text: There is a little island by the train tracks that Foster and Elgton find themselves on course to. At night time you can see the lights of eleven bridges, each seemingly having their own preferred pattern of colored lights hung where the girders met. In the minds of Foster and Elgton, an acquaintance was synonymous with an unpaid employee. Now, friends, they would both tell you, work for each other, an outlet to trust in a little what goes around comes around. Foster and Elgton were friends. They were going to meet an acquaintance. Magnus. Their mission objective this bridge-lit evening was to suck on cigarettes like Tyler Durden or how they do in the Billy Wilder movies. They caught Magnus smoking cigarettes behind the dumpsters between the third and fourth period and they made as they cared about the kid for long enough to matter. Magnus said he could get the two smokes, when Foster had asked he used the term “Bogies” and said there was a cool little spot down by the train station where you can see the lights of all the bridges at night. Now in years end New York a stone's throw from Christ’s “birthday” it can go from diurnal to dystopian dark during the time it takes the private-school seasoned boys to catch their end of the day relief. Foster and Elgton’s patience department was scant and threatened the restless ticks of foot-bobbing and arm movements performed above the waistline. Today they wanted the cigarettes and Magnus had them. Magnus wanted friends and Foster and Elgton had them. The destination approaches, marked by an abandoned magazine publisher’s office that for some reason, most likely due to the resemblance of spirit-tortured psychiatric hospital clad with the usual moss and mold. Rumors had circulated around the school that the thing was now infested with rats and homeless crack-heads, a paradise for cops meeting quota. There was a reason such an obvious spot was never utilized as a weed smokers Valhalla. The pot-addled mind isn’t *that* stupid. Tonight isn’t about pot. The train station demarcates a sort of spiritual end of this trip. The boys know that just over the crest of the hilled parking lot is a little patch of white sand and a couple of benches, known as the island, though in no way having the geological qualifiers for being an actual island. For some reason, every stage for illicit activity is termed after some natural formation. The one about a half-mile up the road from the school, and a short hike through the woods is the River. There is no river at the River. There are the plains at the town's other train station, hidden behind overgrowth and an “electric” fence. Along with a couple esoterically known destinations like the Canyon, the Wall and the Pillars were mythically heard in passing. To get across the train tracks you can go via tunnel or bridge, and the entrances to both are paradoxically located right next to each other. They split up, Elgton taking the overpass, Foster opting to go subterranean. The brief ablation is suggested jocularly by Foster teasing the absurdity of the structure's design. It seemed like a lot of unnecessary work for an inconsequential preference. They emerge on the other side greeted with an extra coronad figure next to the meaty, precociously mustached, scoliosically slouched, garbed in a wool trench coat which obscured his pants. He wore camel-colored Timberlands with a black leather half-crescent on the back. In fact, they all were, causing the convocation to occur two inches above their genetically disposed heights. The figure next to him is wearing only a t-shirt, plain-white but speckled with artifacts of former excursions with greasy food. Included in the outfit are mesh basketball shorts, and of course, Timberlands. The cold wind seems to disagree with Magnus’s large ears and nose both screaming a vibrant red, though the other figure looks unfazed, as if Winter doesn't exist because he doesn’t believe in it. When the faces of each party are no longer obscured by distance, Magnus and the other figure begin to approach to expedite initial contact. Foster nods his head with downturned eyebrows toward the direction of the uninvited guest. “Well it’s about time you guys showed,” Magnus says with a hint of jest, trying either to impress the boys with his nonchalance, or his brother for actually having friends close enough where he can say corny cliches like that. Foster takes his hands out of his pockets which immediately recoil and become harder to maneuver. “We’re here,” Foster says it sarcastically wide-eyed. “This is my brother, he brought us the cigarettes,” Magnus said motioning. “I’m his brother, I bought you the cigarettes.” The chemical stricken throat makes noises resembling a wheeze. Like if the crack of lightning had a novelty computer-generated text-to-speak. Foster again flashes two wide eyes sarcastically with a flat smirk, manipulating his uncertainty into irony, it’s a defensive move but he’s too immature to see it as anything but being cooler than thau. Elgton doesn’t seem to pay any mind to the redundancy. He is known amongst his friends, Foster included as disorientingly aloof. “So... are we going to smoke ‘em?” Foster asks skeptically. “Yeah, we’ll smoke ‘em, if you still want them, since you guys are young and all I’ll give you some first-hand experience from someone who made the exact mistake you guys are about to make.” “Jesus Christ I get enough PSA’s from school and my parents,” replies Foster. “Nah, yo I’m certain you haven’t heard anything like this, I’d bet my life on it.” Foster sighs, he thinks he’s heard it all before. “Whatever you say older-Magnus.” “Story starts a little while back, call it four or five years ago. I had this buddy Big Man, met him he was sitting on a hammock in a little part of the woods the older guys used to smoke at across town. This lard ass was sleeping in the hammock, with two full packs of smokes underneath. So I figure, the snoring’d indicate he’s incapacitated so I reach down for a smoke--” “What are you doing there by yourself?” Elgton asks. His way of conveying attentiveness is to interject with insubstantial questions. “I was supposed to meet a friend there to smoke a doob.” “You say doob?” Elgton asks. “An Indian buddy of mine called joints doobs, I guess I picked it up.” He took off his shoe to empty a pebble. Pebbles seem to teleport inside of Timberlands. “I swear I gestured for the cigarettes and he wakes up and looks at me with these bug eyes, bloodshot with fatigue, and mumbled something like, ‘did you touch my arm,’ I told him of course I didn’t. He turned over and I figured let me try this again, that was weird, he’s turned over and I reach for them again, I swear once I crossed into his personal radius he turns over again and goes, ‘Now you’re just fucking with me you definitely touched my arm.’ That was like the first indicator that this guy had like this connection with cigarettes like they weren’t just cigarettes to him. “Anyway, I fessed up, told him I reached for the cigarettes, he said it was weird and whatnot, he asks if I want one, I do of course, I had already been smoking for a year or two at the time, so I take one, and I shit you not, he just grabs five of ‘em and sticks ‘em in there. Couldn’t hold it between his index and middle fingers like anyone who wants to look like they been there done that. He has to make a circle with his thumb and stick ‘em all in there. "So he tells me to come meet him there, he doesn’t really have anyone to smoke with, he’s a cool guy, he’s got a hammock so I say fuck it, and I end up meeting him there ever once or twice a week. The man was a fiend occupying every orifice of the word, I mean, he had one of those ammo belts that slings over both shoulders, with packs of cigarettes from top to bottom, must’ve had twenty packs with him at all times.” As he says the number his hand slices through the air. “And he would just chain-smoke with me, no less than three at a time, but I’ve seen him go as high as twenty, a whole pack, at one time. Hold on it gets crazier.” He says in response to a glint in Elgton’s eye of reluctant belief. Foster remains cross-armed. “Didn’t he know he would get cancer?” Elgton asks. “There don’t exist a smoker who doesn’t. He used to always throw these phrases at me like, ‘I’m banking on them curing lung cancer before I get it,’ and ‘what slowly kills you makes you harder.’ Sometimes he’d even say ‘cancer schmancer’ and his eyes tell you that it’s like a subconscious response like the idea just bounces off him. What the man was truly scared of was emphysema having to carry around a tank of oxygen all the time. He developed a phobia of sorts to reliant breathing, used to go scuba diving with his dad every now and then in the Caribbean he couldn’t even do that anymore.” At this point Foster is getting impatient, he starts bobbing his heel. “Does this story have an end?” Foster asks. With both hands up in a downward swiping motion, Magnus’s brother responds, “Put a leash on your alleycat big guy, the balls in my court remember?” He jiggles the pack of blue American Spirits like dangling cheese over a mouse. “Now this is back during years of mine that I’m glad to have put behind me, and I may or may not have fed into this psychotic vice of Big Man’s. I’d film him doing smoke tricks, personal challenges, all the while his eyes develop this vapidness but I’m none the wiser. It’s only in retrospect you see how stupid you were you know? But...” He sighs, “I kept egging him on and the videos got more or more absurd.” “Can we see them?” Foster asks showcasing a curiosity fueled excitement that maturity teaches you to conceal, it’s the first time during the story he shows an ounce of enthusiasm. “Haven’t had them in a long time. Even if I did I wouldn’t show you.” He thinks the comment despicable and recoils. “This is when things get ridiculous. We, or he rather, went through this phase of trying to conquer any cigarette pertained world record. I mean speed smoking, number smoking, chain-smoking, anything, I think the craziest shit I saw that man do was smoke 161 cigarettes at once breaking the previous record of 155, then some Chinese lunatic counters with 170 cigarettes, and Big Man, well, he didn’t want to leave the opportunity for anyone to flirt with even the chance, smoking 277 cigarettes at once, and don’t even ask me how he fit them all into his mouth.” He hooks two fingers of each hand around each cheek and pulls, harder than would seem comfortable. “Yeah.” He pauses for longer than necessary if it were just to catch his breath or organize his thoughts. Foster asks thinking the end has been reached, “If you’re so scarred by the whole thing why haven’t you kicked the habit?” “You say it like it’s easy kid. You’re trying to apply logic to an illogical vice. The answer you’re looking for is a whole nother story entirely, and I wouldn’t want to encroach on your patience. Let’s just say it takes a female to quit, and a female to suck you back in.” Magnus’s brother was encouraged by Foster’s reactionary stare, unadulterated by eyes or human figures, blankly pointed at the impressionistic tide-strewn reflection of the myriad bridges in eyeshot. “Now if I could finish. A day or so after this behemoth record of his, notarized by myself, we caught up in the woods we met in, for the traditional chain smoke. He called me up early sometime before noon, I remember because I had a 12:30 blood draw, had to be out of there when the hands overlapped XII, never liked keeping time with electronics so I had an analog watch with the roman numerals. He told me he hadn’t slept the night before, looked like death per usual, wanted to social smoke to drain some energy. Even though he looked like death he kept complaining about not being able to smell, and ‘don’t get me started on what’s coming out of my asshole’ and I didn’t. At the time nothing seemed particularly off, with his type most physical ailments bypass the mental alarm. After that I didn’t hear from him for a while.” Magnus’s brother didn’t have so much as a nanosecond to even send the signal to inhale before Elgton asks, “What happened?” Foster still looks off into the distance, flickers of mental churning in the twitches of his eyes and facial muscles. Magnus draws circles in the sand with his Timberlands, they end up looking like flattened doughnuts. “I texted him--nothing, call him--nothing. Finally went by his house and his mom, not that she encouraged the return, sent me packing said he hadn’t been around since I last saw him. I’m no detective, and Big Man was no type to make finding him easy--if he wanted to escape that is. At this point I’m figuring fuck it that’s life right, might as well hop over to the OG smoking spot and reminisce for a bit. When I get there guess what I see?” “Big Man” Foster and Elgton reply at the same time though their tones out of two different area codes. “Not exactly, I see his pack of cigarettes under the hammock, which by the way I never found out if it was his or just permanently there.” Magnus’s brother cleared his throat and moved his leg as if releasing a fart although unclear even to Magnus who had the knowledge to teach a class on his brother's mannerisms. “I reach down to get me a free pack, and I see the hammock rustle. Up to this point there was no evidence there was anything in it, it just looked full of fallen leaves. All curled up and wet. I look inside and...” He holds a hand up to his face, the “and” before he trailed off had the weakened sound that words do when combined with a gag. “And I swear he was a goddamn cigarette!” “What?” Elgton asks in harmony with a what from Foster, the latter however ended with a “the fuck are you talking about.” Magnus cranes his head at the two eyes threatening to jump out of his head. “I’d show a picture of it too if I hadn’t thrown up on my phone, requiring a new one, after a second glance. It wasn’t pretty, I’m not talking cylindrical paper-wrapped tobacco. Think more mummy, though not wrapped, just paper, it was wet from the rain, the paper had ripped in more than a few locations, long cut tobacco sticking out like cotton from a torn stuffed animal--” There was evidence of a second gag. “And... bits and pieces of vital organs that were somehow hybridized to look like a wet tobacco leaf, still veiny, and fleshy, but strangely... fragrant. And mind you, leaking through these tears with the tobacco. At first, I just thought it was an attempt to create a life-sized cigarette to break a record or something, classic big man. But then squeaks out this voice, it sounded more like a wind gust shifting in speed, but I could make out, ‘cigarette... cigarette...’ So I reached into my pack to give him one, and he didn’t have eyes anymore, and ears that were in the process of transition, so I don’t know how he knew what I was doing but he said, ‘no... me.’ It took me a second to process what he was asking but I could let him sit there like that it was the most... I don’t really want to think about the image anymore. I, well, lit his backside, and stood there as he went up in smoke, slowly, methodically, from bottom to top, and he didn’t have a filter so at the end... that was it. I’ll never forget that burnt caramel smell” He looked like he would take a sip from a glass of whiskey if he had one. “Mom always said Big Man would smoke himself to death but... that wasn’t the way I interpreted it.” Magnus is still drawing circles in the sand, clearly having heard the story before and wishing to distance from it. Elgton looks like he just witnessed an extraterrestrial landing. Foster now focused on Magnus’s brother askance. A couple of moments go by and nobody has any idea what to do with their hands or tongues. Finally Foster breaks the silence, “That’s the stupidest story I’ve ever heard.” When the next train passes, four static figures puff the yellow-gray burnt caramel smoke of a freshly opened pack.