Sitting on the black ground between the trashcans and the backdoor, I patiently wait, feeling the jitters, and enjoying them. It’s not long either, I was right, the walking ashtray needs her nicotine fix, and she comes trudging out the door in under an hour.
The old door creaks open, then bangs shut as she steps outside. She already smells like the diner’s food, greasy and fatty, and her uniform has splatters of food on the white aproned front. Her name tag, and the lighter in her hand glimmer in the little bit of light, but it’s enough for me to verify I’m about to take the right person. It would be a crying shame if I torched an innocent one.
She pulls her phone from the front pocket of her apron, her fingers poking at the screen as she lights the cancer stick and takes a long hard draw on it, immediately coughing a deep hacking cough.
You’re doing the walking disease a favor. Fire is faster than cancer.
“Damn straight.”
“Huh? Who’s there?” Her raspy, cigarette harshened voice calls out in the dark.
She turns her phone around using the screen to light the space in front of her, just in time to see me stand slowly in the shadows. The device drops from her hand, as she stares at me in my black leathers and gloves, watching me come to my full height. I tower over her now that she’s not standing above at a table in the diner, and her eyes have to look up when I take a few steps towards her, making her freeze.
The lit cigarette drops from her mouth, landing on the blacktop, rolling towards my shoe, and I watch it with a deep concentration as the cherry burns bright red.
Use it. Use her own cigarette to set her on fire!
“Don’t mind if I do.” I say, picking it up, rolling it between my fingers, then putting it to my mouth, taking a drag of the thick, menthol smoke.
I let it hang from my lips as I reach out, grabbing her by the throat with my right hand, backing her against the metal and glass wall of the building. She tries to push me off, but she’s too old, too frail, and most likely weakened by the cancer I know is already riddling her body.
“Help!” She tries to scream, but her words only come out as garbled noises from the spit backing up in her throat. “Why, God why?”
“You know why.” I sneer in her face, letting her crow’s foot lined green eyes stare directly into my more youthful, icy blue ones.
“No.”
“You really think you can have that rude attitude with just anyone?” I spit out, my saliva splattering her in the face, making her eyelids flutter and her face flinch. “I mean to me, fine, whatever. But to her? Nah.”
“Who?”
“You know who!” I shout, losing my patience with her.
Just do it already, will ya?
“Give me a second. She needs to know what she did wrong.” I answer my voice, confusing the bitch in my grasp who freezes and tilts her head to the side like a confused puppy.
“Who are you…?”
“Shut up. You don’t get any say here. Just me and him.” I yell at her, squeezing her neck tighter, while leaning back and grabbing the top rim of the oil barrel next to the dumpster.
The thick liquid sloshes out of the opening in the lid as I drag it to me, making it scrape loudly on the parking lot blacktop. Oil coats my glove, and splashes my pants, making me curse quietly about the mess on my brand-new leathers.
“Wh…what…?” She stutters in my grip, her eyes becoming larger, her lips turning a cool shade of blue as I steal the breath and the ability to scream from her.
“What am I going to do?” I say to her, leaning in, my nose touching the tip of hers and the cherry of the lit cigarette singeing her upper lip as I settle the barrel at my left hip. “Is that what you want to know?”
“Owww…burns.” She gasps all breathy and painfully as her hands slap and hit at me, trying to break my hold on her neck.
She hasn’t seen anything yet.
“I know.” I laugh in her face, watching the skin on her upper lip blister from the heat of the cigarette. “This is nothing. You ready to really burn?”
“No!” she tries to scream, but the only thing that comes out is rancid air from her most likely black and infected lungs.
“Yes.”
Yes, yes, yes, yes! Do it, do it, do it, do it!
