Cigarettes After Sunset

Chapter 3

"She."- Samuel had said placing his elbows against the cold and dirty table of the small diner they decided to sit at after school.-"she is the girl I like."

After confessing what he never thought he would, Samuel looked around, staring at the diner's almost ripped of color walls, the dirty grounds full of footsteps of the desperate ignorant humans who walked there, not knowing what was happening after they walked out or what happened while they were in. The old man cleaning the counter, glancing at everyone, wondering what had happened with his life, the lights flickering, just like in a horror movie where the doors shut and you await for your death.

The man smiled, looking around at the small diner, full of people laughing, cherishing today, because tomorrow is not promised, the walls, with the warm colors of old age, showing how long the diner had been alive for, the old man smiling at everyone and the satisfaction on his face as he cleaned the counter he'd been cleaning for the past years and surprisingly, he had never gotten bored of it.

Same eyes, against the same constructions of skulls, yet such a different view. The abused body of a boy, trying to destroy what isn't there, pushing himself against the walls grasping for air, looking around and seeing a tiny room with little oxygen. Lost, he's lost, but where? That's what the man saw every time Samuel breathed, every second he kept existing.

"Listen Samuel, the girl you like-..."- He started to say, but Samuel cut him off, looking down at the grey, dirty tiles: "No."

The man understood, he understood and he was glad that Samuel understood too. At least, he could realize, inside the bones, flesh and blood, he could realize that who could love him if he could not love himself. So he tortured the poor soul he so much liked, pulling her hair and pressing his fingers against her delicate throat, as she struggled to breath, her throat burning and bruising from the bony fingers of his, tears running down her cheeks as she begged for forgiveness, forgiveness for Samuel's pain, even thought the cause wasn't her, it was Samuel himself.

The man tried to hold his composure, pressing his thumbs together, he declared: "Talk to her, pain is not the answer."

This is when Samuel snapped, getting up and furiously slamming his hands on the table, looking right into the piercing green eyes of the man in front of him, of the ignorant man in front of him who could not face the reality, the reality that deep, deep inside everyone wanted to escape from: "Pain, my dear sir, is the question so therefore it cannot be an answer. Pain, is something scary, pain is humans, we are pain, the cause."

There the man stood not quite understanding what Samuel meant, because humans and pain are too far different, but thinking, even life and death are too far different, yet again so close.

"We are the scariest thing in this small and delusional universe, just creatures with a brain that withholds horrors, conspiring ideas that other shall not know. Creatures made from dust, pieces of something that no longer exists, an impure structure that slowly destroys itself and the other structures around, trying to destroy what isn't there."

As Samuel was about to leave, the girl he'd been torturing steps inside and stops in front of him. Her eyes widening in horror, the desire to tear her eyes apart and not watch the monster in front of her was too big, but she knew better, she knew that Samuel was blind enough for both of them, she knew that Samuel had torn his eyes apart long ago and could no longer see the world so she spit her pity around his walls.

"Hi."- he said.