Broken

The ceiling lights flicker somewhere under the rank layers of dust and smog. Under it, quite some feet under it, my companion holds a flaking cigarette. Smoke ringlets rush towards the damaged lights, eager to rejoin lost kindred or, slightly more plausible, eager to be chopped into smaller indiscernible bits by the ancient ceiling fan.

At least I think the movement behind the smoke is a fan.

It could be a swarm of roaches.

I know this place has roaches. Fat little fuckers too because I could feel them scurrying over the tops of my shoes. I almost wore sandals. I almost believe in god.

My companion looks at me through the thick lenses of her bleeding glasses. Everything about her bleeds. She loves to slit her wrists in public.

“Put your cigarette out,” I whisper; half surprised that she could hear me over the silence and not surprised in the least at her lack of action.

Her cigarette burns on, a fiery city nestled in the care of its ash wall. It looks like hell and that thought scares me.

Only when there is nothing left to suck on does she unceremoniously drop it on the floor. There is no ashtray and her glass still has drink in it. She drinks straight vodka that tastes like Draino.

It could be Draino. It’s a cheap bar.

Hands free, she drops her fingers into her glass, mixing her drink and sucking the bloody droplets from her chipped fingertips. What doesn’t land back into her vodka, drops on the filthy countertop. I smudge those bits around with both hands. Under my artistic administrations, the small puddles come to resemeble a heart-shaped mess.

Don’t say I don’t know what love looks like.

“We don’t talk anymore,” she stands to shake the roaches from her shoes.

“No.”

“Why don’t we talk anymore!” She screams, pointing one bloody-alcohol-and-saliva-soaked finger at my face. “What happened to us! What! What! What!”

She pounds the table and our drinks shatter. The roaches run from the showering glass. I hope some of them get impaled. I hope so hard that I can almost see it: the unsuspecting roach, the cool sharp glass, the sting from the alcohol adding to the torment of the final moments. Somewhere there are baby roaches crying for their dying mother.

I can see it, but I can’t watch. That’d be too disgusting.

“You,” she says quietly.

I look up to meet her gaze, but get lost in my own reflection. Bigger than ever, her glasses thicken to deliver my image in unbelievable proportions.

Average. I study me slowly, filling time while waiting for her stunning revolution. Average. Except for my fingers. My fingers look thin enough to just snap off. The reflected-me stares, unafraid. Ha. I could scare her if I broke her. Absently, I wonder how many fingers I could keep before she started screaming.

“You’re too self-absorbed.”

I want to point out that I am not an obsessive, self-destructive mess that can’t seem to stop bleeding, but I bite my tongue. I don’t think she’d be happy if I told her all that. She might not ever shut up.

“You’re not even listening now are you?”

“No,” whispering again. I wonder why I even bother to talk.

“Why are we still friends?”

At a loss, I answer as honestly as I can on such short notice, “I don’t even like you.”

She gives me a look and, for the first time, I see her eyes and not just her glasses. Her eyes are clear. There’s no blood in them at all, “I guess we’re finished then.”

She leaves. I hear the door chime (ding), but can’t look.

When I leave, moments later (hours later), I’m careful to step around the glass. I step on a roach instead, killing instantly under the rubberized substance of my sole, but I don’t care.

(ding)