A Memory Dressed in Smoke

A Memory Dressed in Smoke

By: The Wayward Resonant

It was raining outside again. Had been for at least the last forty nights. I stopped counting after the first half dozen.

The kind of rain that doesn’t fall.

Just sits in the air.

Suspended.

Waiting.

Like the world was holding its breath and didn’t remember how to let go.

I was leaning back in the chair—old leather, broken in like a bad habit. Feet up on the desk. Cigar burning slow between two fingers. A sweating glass of ignored whiskey sitting on a coaster that had seen better days.

The old radio’s low melody barely bled through the volume—a gravel-throated saxophone crawling its way through some forgotten blues.

The smoke curled upward in ribbons, rising toward the ceiling fan that spun just slow and lazy enough to prove it still remembered how.

There are no clocks in the room. Not anymore. Time doesn’t keep appointments at the end.

Nothing to count down—or to. Just the sound of rain tapping glass that forgot it was supposed to shatter.

The ashtray was full.

It always is, when she’s close.

That’s when I heard it.

The sharp click of heels in the outer hallway. Slow. Deliberate.

Like punctuation at the end of a prayer.

Her shadow spilled across the frosted glass of the office door—soft, familiar, wrong in all the old ways.

I pulled my feet down from the desk, took a long swallow from the glass, felt its bite on the way down, and waited.

⸻

The door creaked open with a chime from a bell I’d forgotten was there. I didn’t need to turn when it opened.

Entropy, draped in scarlet, came in like she always had—without sound, without warning, without asking.

A memory dressed in smoke. Red dress painted across pale skin like a vow you don’t say out loud. That fire-bright hair, darker now from the rain, clung to her shoulders and back. She moved with the grace of something inevitable—like gravity deciding it’s time.

She didn’t speak right away. Just stood there. A moment. Soaked. Still. Watching me like the memory of a man she used to know.

“Robe or coat, you never change.” she said with a flirtatious smile that didn’t reach the eyes.

I exhaled smoke. Didn’t look at her “Neither do you.”

Her heels clicked once on the floor. Then again—slower, deliberate. Taunting. She walked toward the desk like she was approaching a grave.

Maybe she was.

“Still working the old cases, detective?”

I leaned forward. Planted my elbows on the desk like I was bracing for the truth.

“Yeah. Something like that.”

She stepped closer, fingers drifting over the surface of the desk until they found it—the scar.

A reminder.

That long, shallow groove in the wood we never could pretend away. “I still remember when we first marked this,” she said.

“Hard to forget,” I said between the next draw from my cigar. “We didn’t know what we were doing that night.”

Her smile flickered and died just shy of her eyes. She traced the line like it still ached. “Thought we were just a pair of rueful children playing at gods. Turned out we were writing the first extinction.”

I finally looked at her.

She was stunning. And terrible. And real in a way nothing else had been for a long, long time.

She leaned against the desk, arms crossed beneath her chest, one leg slipping free from the high cut of her dress like she’d been rehearsing this scene for eons.

“You’ve been hiding away in here for a long time,” she said.

I nodded. “Longer than most.”

She tilted her head. A question, amusement. A tender understanding.

“I was hoping you’d forget me.”

Her lips twitched, just slightly. “You made me to remember.”

⸻

The smoke hung between us. “You were supposed to keep things from falling apart,” I said, with more accusation than I intended.

“I did,” she said quietly. “For longer than you deserved.”

The fan above us stuttered once. Slowed. The rain outside changed—heavier now, falling.

“And now?”

Scarlet’s eyes didn’t leave mine. She stepped in a little closer. Close enough for the warmth of her to push against the cold I’d worn like armor for eternity.

She perched on the desk like the ghost of a promise she knew I’d never keep. The space between us thickened.

Not with heat.

Not with want.

But with recognition.

“Now, there’s nothing left to hold together.”

The words landed like they always had—soft, slow, and sharp.

I rubbed the stubble over my chin, more out of mournful habit than anything else. “I didn’t mean for it to be like this,” I said.

“You never do.” Her tone was soft. Not cruel—just tired. Like she was folding a page she’d already read too many times. “But that’s not the same thing as regret. She leaned in. Her breath touched mine but didn’t cross the line.

Her lips hovered just above.

And then—

A fingertip, pale and impossibly delicate, resting gently against my mouth. A palm, pressed against my chest. Her touch, warm like something remembered only in dreams.

“I was trying to make it better.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt them.”

“I know that too.”

I looked at her. Really looked. She wasn’t angry. She was mourning. She always had been.

“I was trying to fix them,” I said. “I thought if I could just—”

“Make them perfect?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You drowned half the world to cleanse it,” she said softly. “You burned cities in the name of mercy.”

“They were broken.”

“So were you.”

⸻

We were both quiet again.

The rain softened.

The fan stopped spinning.

And the city outside sighed like it had just let go of something ancient.

She reached out, brushing the edge of my coat in a gesture of compassion and empathy. Not to touch me. Just to be near “I wasn’t made to destroy you,” she said softly.

Then, after a baited pause: “You created me. To catch you when you finally fell apart.”

I closed my eyes. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”

“You did,” she whispered. “That’s why I’m here.”

Her lips brushed mine.

Soft.

Cold.

Kind.

And in that moment, I felt it—The masks peeling away. The creator. The destroyer. The frightened god in love with the silence he built.

I kissed her back.

Slow.

Final.

And the world came undone.

The radio sputtered.

The light went out.

And we stayed there, entwined in the hush that followed—until the last memory of her presence faded away.

Not with a bang.

Not a blaze.

Just the stillness of a god finally understanding why he built the end to look like a woman.