You peek between the blinds into the dark street below. A black subaru melts out of the night and crawls up your driveway. You step behind your desk, collapsing bonelessly into your plush leather chair, eight-hundred bucks well spent. You knock down a glass of red wine. French vintage. 1992. You like fancy liquor. You drain another cup, two, three, relishing the burn, breaking through to the bottom of the bottle. Your mind hazes. Then comes the Marlboros. You love cheap cigs. Mostly due to nostalgia. Destroying your lungs harks back to the times when you were a nobody—lower-class trash with a whore mother and an absent father. After school one of your friends, the class clown, swiped his dad's cigarette packet and passed it around like it was candy, getting most of the friend group hooked on nicotine for life. Last year you found out he died of cancer. Prostate cancer. Funniest joke he ever did sling.

Grab your zippo. Open it with a flick of the wrist you spent more time practicing than you'd care to admit. Stare into that bright orange flame. Death. Corpses. Funerals. Caskets. No caskets. Flame. Ashes. A great big urn, one with a skull or a dragon or a naked woman.

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