Smoke blew towards the air in a steady, delicate stream. White-grayish tendrils reached out into the roof, changing their course with the gentle breeze coming in from the broken window. A gentle stream of light shone through the smoke, bathing the room in golden tones, and combining soft whirls of dust with the white-grayish particles until these blended with the air, becoming one. The smoke emerged from the exhalation and puff of a cigarette coming from a man’s mouth in a sigh. It shifted into the air, molecules mixing and intermingling under the gleam of golden light in that old, run down room.
The man sat in a decrepit white chair, discolored and broken in places by old age, seemingly tired of existing. It creaked with his weight as he leaned back, head resting on the top rail as he exhaled smoke from his mouth. His dark eyes were intent, focusing on the floor before him, but unseeing anything. His mind ran away with his thoughts, curling through locks of dark hair, neither here nor there, chasing an unchaseable dream. The bitter taste of the cigarette’s paper contrasted with the nicotine’s sharpness and sweetness, leaving a welcome musky taste in his tongue as the smoke left his lungs. The haze of his addiction sang in his veins, filling his blood. A small mound of ash formed in the floor below his hand, its shape stressed by the shadows of the chair above. It increased in size with every tap of his fingers against the cigarette to rid it of extra waste. The ash fell down into the mound in soft motes, seeming to be fighting against gravity, like snow falling from the sky into the earth.
Around him, everywhere there were flowers. Any kind imaginable, from proud roses to innocent daisies, pure white gardenias and richly colored violets. They covered the room, loitered the ground, filled cabinets and shelves, climbed up the walls. But their sight was strange, their scent unlike the living, for they were dead as a corpse, though tangible in their existence. They remained frozen in a timeless state, their petals senile, and though delicate, stiff. It seemed as if their color had been drained from them, leaving only a whisper of what once was. Their leaves blackened around the edges, their green lush gone. Corpses all of them, evidence of what once had existed in the past.
And yet, although their depressing sight and paper-like texture created an eerie allure, it could only be said that they painted something beautiful. The room shone with the creepy beauty of the flowers, petals scattered around the floor; uncanny, dampened sweet scent floating through the air. The light coming from the lone window in the wall highlighted shadows among the scene, and wilted others. Broken glass stained the floor, reflecting the light and mirroring the dead flowers, the flowing smoke, the pensive man. The stark silence was only broken by the ruffle of leaves and petals by the incoming breeze, and the sigh of the man as he smoked, the sight of him blending and unavoidable in the sea of dead flowers that surrounded him. With a small hush, the dead petal of a lifeless rose fell to the ground, suspending in the air before touching the floor, joining its brethren. Unlike corpses, they had never seemed so alive.