The Death of Pain

The Death of Pain"

A short rambling made up story"
By s.redenbaugh



The cheap metal wheel spun, striking a small piece of flint, which produced the flame that brought a red-hot tip to the joint that now fills my lungs with an ever expanding smoke. In my lungs that smoke swirls, brushing against the fine cilia fibers, sending waves of euphoric bliss straight into my brain. Like a bullet, these freshly clipped, primo Humboldt buds draw smooth as silk. Expanding my horizons as well as my mind and lungs. I smile, exhaling and look out the window.

The rain is falling, cascading down, stripping the leaves from the trees. Pushed into the street, which is empty, they float along the gutters and then disappear, into a system that will someday carry them to the ocean where they will no longer be my concern. The only concern I seem to still have is her. The radio noise from the condo next door is loud, and the singer is expressing how bad he feels about his woman leaving him. This cuts deep into my weary mind, and it feels as if my beating heart is in that gutter, drifting away from me.

Now my memories of her are all that remain. Even after two years I think about her every waking moment. Once I even called my girlfriend of nine months her name in the throws of passion. She moved out that night. A flood of others have come and gone because of my inability to move on, they all brand me damaged goods, and for understandable reason. A soul mate cannot be replaced by quantity. It can only be dimmed by quality. No amount of smoke, nor liquor, or other drugs can erase them. No amount of nameless sex partners can bring me peace. Her image is burnt upon my retinas and I can no longer live this way.

Without a coat, and in the falling rain, I walk to the cliff where she had died. The sheared off trees tops and brush are still visible where her car had shot off the road that night. Moments of madness rush my thoughts and death seems all that could relieve the inferno of pain with in me. I lean over and hold my arms up, lifting my hands, I begin to cry out “take me, me. Why didn’t you take me?” And then in that single moment I am back to that night. I am again just waking as the car begins to skid out of control. I can still see the fear in her eyes as the first tree rips the auto apart, her hand reaching for mine, fingers, briefly touching, then nothing but darkness, nothing but sobs, nothing but death. And then, unlike the thousands of other times I have stood her and replayed that night I leap.