Thanatos III: Stop Smoking

I guess you could say I smoke a lot. I keep a puff bar in arms reach for most of the day. I kept my friends at arms reach for most of last year. I get antsy when I have to go indoors because I can’t smoke in there. I can’t be in a restaurant for more than half an hour because I need to get back outside for that sweet release of nicotine and the billion other things destroying my body. I need to smoke. I want to smoke. It looks cool, makes me attractive. Women see me smoking and want me. Men see me smoking and wish they had what I have. Clogged blood vessels, the occasional inability to breathe. A predilection not to dial 911 when I’m coughing up blood because I don’t have health insurance to cover the ambulance. It’s like an old friend of mine once told me, “Stop fucking around, man, I don’t want you to die.”

I should have called you when I got back to Corpus. I should have called all of you when I got back home. You only wanted to know I was alright, but I couldn’t handle being alright. The first person I texted was Amy. I hit her up for more puff bars when I should have been telling her to get her life together and stop selling puff bars. We enable each other sometimes. We don’t need each other though. We’re good enough at enabling ourselves.

I think about quitting every few weeks. I seriously consider it less often. I make honest attempts rarely. Once I even succeeded, for a few months. I can’t remember what it was like now. Living without keeping a shovel to dig my own grave in my pocket at all times. Smoking leads to more smoking. I’m tired, had a long day, just not feeling it, guess I’ll have a smoke. I don’t carry around cigarettes, but I’ll never pass up a free one. It’s Christmas Day, and we just got home from the yearly family dinner. Mom and I are smoking cigs in the backyard and I offer her my puff bar. “No thanks,” she says, “I prefer to kill myself slowly.”

I’m a little older now, somewhere in my twenties. I quit smoking for a year and started drinking. Quit that and got back to smoking. Being a functioning smoker is a lot easier than being a functioning alcoholic. Smoking leads to more smoking. We wanna get high, but we like to smoke more when we’re high. We take dabs that night and smoke a pack and a half between the two of us. My heart is beating out of my chest now. Feels like it’s gonna explode. I’m begging him not to call an ambulance, but the words in my throat don’t have enough air to escape. Blackness, shapes and colors. Is this how it ends? Dead on a balcony from too many cigarettes while I can still hear the Smash Bros music playing in your room. This is pathetic. This is disgusting. So am I. Can’t die here, not done yet. I have more to write, more people to meet. I can’t meet them If I die here. Maybe this is what I wanted all along.

I’m a lot older now. The year is 22,093. Humanity died out a few thousand years ago, but being alone never bothered me too much. I climb mountains now. The new ones are nice, but the old ones bring me a lot of comfort too. The squids are talking in a way we can finally understand, but they speak their words straight into my mind. I wish you were here to see it. They’re a far superior intelligence to us and they make me incredibly insecure. I wish you were here to see it. I can’t die anymore than I already have, and I gave up trying a long time ago. I still look like I’m 23, but I can look however I want now. Age is a choice and I made the wrong decision. I have a house now. I spent a few thousand years wandering the Earth, but eventually there was nowhere to go but home. I live in what used to be Corpus Christi, the city I was born in. I spent so much time trying to get out of this place that I wasn’t at all surprised to find myself spending my remaining time here.

I can remember everything. I remember every moment of every life of every being that’s ever lived. Humanity wasn’t the first, and we won’t be the last. Millions of years have passed since I was born. I thought I’d stick around to see the sun explode, but I found out pretty early on that our star never had enough mass to go supernova in the first place. I’ve been drifting through space in my dinky ship remembering everything I see. I look 46 now. I don’t know where I’m going, but I can’t go back home anymore. There’s nothing left for me there. The squids left before I did, but the rat people’s society was going pretty well before I decided to head out. I hope they do better than we did. I gaze out at the brilliant emptiness before me and reach for my bag. I didn’t bring much, figured I wouldn’t need a lot. I’ve survived for this long; if hunger or thirst took me now, I’d welcome the release. I don’t have any desire left to live or die though. All I have left is this tablet with the sum of human knowledge, a waterproof one with everything the squids were willing to share, and this never-ending pack of cigarettes. They invented some really great stuff in the 26th century. Body mods you can plug into your throat that release nicotine as soon as your body wants it. I always preferred to smoke mine though.

Time doesn’t really exist anymore. I look somewhere in my seventies. All I see is blackness. Black holes are devouring what’s left, each other, and soon, me. Eventually I’ll travel through one. My particles will be torn apart and reassembled as I fall face first into the time and space bending anomaly. I want to be the last to go. I’m now connected to every living being in the universe. I can hear their thoughts, and if I’d like, they can hear mine too. There are a few planets still holding on. Some with the capabilities of gods, others where we are right now. I’m waiting to make the plunge once they die. Once I’m gone there will be no one to remember me. No one to remember us. Do you still remember? Do you think we’ll remember after it’s all over? Once the singularity’s come and gone and the universe is remade, will you remember what you told me on that foggy November morning? Will I remember what I said back? None of it matters anymore. Not to anyone but me, anyway. That’s why I can’t die. Why I can’t be the first to go. Once I’m gone, everything is gone.

I am time. I don’t really exist anymore. I exist in multiple dimensions at once, exerting my influence on all without even having to try. I am what we once called angels, gods, ghosts, etc. I am the universe experiencing itself. I remember everything that ever has or ever will happen. I’ve watched myself live and die more times than you’ve woken up. I’ve watched you live and die more times than you can remember. Nothing ever stays the same for too long here, but there’s a quiet comfort in that. No matter how much everything changes, everything is still pretty much the same as it ever was. I’m sick of this. I miss being on Earth. I miss being less than the billions of people on Earth and the trillions of other beings in the cosmos. I am limitless. I am eternity. But I would give it all up just to spend one more day with you. Thanatos calls once again. I cautiously pick up the phone, and in an instant, everything is nothing. Death, sex, passion, the Big Bang. The cycle continues, and I meet you for lunch at that cafe close to your place.