Cigarette Butt: Two Years (Part I)

Cigarette Butt: Two Years (Part I)

He sat there in his bed staring at the clock hanging on the wall. The wall looked more like a playground for spiders who had done a fine job of giving it a dirty three dimensional texture. The paint on the wall had grown pale yellow and was growing paler day by day. And so had the light of the bulb peeking out of the wall. May be a problem of low voltage or maybe again an effort of spiders. As he smoked the last puff of the cigarette between his fingers, he threw the cigarette butt in a corner of the room, The cigarette butt flaunted its last glow to the other old ones lying there and joined the mourning in a few minutes.
All this while, he kept staring at the clock, as if he was waiting for it to slow down. And turn it to clock back into the time. Back into that moment when he was sitting in that nice wooden chair about to get scratched. Placed over the floor tiles surrounded by lots of plants arranged in no particular pattern with one flower pot about to break. Just to leave enough space for a table of two about to get marooned. The ambiance filled with the smell of the evening just turning dark. The air filled with sweet romantic music starting to grow blue. And he sat there, with a glass of iced tea with last sip of tea sitting it its bottom, ready to depart, forever. He wasn't speaking, perhaps too choked or perhaps at a loss of words. He sipped the last drops of tea and said,

"So its all over".

She didn't say anything. She looked sad. He had never liked to see her sad. It unsettled him. And this time it was all the more unbearable.

"Well... Lets go then".

Unsettled as he was, he stood up abruptly, the chair fell back in a jerk to the corner of the floor with the sharp edge of a flower pot kissing it hard, or perhaps hitting it hard and leaving a scar on the backrest of the chair. What the agonized chair failed to see was that even the flower pot broke.

"Ya its late". She finally spoke in a low voice.

He looked at the clock hanging on the nice bright wall of the cafe, lit bright by the artificial lights all over the pale wall paint.

"Ya... its too late".

He wanted the clock to run fast. Fast enough to cross two years. Someone told him people have a memory of two years. It was about stock market scams. But maybe it applies everywhere. The clock should run fast. Fast into the time when it would be two years from this moment. He would forget it all by then. He would be happy then.

Or perhaps, he would be looking at another clock hanging on a pale wall which would look more like a playground of spiders. Perhaps...

The time ran at its own pace. So what if he hadn't removed any spider web from his wall for last two years. So what if he hadn't removed a single butt from the corner of the room since that day. He smoked his first cigarette that day.

"When would you realize that you can't stop time by stopping to live"? It was not new for Neeraj to say these words to him. And it wasn't new for him to ignore it completely and keep staring at the clock.

"I am going out with others. We are going to Purple Haze. Why don't you join us. Spend time with us. It will help you stay normal... Are you listening to me? Don't waste your life goddammit".

He heard a slam of the door and few distant voices.

Forget him, he is like one of those cigarette butts of his. He has lost the light and purpose.

Cigarette Butt? He looked towards the corner of the room. Yes all of them were static, mourning and dull. All of them.

All of them. Its not one, there are many. The world is full of cigarette butts. Who have lost the light of their life and are thrown away in corner of a room. To stay there static. Till the time they wear down into dust and fly off.

Cigarette Butt?

He stood up and dragged himself towards the cupboard. He opened the cupboard and looked at the new red striped shirt. New?

Manager is angry, who broke the flower pot? Sir it was a guy in a red striped shirt.

He took out the black shirt hanging next to the red striped shirt. On the way to bathroom, he looked at himself in the old mirror. He needed a shave. He needed to take a shower.

Half an hour later he walked out of the door, locked it and kick started his motorbike. Perhaps he avoided the self start deliberately. The cigarette butt was ready to try a new life.

Cigarette Butt?

It takes two years to erase memory.

He murmured something.

"I am not a Cigarette Butt. I am like a stock in the stock market. Scams last only for two years in memory".

Far behind he left the room in his flat. Where the same clock clocked 7:00pm.

Its been exactly two years.