your other senses picked up the slack. She learned as a child to watch and listen far closer than others did. The need to speak, that so many others exercised to the point of insanity, was out of the equation for her so she could focus on the other clues so many missed when locked into the talking game.

The older man looked her way again. She was right. She was beginning to disturb him. "Bad girl, bad girl." she chided herself. She gave them both a final glance then looked back down at her tablet as she pretended to take another drink from her glass. Sleight of hand was her friend as she quickly poured some of it into trash can behind her. Some waiters and waitresses were actually sharp enough to notice details such as how full the glass was when they made their rounds. The woman that came to her table was one of those.

"Need a fresh one, sweetie?" she asked with a smile. The girl nodded her thanks and sat the nearly empty glass and a five on her tray. As the waitress moved to get her order, she absently brought up a game on her tablet and began to move the little yellow people around.

'Minions!' she smiled for a moment. She was just starting to feel more energetic so she would stay for a while yet. Every so often she would glance up at the pair again, just to continue her mental game of observations yet not enough to begin fraying on any nerves. She imagined the old man could still pack one hellava nasty punch if he felt inclined. Yes, she could still annoy people that badly it seemed, but tonight was a not a night to see if she could still manage it.

[Geist (DELETED 6525)]

He's smoking, when he walks into the bar. In the past two days, he's walked into lots of those -- bars. He's walked in, sat down, ordered four shots, then -- with intent -- taken the entire lineup like some sort of budding alcoholic. After, without the slightest indication that he had ingested alcohol, at all, after a short incubation period, he's had to run to the bathroom to puke.

Indication, here, meaning any symptoms of being drunk, such as: euphoria, slurred speech, euphoria, poor coordination, euphoria, memory loss (euphoria).

Puke, here, meaning, well... puke.

There aren't even digestive fluids in the puke. It's just whatever he's tried to keep down. Three hours ago, it was a mayonnaise and fried egg sandwich. Two hours and thirty minutes ago, it was him, in his wife beater, leaned over his commode, hurling up butter yellow bread, egg, and mayonnaise. It looked the exact same in the toilet as it did, when he was chewing it.

A list of things that don't make Marcel Geist vomit looks like this:

o1. Cigarettes.
o2. Blood.

He's inclined to believe that it's some sort of infectious disease, thinks maybe that's what the quarantine is up for, and some of the rotten disease has crept out and made a rotten home in his filthy, rotten lungs. In his mind, the disease (airborne, obviously) goes from his lungs to his brain, and from his brain, it triggers an intense urge to do something he's never had any inkling of a desire to do, before, not even in those strange, experimental college days, when girls would say things like, 'Slap me,' in the sack. More on that urge in four paragraphs, in nine sentences, after we've discussed Marcel Geist's intense urge to smoke cigarette after cigarette, like some sort of one-man factory, polluting the air around him.

He's been smoking the same way Kasimir's been smoking, except he doesn't have a doctor to tell him (or anybody to tell him, for that matter) that he's going to die, if he keeps it up. Nobody is there to urge him to better his health. For all intents and purposes, Marcel Geist is alone.

If somebody did tell him he should stop smoking, he'd probably give it a good five seconds, before telling them to **** off.

Not that death is on his list of things to worry about, at the moment.

His list goes something like this:

o1. I'd really like a drink.
o2. I can't drink.
o3. I'm overwhelmed with the insatiable urge to drink people's blood.
o4. My neighbor asked me if I'd seen her cat. I told her I hadn't, which was a lie.

You can see how this may cause certain levels of angst in a man, maybe even levels of depersonalization. (He'd spent exactly one hour and twelve minutes in his shower, in the cold water, trying to get himself to wake up from whatever nightmare film-dream was rolling on around him.)

Maybe he hasn't been smoking exactly the same way Kasimir has. His is more desperate, needy, sucking, inhaling, trying to liven up his lungs, or give himself some sort of stimulation to keep his hands and mouth busy, so he doesn't end up stuffing a dead cat in the garbage bin, at dusk, while waving to the jogging neighbor couple and smiling like everything is all right.

Everything is not all right.

The point is this: He's smoking. He's smoking his guilt, after he gets rid of Ms. Robinson's cat (not like she doesn't have fourteen other cats to more than make up for one shitting furball gone astray). He's smoking his hunger, when he walks down the avenue and everybody's cumulative pulse is hammering through his lightweight jacket, slapping his skin. He's smoking for his sanity, when he weaves through people, and he's smoking with intent. He's inhaling his cigarettes one after the other, hoping maybe the nicotine will do something for him.

Between you and I? It won't.

He keeps smoking as he sits beside Kasimir, who looks like his parents probably think God looks. When that cigarette runs out, he lights up another, then holds his hand out to order his obligatory four shots, which he lines up neatly on the bar and stares at, like this is some sort of bare-knuckled fight to the absolute finish.

After he stubs out his cigarette, he cracks his knuckles, then glances at the man next to him, "Do you know anything about infectious diseases?"

[Kasimir (DELETED 6478)]

Kasimir Metzger knows a thing or two about infectious diseases.

The thing about diseases is that all of them, no matter their actual virility, are infectious. It doesn't matter if they transfer to person to person, or cow to person, or don't transfer at all. People are funny like that. You start telling them that a disease exists, even if they can't get it, and everyone has it, all of a sudden. Like Ebola. Everyone in America has Ebola, now, despite the fact that only three or four people actually have Ebola, and it doesn't matter what the CDC says -- there's a plague. It's in the mind. It spreads there, and latches in, the virus, and then you're never going to get it out again.

Ideas are like infectious diseases.

They spread, insidious. They get in your brain, and you can pass them on to others just by talking. Airborne disease. All it takes is a whisper. Then the whispers rise, a crescendo. Then that crescendo crashes over you, and you're burning in a shower, and they're picking the gold from your skull.

Kas downs the rest of his drink, because the other boy went quiet, and the new boy is asking him about infectious diseases. "I know the types that have to do with animals," he says, because he's a butcher, and he needs to know these things. The shitty alcohol doesn't go down right, so he orders what he had before, because it was smoother, and mixes better with his cigarettes. He lights up another, then finally glances over, at the new kid. He's about the same age as the other, but he's lining up four glasses of liquor, looking at them like they killed his mother, or he's about to kill theirs.

"What are you gonna do with all those glasses?" he asks, but he assumes he knows the answer: drink them. Kas just isn't sure why the boy lines them up like a firing squad, pistol poised and ready. He wants to warn: if you drink them that fast, you'll throw up. Wants to warn: you can get alcohol poisining, like that. But, he's drinking his own, and it's his third or fourth, and his doctor says everyone dies ("But that doesn't mean you shouldn't at least try to prolong it, Mr. Metzger!"), so it doesn't matter, anyway, in the end.

The girl across the bar isn't looking at him now, which is good, because she doesn't say a word and just stares, and Kas has had enough stares for one lifetime, or two. She's looking at some piece of technology, probably a phone, and so the Jew lets his gaze stop, squarely, on those four glasses ready to die. "Do you have an infectious disease?" Maybe, if he does, he'll give it to Kas. "Is it deadly?"

[Zodiac]

Her eyes focused on the silly little game, but her ears were elsewhere. Nature had been most kind to her with her hearing, as if the Goddess was apologizing for the cruel trick that had been done to the voice she'd would never have. She sat there like a small spy satellite picking up bits of conversations around her. Her hearing had been good before, but since being turned she heard far more than words. To her left a pair of heartbeats. One excited, the other strangely calm. A quick glace filled in the details. The man was all smiles with his date. His elevated heartbeat suggested he felt he was getting lucky tonight, but the woman was calm despite her outward appearance. A game was being played there and though the smiling man did not know it, she was in control of it. Odds are he would find himself rolled in an alley or motel somewhere. Not her problem.

Another rapid heartbeat with a soft hint of teeth grinding. A glance to her right saw a man glaring at his cell phone, clearly agitated. His entire demeanor suggested he would be up and out the door quite soon to deal with whatever the text message he was reading had informed him of. Odd were a cheating spouse / girl/boy friend or money was the root of it. She was tempted to reach out with her mind and see what the message said, but again- not her problem. A bit beyond him, the cooing seduction game was being played between another couple. Judging by the hearts the male was laying it on thicker than anything and the woman was eating up like a cup cake. Bon appetite.

Now another man had joined the older gentleman. It was the movement and not any sound that caught her attentions. She focused and only heard the old man's heart. Conclusion- the newcomer was like her. Vampire. A young one by the looks of it. He had the look of someone not 100% with the program yet and a sliver of sympathy encouraged her to take another quick peek.

"Do you know anything about infectious diseases?"

An eyebrow raised as she managed to move the Minion to his goal for the level. This one was in major denial apparently. Granted, being the way they were could be considered a disease that was spread by them to the living. What did he think he had? West Nile Virus?

"Do you have an infectious disease? Is it deadly?"

She focused on his voice again as she caught it over the noise of the bar. A good voice. It was pleasing to her ears. She could also hear the cracks that said he had indulged his smoking habit beyond the lines. She also caught the eagerness in his tone. She shook her head a bit. She was right, his light was going out. Catch a dangerous disease? There was far quicker ways to finish the job than slow lingering diseases.

Zodiac looked up and froze at what she saw. She was staring but could not help it. The young vampire was sitting with four shot glasses full of whiskey by the smell of it (her nose was as sharp as her ears) and contemplating them. She knew that look. She had it herself when she was alive and she could indulge. So many of her kind talked about the benefits of being vampire but few considered the minuses. For her, over four years of forced sobriety with nothing to help calm her own inner demons made her wonder sometimes how sane she truly was anymore. Inwardly she cringed because she knew what was going to happen as soon as Vamp Jr began to pound them down.

"Maybe the spectacle will give the old man something to laugh about." she thought to herself as she reached a bonus round in her game.