The Red Cigarette

A Story Of Raging & Sacrificial Femininity

He likes the younger girls and green-wrapped cigarettes, the ones of strong stuff.

I know both of these things.

He builds her body with drunken eyes: flat chest, lean thighs, a ratty skirt that hugs a slim waist and fans out at the ankles. He likes that she’s small and seems to float when she strides or shivers. 

I know men like him, and I’ve been a girl like her.

I watch from the bar while lighting another man’s cigarette, a yellow-wrapped one of less strong stuff. The young girl tenses her thin shoulders beneath his fingers, and his touches linger at every juncture they travel, even when they have left.

Those traces will be felt for a lifetime until purification is the only ideal left to pray for. Beseech for removing your skin and trading it for a new set of flesh—reincarnation, not heaven. 

“Yes, Seraphine is an entertaining, shy girl. Would you like to take her tonight?”

The man sucks on his green-wrapped cigarette, nods, and shoves his coins into the hands of the speaking woman. Before his fist can wrap around her forearm, I flee from the bar and pass between them. His desirous hand knocks against my torso.

I present my smile, like how a doe exposes herself behind the oak so her fawn may have a chance to escape. 

“Alas, sir, she is taken for the night,” I say. “May I offer my services in her stead?”

This is not a question for him to answer. I don’t look for the young girl again; I leave her on the threshold as I whisk the man away. 

He likes the younger girls, and I am twenty-seven.

He does not know this.

He is too drunk to oppose. 

The chamber we take is shoddy and mildewed. I remove my red semi-translucent gown before he can turn it to fray, and set it on the bedside table. One and a half minutes later, when it ultimately ends, he collapses on the cot in a stream of sweaty groans and swears. 

As I dress, he gropes at my thigh and whispers, “Stay, baby. Stay…”

I pull a cigarette from the slip in my dress, light on the bedside candle, and give it to him. A bottle to nurse his lamentations. He’s too intoxicated to see that the cigarette is wrapped in red paper, in my own strong stuff. He sucks down the contents on his back and coughs out every puff.

I go to the window and find the moon. I stare at her.

When he stops breathing, I return to the bar.