The Marlboro Crayolas

A Note From The Writers Kitchen:

The Non-Apology

Just tell me how it really is. Give me the truth. I respect that. Keep that in mind, as that is how I have written 'REZ's EDGE'.

Please, do not presume me to be a racist, as I am not. The content of the story is meant to put you, and your mind, into the realities of the time frame of the story. A feast of a story laid out before you. Bon Appetite!

Truly Yours,

Brad Jensen

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We come to the last page and Darrel closes the magazine.

I wipe the moisture from my brow and stand up. “All-righty then, after that I need a smoke.”

I slip my hand inside my pants and snag the cellophane covered rectangular package that used to reside inside my Buster Browns.

I yank the pack of Winston Reds from my trousers. “Who needs one.”

Three palms fire up. A fourth hand slowly rises, Joe's.

“Where did you get those?” Joe asks.

“From my Dad's service station. I snuck them out of his candy and cigarette display cabinet over a year ago. Had them stashed away in my closet ever since.”

“Alright! You got matches?” asks Josh.

“Yup.” I dig into my back pocket and pull out the book and hand them to Joe.

Fiddling with the cellophane, I find the tab-strip and pull off the top of the clear plastic. My digits peel away at the folded silver foil and expose the round cotton filters of the cancer sticks.

I smack the pack on my opposite hand, like I've seen real smokers do, and four cigarettes shoot out the pack onto the cave floor.

Indians and the Wonder Bread boys are on their knees picking up coffin nails.

“You’re welcome.”

I shake the pack and wiggle out a white, black-lung, peg of my own. I smell the slender shaft of wrapped tobacco, pulling it under my nose and inhaling. It smells good.

I place the blunt between my lips. It feels cool. I feel cool. I feel... like a man.

“Light me, Joe.”

“Shit! Where'd they go?”

Joe stands there spinning around looking at the floor of the cave, bends over and picks 'em up out of the dirt. He unfolds the book cover, yanks out the cardboard matchstick, closes the mini-novel and pulls the bulb end across the black striker.

It snaps to life. A small white spark turns yellow and smoke curls away from the tip into the air of our cave. Burning sulfur titillates our noses.

Joe cups his left hand around the flame, and I think 'This little light of mine', as he extends his hands out and I lean forward.  

My peace-sign finger clamp holds the cigarette to my lips and I suck.

The red flame bows down to the white master and ignites the tip of the tobacco.  The flame at the end of the lung-dagger dies and leaves a red glowing ember of burning tobacco and charred paper.

I only suck the smoke into my mouth and then blow it out. The taste is ashen and not really appealing, but watching the smoke puff from my mouth and swirl erratically and magically into the still air of our cave is completely mesmerizing.

“Joe?” I offer my lit butt to be used as a smoldering punk.

“Nah, let these guys go first.”

I reach out the lung dart to Piss Shaker...   He sucks hard and coughs up lungfuls of smoke. “Tastes good” he rasps.

He takes a more cautious puff and then Darrel bumps his butt up against Jeffery's red-skinned butt.

I shove my micro-Camel in Josh's face, and he sucks in a deep-throated dirty lungful of smoke. He exhales it out his nose looking like a smoking dragon.

That was cool, but I'm still too pussy to pull that crap into my virgin lungs. I suck the smoke vapors into my mouth and then breathe out through my nose.

It works, it actually works! I'm friggin' Smaug! I'm a Led Zeppelin conjured, fire-breathing, Lord Of The Rings bearer of terror and death. This is so cool!

I notice Joe watching all of us experimenting with the inhale and exhale of toxic carbon monoxide, cyanides, ammonia, tar, and nicotine. “Here you go, Joe. Light 'er up!”

He holds the cigarette between thumb and forefinger and moistens the filtered tip with his lips. His eyeballs focus intently on the glowing torch in front of him. He slowly pulls a drag in. And explodes! A seizure of coughing fits rip from his chest and smoke billows from his mouth and nose.

I smack him twice between the shoulder blades. “You OK?”

His watering-eyeball head nods.

“Try just sucking it into your mouth only, first. You can always work up to pulling that shit into your lungs, you know.”

- - Excerpt taken from "REZ's EDGE" by B.C. Jensen