smokers



	Smokers

		they were the only smokers so they'd meet outside every twenty minutes when we used to hang out soon they became drawn to each other and anticipated the next time they'd meet -Hayden


I was born in a town in England, grew up in the same town and I would have died in that town if I hadn't grown back a steel finger after a farming accident when I was thirteen. So instead of living out that simple, easy life, I'm here in London, living in one of the most hi-tech buildings in the world, employed by the British government to serve on a team consisting of both mutant and baseline humans. And I get to spend alternate times cleaning up the puke of my alcoholic team leader. All the dreams of a small town Brit, huh? You know, I had just gotten use to nursing Pete Wisdom, spy extraordinaire and perpetual drunk when it abruptly stopped. I know the clich� to say overnight, but in his case it was absolutely true. He stopped going on missions drunk. He stopped disappearing for days on end. He stopped forgetting who we were, calling us different names. He stopped waking up in his own piss. He stopped being miserable. And he started sleeping with Red. That night, Kali crept into my room just after the two of them disappeared into his room, next to mine. She put a finger to her lips and nodded at the wall that Pete and I shared and we sat on the bed together and listened like two prepubescent girls. It was loud and hard. We stared into each others' eyes, the simple boy from England and the goddess from India and listened to Pete alternate between growls and near-screams, demands and sobbed mutterings. It had to be the most horrible thing I had ever heard. Judging from Kali's expression, she didn't feel that different. The day after, we all avoided the two of them. Red walked around with her eyes downcast, trying to escape from all of our curious looks and Kali's openly hostile glares. Pete strode out of his room later and he did his share of glaring. We all noted that he completed ignored Red. Up till then, I had never been connected with the rest of the team. I was close to Hugh, sure, but that was because I knew him before this whole mess, before we were both drafted. I didn't have much in common with him, since he was a magician playboy. Pete was probably the person I had the most in common was, but he intimidated me. I didn't like the way he treated everyone, he was far too abrasive for me. The rest of them were all strangers, and there couldn't be anyone stranger than Kali. They told me that she actually was Kali, the Hindu goddess of death who had given birth to life, but all of that meant nothing to me. It was strange enough to blink and see her suddenly with four other arms, a hideous black tongue and a necklace of skulls. And it didn't faze her at all. But because of that first night between Pete and Red, Kali and I were drawn together. She was the one who had slipped me the burnt remains of the wedding invitation the day after, had whispered to me slips of the story about Pete and some woman, far away in America who had decided to get married and had invited him. And she was the one who came to me every night afterward, lying next to me in bed against the wall I shared with Pete. Red seemed to return every night after that to Pete's room. Most nights, she would stay for a few seconds and then leave. Other nights, she stayed, but we never heard the same fury and passion in Pete's voice as the first night. In fact, we never heard him at all. There was just Red, her whispered hisses of demands, her forced purrs and her groans. Part of me felt perverse listening to all of this happen, but Kali never blinked. Instead, she alternated between staring at the wall and at me, listening meretriciously until it was over and then I would gradually drift off to sleep. She was always gone by the morning. We never spoke about our practice during the day. We never comforted Pete or Red about what had happened, what we had heard. For a while, Red shrunk but she sprung back soon enough, maintaining her wild, flirtatious behavior. It offended me, the way she would grin at me or any other man she came across and then sleep with Pete at night. Kali, who knows pretty much everything, says that some people have certain masks that they use to protect herself. But she still glared at Red during the day, as if she had broken some promise that the two women had forged between them. With Pete, it was superficially easier. With all of his destructive behaviors now in moderation, it was easier to respect him, and he was a stronger leader. But the passion he had dedicated to destroying himself, to the missions he led us on, to sleeping with Red, had all disappeared. His eyes which were once full and angry were now wary, like he was waiting for the next horrible thing to happen. Initially, Kali and Pete had been close, had been friends. Now, they seemed farther apart and when I would ask her about what was different with him, she wouldn't say anything and she would brush me aside. At first, it was hard to carry our friendship over into the waking hours, but Kali is so full of live, so alive that she intoxicated me and eventually I didn't feel so scared anymore, I didn't feel so lonely. "Kent," she said to me one day, tapping her finger on my nose in the way that she does when she's trying to be cute, "something bad is coming. What is it?" She was teasing with me. She knew very well that the only thing I was good for was repairing hacked off pieces of my body, and I was not some far- seeing prophet. She had been playing with Hugh lately, and had been kidding around with me that Hugh was right, that we all had the power to do everything if only we tried hard enough. I shrugged, deciding to appease her. "It's a storm." She smiled and shook her head. "You should know the best that storms always come to England. That's not bad." She leaned forward, her dark eyes shining. "Now come on.. what is it?" I looked out the window, at the clear skies and scattered clouds. "It's an evil mutant villain, intent on turning the world into catfish." She giggled. Do you know what it sounds like, the giggle of a goddess? "You do have a sense of humor after all," she laughed. She darted towards me suddenly, her movements fluid and temporary. She was serious and she was beautiful. "Close your eyes, Kent," she murmured. "Close your eyes and tell me what is coming." I obeyed. My eyes tightly closed, I thought wildly about some answer that could satisfy Kali. She was playing, but I had never crossed her before and I wasn't quite prepared to see what a disappointed goddess was like. I thought about Hugh, sitting up in his room with his ancient priceless books, believing whole heartedly in his pagan mumbo jumbo. I thought about Red, the glares and abuse she put up with from the rest of us during the day just so she could act desperate around Pete at night. I thought about Pete, and how I had preferred him when he was drinking himself to death, because at least then he had something in his eyes. And I thought about Kali, how she was older than all of Hugh's books and was a goddess, a real goddess that people worshipped and that a real goddess that people worshipped had touched my nose and giggled like a child. "I know," I said. My eyes were still closed. I breathed in deeply, triumphantly. "A smoker, a phoenix is coming across the water."

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