Wreckless Abandon

When the clock hits noon,
that’s when everybody leaves their designated cubicles, pacing through to the parking lot and into their own vehicles like trained rats in a timed maze. For it is lunchtime, and the union says that if we don’t unassemble right then and there, we shall surely perish of starvation or succomb to the massive amount of work placed in front of us. Run, rats, run. Run as far and as stealthily as you can! Run until there are no more Mc-branded-burgers out there!

Feeling a stab of hunger, I too paced the corridors – into the parking lot – and into my own vehicle. My resource of solitude. And the problem therein – Cigarettes. If taken in quantity of time, that is to say "Measuring distance by cigarette" or even the process of time measurement by cigarette. In this instance, the length of time and distance it takes to get to my destination (a sleazy convenience store) was about 3/4 of a cigarette. This makes for unprecise arrival time, and therefore allows that I must sit in my car, smoking the end half of a cigarette, and judging everyone as they walk by.

It was a drizzly day, not enough of a rain to merit flicking the wipers on, but not so little that the pitter-patter of the raindrops bothered me as Bad company’s "bad company" jangled from the radio. I parked in my usual spot, a rarely used space between the store and a chinese restaraunt. Generally the restaraunt was unused until later in the evening, but on this particular day, my unused spot happened to be adjacent to a table occupied by a young lady, probably within her 20-teens, holding her head in her hands, bowed down as if reading something very intensely.
I wasn’t particularly interested in this, that is until the lady lifted her head up to gaze out the window. Her face was stained with makeup, her eyes red from relentless attempts at wiping away tears. She wasn’t reading, she was fuckin’ crying.

I grabbed my phone from the passenger seat, and opened up a notepad app.
ARE YOU OKAY
I typed, enlargening the font to a readable size. I held my phone up in her direction. She slowly nodded, her hair falling down into her face, partially covering her eyes.

Fucking liar. Do you look ok? No. Don’t lie about it, then. If you’re not ok, say so. Shake your head. DO something about it.
I erased the memo on my phone and typed in another:
FREE HUG?
Feigning some kind of care, the only kind that I could possibly muster up at lunchtime on such a dreary shit day. I held my phone up in the same fashion. She turned, got up, and disappeared into the swell of the restaraunt.

All this emotional shit made me feel for another cigarette. I got out of my car and slammed the door. Thanks for the lung cancer, you bitch. Next time, keep your emotions on the level. Had I –
She appeared at the doorway, and it was then I got a full view of the beast. She was an easy 5’11", well built but only in the right places. She had dark baggy pants with what appeared to be zippers in odd, randomly placed intervals, and a zip up hoodie that was fraying in the weak spots, covering her black satin tank top underneath.
Great. It’s some slimy goth wanna-be. My thoughts raced to covering her in gasoline and then flicking a cigarette at her just to watch her dance.

She didn’t say a word. She wrapped her chubby arms around me in the same way I’ve seen thousands of people embrace. I just stood there, taken aback, unsure of whether to bludgeon it off or accept the warmth and ease the tension. I took a long slow drag off my cigarette –
"So what the fuck is wrong, anyways?" I asked, perhaps a little abruptly, as she shrank away with what seemed like distaste.

She gave out a long, low sigh, and looked over me with a dead stare….but there was something in her eyes, amidst the dried on makeup stains and busted blood vessels, there was fire. I couldn’t decide if it was desire or something more, and contemplating this was broken by her:
"Everyone I know is dead. I have only myself, and I hate myself. I want to be dead, too….But I don’t want to die"

I turned away from her as a smirk escaped me. Typical underage thinking, "woe-is-me" and "the world shall suffer". It was then that I decided that this creature needs nurture, and though I am far removed from anything in this world that should nurture, I absolutely needed to know what it was in her eyes that yielded so much and yet so little.

"Get in my vehicle, dear, we’ve lots to talk about." I said in a low tone. Don’t run, little bitty, just come with me and be safe momentarily.