By the Butt of a Cigarette

Jake had worn all black, the day it rained. He and his father stood beside the casket, lips and palms worn and chapped from all the thank yous and the handshakes of solidarity. Marry-Anne Frank lay in cushions of white-pearl surrounded by polished oak. She had picked the coffin herself, bargaining the funeral home down to the lowest price. 

Dying shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg, she had told Jake as he tried to pry her off the salesman. She then spent the next half-hour crying from laughing at her own joke while Jake and the store owner chuckled uncomfortably.

Now she lay silent, dressed in her favorite navy gown, the one she had met her husband in over thirty years ago.  

Dave Frank was a short man with a heavy potbelly which protruded past the flaps of his jacket. Thick, circular glasses hung on the tip of his beak-like nose and fogged up every time he exhaled. 

People, all blurs in his vision, gave their most heartfelt condolences. Jake nodded passively, not hearing a single one. 

A young man with thick curly orange hair shook Jake’s hand and patted him on the shoulder. Greg and Jake had been friends since middle school. Only now, standing here, Greg felt like a stranger.

If you need anything man, just say the word. Greg pulled him in for a short embrace. 

Jake’s blood ran cold. His lips twitched as he tried to smile, to say thank you like he had robotically repeated before. Something inside him, some quickening of the heart, blurred the corners of his vision. Greg’s brow furrowed with concern. Is everything alright? 

Jake gulped, his throat dry. His head felt dizzy, forcing him to take a step back. His heart pumped so desperately against his chest Jake was sure it would burst right out of it. No, he wanted to say, no I’m fine. This isn’t about me. I’m fine. 

He smelled it before he saw it.  

There was the sizzling of a cigarette. Across the room, in the back of the old church, a cigarette was being snuffed out. Jake’s eyes followed the narrow pillar of smoke as it wafted toward the fire alarms. A beaten, old dress shoe crushed the white, spotted paper, shoving it into the splintered hardwood floor. Jake’s gaze followed the shoe up, past the dark jeans and leather jacket, past the five o’clock shadow, to the face hidden by shadows, the eyes covered by sunglasses, indoors on a rainy day. Jake cocked his head, wondering if he knew the man.

The fire alarm began to roar. Jake jumped back in surprise, gasping with the rest of the crowd. When he had regained his senses and looked back to where the man had been standing, the wall was empty, and his father was urging him outside, back into the rain. 

When the funeral had ended, and the fire-department had decided it was safe, Jake went back into the church, telling his father he needed to say his final goodbyes. Alone. He walked past his mother’s casket, to the far edge of the room and bent down. Upon the ground, surrounded by ash, lay a cigarette.

At first, his friends would invite him out, try to cheer him up, but Jake had turned down the invitations. They understood. Of course. They gave him time and tried again. I’m not really up for it tonight but thank you. Of course. Take all the time you need. They gave it time and tried again. 

There was only so many times they could try again. 

 It’s not healthy, what you’re doing, Jake. Greg had said. You need to get out. Live again. Come out with us, there’s this great new pub in Soho I wanna take you to. 

The thought of going out had made Jake sick to his stomach. Jake quietly explained that he was grateful for what Greg was trying to do, really, he just... wasn’t ready, that’s all.

 When will you be ready, Jake?

 (Never.) 

 I’ll call you, I promise. When I’m ready. 

By day, Jake Frank was a twenty-four-year-old accountant who lived alone in a studio apartment and worked for a nameless bank in Brooklyn. By night, he wrote comic-books. 

The hero was a middle-aged man in a leather jacket who rode a motorcycle. He had no family and no name, only sunglasses and a five o’clock shadow. Night after night he sat by the light of his stove top, drawing the same scenes over and over again.

Ten missed calls. They weren’t missed. Greg had been calling all month. He had left messages, sent emails, texted. Jake had ignored them all, getting more and more irritated with each new ping. He tossed the cell onto his desk and set down by the kitchen table, pouring himself a bowl of Bran Flakes. There was no more milk. He used water. 

A knock pounded on the door. Jake ignored it. The knock came again. Jake ignored it. He could hear voices whispering, wondering, doubting on the other side. He knew who it was. He just wanted them to go away. He shoved a spoonful of cereal in his mouth. If he stayed silent, they might think he wasn’t home. 

Sshhhh! Greg hushed the group outside his door. 

“We know you’re home, Jake!” Greg shouted. “Open up! We’ve come to take you out!”

Jake stiffened. 

“Come on mate, it’s your birthday! Woot-woot!” Someone cheered. “Let’s go get wasted!”

Jake covered his ears with his hands, staring intently at his sketches, his face boiling red. Shutupshutupshutup. 

Greg pounded on the door with both of fists. “Getoutgetougetoutgetout!”

Jake grinded his teeth. He could hear Greg tinkering with the lock. Shoving his bowl back in frustration, Jake grabbed a sweater from the pile of clothing by the door, pulled on his boots, and came out. He was met with a hounding of cheers and slaps on the back. They chanted his name as they carried him to the elevator and shoved him in a cab. Together, they went to a club with flashing lights and blaring techno, sweaty bodies and too much dancing. Greg forced half a bottle of scotch down Jake’s throat, laughing gleefully. 

Aw man, I missed ya! Greg nuggied him drunkenly. It’s so good to have you back! He planted a slobbery kiss on Jake’s unshaven cheeks.  

This was what they had used to do, Jake observed as his friends tossed back two shoots each in one go. This used to be fun. 

Why wasn’t this fun anymore?

They piled in the Uber at two A.M. Jake’s skull was pounding as the car pulled up outside his apartment.

When he got to his flat, Jake peeled off his putrid sweater and shirt and dumped them in a pile by his door. He slipped out of his jeans and fell into bed, the music from the bar still pumping in his ears. He could hear it, rushing past him, his friends dancing past him, the world running past him as he stood, unmovable and still. 

A soft stanza of Beethoven played in his dream. Playing upon her violin was Mary-Anne, the man with the cigarette standing beside her, looking at his watch. Jake tried to come to her, but his feet were unable to move, rooted to the blackness that engulfed him. The man with the cigarette snapped his fingers and everything went black. 

Sorry kid. Seems like you ran out of time.  

Jake awoke to the screeching of the fire alarm. Rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, he stumbled into the kitchen. The light on the fire alarm flashed like the strobe lights in the club, yelling at him to dance, to drink, to be young and dumb and alive. He grabbed a hand towel from the back of a chair and began waving it at the broken device. 

“I wasn’t even cooking anything,” he muttered as he began to reach for the alarm, desperately trying to find an off button. Yet the alarm kept blaring, taunting him, laughing at him, mocking him. Growling, he twisted it off the ceiling and peered closely at the device’s back, poking and prodding, desperately trying to shut the stupid thing off. He pulled at the back panel and yanked out the batteries. 

Aha, he thought smugly. Once again, man is triumphant over beast. 

Only he wasn’t. The alarm continued to blare, to crawl into his ears like bats, scratching at his sanity. Jake’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the alarm, his body shaking, trembling with rage.

“SHUT UP!” Jake slammed the alarm against the table, pulled a frying pan from the stove top, and mercilessly began to whack at it. He pounded and pounded until the small contraption lay in pieces, wires and springs splayed out like guts and arteries on the old wooden table. Sweat dripped down his brow as he slumped to the floor. He leaned his head against the cabinet, chest heaving, eyes closed. 

Just...shut... up. 

A thin pillar of smoke rose beside him from the last embers of a cigarette. Jake plucked it from the ground and held it to eye level.

“The quiet ones always have the loudest tempers, don’t they?”

Jake looked up. Sitting in the chair, a cigarette in his long, thin lips, sat the man. He held a spring from the fire alarm between his boney fingers, studying the specimen with disinterest. Jake rubbed his temples with the heels of his palms and chuckled with disbelief. 

“It’s official then. I’ve gone mad.”

The man shrugged. “If it’s easier for you to think that.”

Jake let out a hysterical laugh. “Easier than what? Then believing you’re real?”

“I’m not real. Not really. Not in your sense of reality.”

“In what sense of reality are you real?”

“In the Realm of the Demons.”

“The Realm of the Demons?” Jake’s eyes were wide in polite disbelief. “Is it nice this time of year?”

The demon chuckled as he flicked his lighter. “You can call me Bowen. If you’d like.”

Bowen took a long drag, blowing a column of smoke up at the ceiling. As Jake watched him now, up close at his kitchen table, the demon no longer felt like the apparition he had seen at his mother’s funeral, distant, above it all. He just seemed old, burnt out, tired. 

Bowen put out the cigarette, stamping it methodically into the tabletop. “I’ve been watching you for a while now, kid.”

“That’s not creepy.”

Bowen took another smoke. “Look at your arm.”

Jake eyed him warily then obeyed. He lifted his arm and looked, really looked. At first, he saw nothing, but after he focused for a moment, he could see a light blue sheen, a sort of coating around his skin. 

“That blue shine, it’s a sort of bubble, a separation from the human realm. Whenever a human is in mourning or going through a trauma, they become separated from your world and more… susceptible, let’s say, to the Realm of the Demons.”

Jake lowered his arm. “You “Demons,” you aren’t bothered by the fact that we can suddenly see you?”

“Eh. You’ll probably wake up tomorrow and convince yourself this was all a dream.”

“But you’ll still be here?”

“I have to be. I’m your own personal demon.”

“My what?”

Bowen took another smoke. “Everyone has their own personal demons, kid, alright? Some people, like your friend with the curly hair, have Loneliness, your mom had Chaos, and you’ve got me.”

“Wow, so I really lucked out.” 

“Hey,” Bowen pointed his cigarette at Jake, “Stop that.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

Bowen rolled his eyes. “Oh little Jake, so quiet, so unobtrusive, so unwilling to cause a ruckus. Somebody had to step in, to save you from shutting yourself into oblivion.”

Jake sat up stiffly. “Thanks, but I don't need you. I can take care of myself.”

Bowen stared him dead in the eye, leaning forward. “Can you?” He slapped Jake upside the head. “Then why didn’t you tell Greg what you needed? Huh? Why did you tell him you needed space?”

Jake rubbed his head. Were dreams supposed to hurt this much? “I told him what I needed!”

“No, you said you needed time.”

Jake pushed himself off the floor and began to walk towards his bed. “That’s because I do need time.” 

Bowen appeared in front of him, leaning on the windowsill, a cigarette between his fingers. “Bullshit.”

“Get the hell out of my apartment.”

“You’ve had plenty of time, Jake. It’s been over a year.”

Jake clamped his hands over his ears. “I—I just need some space.”

“What space?” Bowen appeared before him, shaded eyes up in Jake's face. “Greg didn’t talk to you for months. You don’t even read your Facebook feed. You live in a black hole of your own making. All you do is draw that damn comic every damn night. And it isn’t even any good.”

Jake stared at the man, trying to see the eyes behind the darkened shades, to see the human in the demon. 

            But he saw no eyes, no soul, only his own reflection in the cold glass of demon’s shades. Disheveled hair and dead gray eyes. Deep down, below the ashen skin, beyond the slow beating heart, the crazy, unprompted yelling, the desperate need to be seen, to be noticed.

The demon began to drive his finger into Jake’s chest, stabbing the boy's heart with every phrase. “ You sit, alone, refusing to let yourself sleep, drawing the same pictures again and again and again. You draw that freaking comic as some pathetic cry for help. ”

Jake felt tears sting the back of his eyes. “What... what are you?”

Bowen scoffed as he took another long smoke, not speaking, simply contemplating. “I’m you, Jake. I’m that part of you you keep trying to suffocate. I’m that fire alarm in the back of your head that screams when your soul is burning, and you refuse to feel it. I’m the part of you that bangs on your ribs when your heart is breaking, and you’re pretending not to have a heart. I’m that little part of you that’s still alive, kid. And I’m bearly breathing.”

Jake’s knees felt weak as he wobbled over to his bed. Sitting down, he cupped his face in his hands, trying to silence the pounding in his head. 

Jake lifted his head trying to breath. Not too deeply. He couldn't bear to breathe too deeply. Just enough that his lungs burned, just enough that his back began to tremble. 

“ It’s not like she wanted to die.” Bowen sat down besides him. “ When your mom got up to heaven, she spent her first day telling God she’d like to speak to his manager.”

The thought of Mary-Anne shaking her fists at a heavenly court pulled a small smile from Jake’s lips. Mary-Anne’s life was a whirlwind, one surreal encounter after the other. She was mystifying to watch and impossible to hold. Always running, was Mary-Anne, running so fast she had left the world behind.  

 Jake laughed, a laugh that was dry and rough, unused and unheard for far too long. “She always said she’d like to go to hell.”

“That’s where all the interesting people are, yes, I remember the line.” Bowen sat down beside him and offered him a cigarette. Jake shook his head, refusing. They sat in companionable silence, the breeze from the window dancing against the back of their necks.

Jake laughed, running his fingers through his hair. “So, Bowen, if you’ve got me all figured out, tell me, what do I need to get through this?”

The demon took a long drag and let it out, the smoke billowing through the apartment air. In the dim light of the October moon, Bowen no longer looked like a demon. More, Jake thought, like a friend. “I think you just need time. Not time alone, but time. You don’t have to lock yourself in until you’re fixed. You need to give yourself time to be imperfect.”

“To be comfortable with my demons?” 

“So to speak.”

Jake stared out into the darkness of his apartment. “Is my comic really that bad?”

“You need to burn that thing immediately.”

Jake nodded, a small smirk upon his dry lips. 

 Here, with his demon, he felt strangely at peace. Here, with Bowen, there was no pretending that everything was alright. There was no need to dance, no need to listen, no need to run. Here, he could be still and imperfect and all at once alive. 

Bowen took a long puff. “It was good talking to you, kid.”

Jake chuckled. “You got some stuff off your chest, huh?”

“You’re joking, but watching someone self-destruct is worse than hell. I would know.”

Jake averted his gaze. He wasn’t trying to self-destruct, he was just trying to move on.

 Quietly. 

“Well,” Bowen sighed, slowly getting to his feet, “I should get going.”

“Yeah,” Jake waved absentmindedly. “I’ll see you around.”

“I truly hope not.” Bowen’s mouth drew thin, poundering for a moment. “Promise me something kid?”

“Sure, why not make a deal with a demon?”

“Satan’s on your side today pal, trust me.” 

Jake shrugged, lying back into the warmth of his bed. 

“When you wake up, get rid of that comic book. Toss it in the trash, flush it down the john, I don’t care, just get rid of the thing. You’ve gotta... you’ve gotta stop obsessing over it, you know?” 

 Jake laid down, his head thumping against the softness of his pillows. “I think I’ll be ok with that.”

“You take care of yourself, kid.”

As Bowen melted back into the shadows, Jake drifted away to the warm embrace of sleep.