One sweet suck and mountain air was humping its way through my nervous system. It was erotic, a passion of momentum. I tasted pine and felt a forest in my belly. An eighth tug was one too many, then flame touched the cedars and the elm and the arbutus tree. Foliage of cognizance, up in smoke. By the ninth, I liked the company. My guts were always sour; ash couldn’t topple me. What a blessing some had and it begged disbelief: to never be sick until you caught a cold. I shook my head through the smog of indulgence, failed to fathom it so scowled instead. Break was up.

Phosphorescent whites screamed by the bell of entry. Bubble letters popped, sizzling neon, mascots like curt and jumpy onomatopeias were in instant revelry. The shelves wanted to ensnare but let me fall alone. I think I would rather work at the grey waste of rubble that an inferno could turn it all into. It’d probably survive though. You can’t discard your own damnation. You wait by the counter for a saviour. And you face the lighters. And you fill the chocolate box.

A younger fella walked in, at a stride, like he had quick business elsewhere or something to be proud and protective of in the parking lot. Cute brown jacket, sized right. Jeans, dark; could’ve been work-pants. I nodded and he waved with half his fist.

“Slow night?” he asked, while he swooped an energy supplement from beside the cash and propped it between us.

“If it was fast I’d be smiling.” It sounded ruder than I was hoping. Speedy service would rend the offence.

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“Yeah, I hear that, brother.” He scraped brown strands from over his eye; swayed in his hustle. “Cold out there, too.”

“Good day to have a car, I bet.”

“Might be snow next week, I heard.”

“Wouldn’t mind that. Couple inches is probably enough to call in. That’ll be $4.75.”

“It’s the weirdest thing.” His eyes wobbled with something dreamy, deluded. In a second, he was distant, younger. “I keep waiting for something to get in the way. A comet… or a terrible storm. Something to reach down and break the road, y’know? Or freeze it over.” He looked down at the debit machine turned towards him. Far back in his skull, he remembered I was providing a service. A quaint smirk took him and he tapped his card. “No use waiting for someone to stop us, right?”

He knuckled the counter and threw out a nod, then was backward and away. With him went my smile and composure, and that tiny high of a recent tug, and the caffeine potion near the register. Like a mystic of the borough, out he went to sling prophecy and pump carbon dioxide into the stars. Mystics don’t often steal pepperoni sticks from the counter display though, and I can’t imagine the fogs of tomorrow obscure their sight when their cards decline. Wasn’t my money he made off with, anyhow.

Orange tore through the aisles. Headlights dragged over the window. I blinked funny but didn’t look away. I was thinking of home, of watching movies and laughing the liquor from my lungs. It was 9:51. There was still time in the night for snow. I peered, squinted, tried to see it in the shadows of concrete: the crevasse from which the storm would crawl.