Opium Cigarette

“I don’t even do drugs anymore. I’m, like, sober.”

That’s what the mohawk man said to the long-haired man sitting across the table from him as he rolled the tip of a cigarette through a small pink and green rubber container holding the black goo that was opium. The long-haired man’s long hair that fell to his shoulders was greasy, and he had a large beard to match it. A green sweater and bright blue jeans helped hide his pale, thin frame. Everything he wore, hair and clothes, worked hard to conceal his bony body.

The Mohawk guy was his opposite in that way. He had nothing to hide while also being thin and sun-deprived. His mohawk must have been five inches high, gelled up, and dyed pink. He wore a black T-shirt to show off his tattoos, which were all skulls and people brutally and bloodily dying. A shining silver wallet chain looped over his camo pants. The irony of him wearing camo was not lost on the long-haired man. Yes, this man wanted to be seen. He wanted to turn heads and have people stare at him.

The afternoon sunlight danced in through the windows of the city apartment, illuminating the red and yellow walls, the leather couch that the mohawk man sat on, and the dirty rug pimpled with cigarette burn holes that the long-haired man sat on. The cherub that hung from the wall, covered in satanic symbols doodled on with a Sharpie, was cast in shadow by this light.

“Yeah, man, good for you. Sobriety is a hard thing to do,” the long-haired man said to the mohawk guy. “Seriously. Good for you. You should be proud of yourself.”

“Yeah, I am. Habits are a bitch to kick,” the mohawk man said in response. He took the cigarette that now had a third of it covered in the black goo from the rubber container. “Anyway, this is done. Wanna go smoke”?

“Hell yeah.”

The two men rose and exited the apartment, entering into a red hall with a red carpet. The walls were cracked, and they walked down this hall until they got to the door at the end, where they exited onto the covered outdoor stairwell. They walked up to where they could see the whole city sprawled out below them.

The sun was beginning to set, which made the whole city sparkle. The apartment was lived in by the man with a mohawk, and it was on a hill which allowed the entire city to be visible from this outdoor staircase that the pair perched on. The water in the distance sparkled, gemstones beneath its surface glistening up. The windows of the skyscrapers in front of them reflected the light back in a serene glare. Massive cranes stood tall in the warehouse district of the harbor, taking metal shipping containers from barges. The scene was bright. The scene was light.

The Mohawk man was struggling to light the cigarette as it was coated in the sticky black substance. Try. Try. Try. Finally, a flame and curling smoke. The taste and smell of it instantly hit his taste buds. It made every organ in his body want to leap from his insides and devour the cigarette to get every last bit of opium. Instantly, every tension was relieved from him, and he was delivered into a peace of knowing now that the high was coming. The taste of the opium was the best taste in the entire world, and completely indescribable. It was not sweet-tasting; it was not bitter. Neither of those were close to describing it. It was Heaven, and nothing was as good. A slice of calm on a cigarette. Oh, sure, it tasted gross when you first did it. However, only the first time. After that, it always tasted amazing. Amazing enough to never want to get away from it. It was the best food a junkie could eat.

The Mohawk man passed it to the long-haired man as they leaned against the tan plaster walls, and he took a deep drag as the embers struggled to remain lit. “This won’t get us very high,” the long-haired man said.

“I know,” the Mohawk man said. “We bought more. We’ll just get some tinfoil to smoke the rest. I just love smoking it from the cigarette. There’s something about it, you know? It’s pleasing. The ritual of it, I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Kind of a waste of drugs, though, since we could get higher from it in other ways.”

“Well, shooting up gets you higher, too, but you’re very against that.”

The smoke curled from the cigarette, the ritual of smoke. The two men stared out in silence at their sunlight city, at their dying city, and ignored the death that could ever come to them. They inhaled, they finished, they went back inside, and got high. Forever to be high.

Opium was a hard drug to get in the United States. Harder still for two street punks like them. They knew what they were smoking was more likely heroin, but what were they to do about that? They were in too deep now, so call it opium and say that it’s healthier than H. Say you’re clean and having fun and not an addict. Say you’ll live forever and aren’t riddled with the disease.