Tendrils of smoke caress the dilapidated fabric of the towel draped—almost dangling—over the edge of the bunk overhead. She stares at it languorously, literally through a haze of gray, purple in the dull off-yellow light of the dull off-yellow room. The smoke snakes up & around in all directions, one string of gossamer giving chase to the other, in a race to first reach the surface of the fair maiden that is the cloth, or the rag, hanging sullenly overhead, like a mottled raincloud ghosted over with the image of a palm tree—or what’s left of it—and a beach ball, all but remnants of images scraped over with sandpaper skin over decades.
She imagines how it will smell later on; it hasn’t been aired out properly from the morning, having been taken advantage of (arguable; what could you have taken from it that it wasn’t designed to give in the first place?) & tossed over the top bunk gracelessly, crumpled. Add to the fermenting reek the smell from a “special-flavour” cigarette, & the results promise to be as mangled a stench as the towel itself.
She sighs, dismayed. Is this really what one ought to think about when in the midst of an exit from a revolting chase of the chimaera that is romance? Continue reading
Life In A Meta-Egocentric Universe 