fiction snippets

She could be called self-absorbed by some–and probably even had been. The reasons for this were likely well-founded. She gave off an air of not caring what anyone had to say. In reality, this was partly true, but mostly, the way she saw it, everyone else was a little too absorbed with themselves. Babbling on as it were, about any subject under the sun, be it politics, the weather, or their own health, without a single regard as to whether anyone else wants to hear about it. In that respect, she surmised, she was less self-absorbed than most people.

If given a choice, she could probably go through life on a daily basis without ever speaking to a single soul. Even her husband, whom she loved dearly, had the annoying habit of talking too much on subjects she found mundane.

New York is the Centre of the Universe. All other dimensions and universes axis from this point.

It might seem more reasonable to think that the Centre lies in some abandoned cornfield in Nebraska, or on the snow-blown plains of Siberia, or somewhere among the dunes of the Mojave desert. But as anyone who is adept at hiding things knows, the best hiding-places are often in plain view. And so, what better place to hide the Axis upon which all universes and dimensions converge than the place in this dimension where all peoples and cultures seem to converge?

She sat upon the toilet puffing away at a cigarette. Each breath inhaled and exhaled quickened her heart. Suddenly, the red-orange embers at the tip of the lit cigarette captivated her. She found herself wondering, with no provocation other than the cigarette burning away between her manicured fingers, what it would feel like to stub it out on the creamy white flesh of her inner thigh.

For a moment, mesmerized by the ember, she even involuntarily brought the cigarette close enough to her thigh to feel its warmth.

Perhaps that was what snapped her out of her brief fantasy with the cigarette, or maybe it was a momentary recollection of a childhood instance when her father inadvertently burned her neck with his own cigarette. They played her favorite board game–CandyLand–afterwards.

In any case, she stopped, shook her head a few times, and took one last drag before dropping it between her legs into the toilet bowl.

If she had been a stronger person, that would have been the last cigarette she ever smoked. But she wasn’t a strong person. As her love might say, she only played one on TV.

Just some fictional ideas that have been running through my head. I’m still not certain if they all belong in the same piece of work, but what I am certain of is that the girl in the first passage is not the same as the girl in the second.