OFF-CUTS!

Nero's End

It's been a long while since I last felt those velvety sweet vapors billow down into my lungs, after everything that's happened lately though, I'm considering whether it's time to start back up again.

Even though I quit smoking years ago, I still kept my last emergency cigarette stashed away in the drawer beside my bed.

Now, with my dear wife's passing, I've somehow lost that too.

She despised my smoking addiction.

"That filthy habit'll be the death of you, Stewart," she'd yell out anytime she'd hear me spark my zippo lighter on the back patio.

I'd normally just shake her warnings off, and let my guilt twist away at my innards although once when I was out the back sneaking a smoke, I heard a loud thumping sound from my kitchen.

While I was slightly intrigued, I didn't really think much of it until I finished my smoke a few minutes later, and walked inside where I found my Ann-Maree lying sprawled out, and broken atop the tiles.

Staining her long blonde locks red was a fresh abrasion on the back of her head where she fell, visibly leaking out her most vital of fluid but unknowingly bleeding into her brain as well.

The paramedics told me that they might have been able to stave off her brain damage if I'd called sooner, meaning if I put out that smoke and ran inside when I heard her fall, maybe she wouldn't have lived like a vegetable for the last seven years.

Seven long years I've gone without a cigarette because I felt guilty; should I have though?

There was only a slim chance that I could have saved her anyway; even if I did get there in time, she could have still gone through all that regardless.

It's not like I knew the exact path she would take to scowl me at the window, and so squirted a small amount of dish-washing liquid on the floor to get away from her incessant nagging, nor was this my fifty-seventh attempt to get rid of her.

Those past seven years lying in a hospital bed, unable to even communicate, must've been hellish for her, probably not as tortured as myself going without a smoke for that long, but hellish nonetheless.

I've rifled through all of our belongings in the house and I just can't find that last damn smoke.

Who could've moved it?

Nobody else has been here but me.

Oh well, looks like I'm going to have to buy a pack.

⁂

"Thank you, Darren. Now on to our most bizarre story of the day. A woman who's been in a coma for the past seven years passed away last night; today, her husband also passed away in a bizarre accident where his cigarette lighter exploded inches away from his face."

"Wow Mandy, that's horrible. Really shows an unexpected danger of smoking though, doesn't it?"

"You're right. Anyway, now over to Clark Belson with Sports."