As I was putting my third cigarette of the day off, I saw him. Or it, I can’t tell. Whatever it was, it was under the lonely street lamp in the back alley and seemingly the only source of light against the winter night. His form was illuminated and almost too bright for me to comprehend, but its pitch black shadow stretched over the dim light like the hopeless feeling creeping on the back of my throat. I couldn’t see the shadow’s end and I felt like crying. In that moment I wished I quit for real a long time ago, I wished I never left my sweet and secure apartment. I wished I listened to her telling me to stay inside.
Of course, he saw me as well. His eyes stretched inside his bulbous head, attached to the tinniest and most fragile looking neck I’d ever seen. He was uncomfortably tall and felt elastic, like he could stretch vertically if he only wanted to do so. His old and stained clothes, too lose on his deformed body.
And then my mind wrapped around the full picture as if it was a foggy dream. The fingers looked…wrong. As if they had been broken and clumsily healed a couple times. His skin was immaculate, though. It was almost translucent and its strange beauty blinded me for a second. He smiled and I felt sure that “he” was an “it”; because there’s no way a human would be able to smile in such an effusive way that the corners of their lips start to lift the skin off its face, like paint peeling off an old wall. It tightened and broke making a sound similar to a wet rag. I felt like running but its long and misshaped legs told me otherwise, and the thought froze me in my place, cigarette between the index and the thumb.
The little droplets of blood slowly fell on the ground, slithering through its face, but its look was still fixated on me, still maniac as if high on happiness. He was excited, I could smell it in the air, and in that moment I understood that he also knew that there was no confrontation possible, I was going to die in that instant and nothing could save me. This is it.
So I did what you’re never supposed to do if encountered with an impossibly shaped and clearly insane person.
I took a big breath. And I approached him.
“Hey buddy, are you new in the neighborhood?”
It looked back at me, perplexed. The smile was intact, but the corners trembled for a second and I knew I had to try, I had nothing left,
“I came outside for a smoke. Want one?”, slowly extending a cigarette in its direction.
My hand was shaking as I approached his, and he raised his needle-like fingers slowly, as if he had forgotten how to. He accepted it with an even deeper smile and he started bleeding more profusely than before. It looked painful and a shiver of compassion ran through my spine, and I felt lucky to have a nice and well-shaped spine.
Flickering the lighter, I lighted his and my fourth cigarette of the day, and I realized my wife would not believe it when I told her I had smoked more due to out of my reach series of events. I sighed with resignation and took a long drag.