Keys jingled in the hands of a salaryman in his mid-thirties.  The lock to his high-rise apartment clicked open, unlocking the door.  The man sighed, exhausted from another day of working himself to the bone, and another night of semi-forced drinking with his colleagues.  He could smell the cheap booze on his own breath, and his head was pounding, indicating a bit of drunken stupor.  He staggered into the foyer of his somewhat expensive home.  The dress shoes on his feet were crushing them half to death, so he kicked them off.   They clattered to the ground loudly, irritating the already annoyed man.  He left out a sigh, then continued to drag himself to the bathroom to wash up and change.

He unbuttoned his collared shirt, which slid off his arms rather easily.  The man in the bathroom mirror before him was not as he’d always been.  His eyes, once shining and full of life, were now hollow, sunken, and surrounded by bags.  His clean-shaven face was supposed to portray an air of professionalism, but it now only strengthened his despair.  His hair had been ruffled like the wind, looking just like it had when his mother had done the same thing.  Where was that happy boy he used to be?  It was all… lost, drowned in a sea of paperwork and deadlines.  The only thing left was the lifeless man standing before him.

“What have I done to myself,” the man thought.  

He splashed his face with water from the sink faucet, determined to wash away the crushing emptiness he felt.  When it didn’t work, he simply sighed again and dried off his face, choosing to have a smoke rather than stand here staring at himself.  He trudged over to the sliding glass door leading out to his balcony and unlocked it with the plastic switch by the handle.  The idle thought flitted through his head that the lock would be extremely easy to break, but he immediately dismissed the idea, realizing that no sane man would break in from his balcony door on the fifteenth floor.  He slid the door open and sat down on the lawn chair by the table.  The metal floor of the balcony was cold and wet from yesterday’s rain.  He reached for the half-empty carton of cigarettes on the table and the lighter that went with them.

“Only one smoke, then I need to sleep,”  he said to himself through only slightly parted lips, his voice surprising him by how low and gravelly it was.

He chalked it up to tiredness and slid a cigarette out of the package and put it between his lips.  He grabbed the lighter and held it up to the end, then clicked it on.  A tiny flame, producing but a minuscule amount of heat.  The cigarette glowed a bright orange, then went out.  A small stream of smoke floated up listlessly from the tip.  

The man took a long drag and exhaled, the smoke dispersing throughout the midnight air.  His mind had emptied itself of the day’s rubbish, thinking only of the tiny flame on the end of his lighter, which he’d kept lit due to a random fascination.  It flickered and flowed, just as the man’s mind had been doing.  From one angle to another, the flame went, and his mind along with it.  He seemed to be hypnotized by it, his eyes watching the flame with the utmost focus and care.  It was like all of his despair has been burnt away… by that one tiny flame.  All of the neon billboards were flashing and shining brightly in the night sky, people, drunk or not, stumbled to their homes, but the man’s attention had been captured by that one little flame.  

But alas, the time of night was not on his side.  Another yawn, one he was unable to stifle, escaped his lips, signaling the man to extinguish his tiny flame.  His cigarette had been finished, and he had dropped the butt in a ceramic ashtray sitting in the center of the faux-glass table.  He rose from his chair, his legs barely able to carry him back inside to his bed.  He closed and locked the door, made sure his front door was locked, then crawled into bed and flicked the light off.  His heavy eyelids dropped down over his eyes, reminding him that tomorrow would be just the same.  His extinguished little flame marked the end of his only enjoyable waking moment.  That time he got to do something as simple as to stare at a lighter.

The last thought that flitted through his mind was what he would give for just 

one…

more…

cigarette…