- Got a smoke? – Badou addressed his question absent-mindedly to the clear air. As if expecting an answer, he turned his one-eyed gaze to all directions, but still he saw with a horrible clarity only the white as sheet heavens. On the steep hill just above the nearly underground city, he had no wall to lean on, no wall to hide behind, no wall to keep the smoke from the last cigarette locked in.
What happens when there's no 'there'?
Still no answer. Misty clouds were conjuring up like a new-born typhoon up high.
- Damn clouds, bet they're God's smokes.
Damn God. Damn smokes. I'll give a damn if you give me a cig.
The clouds finally swallowed all traces of directions, wrapped the city in their ghostly fumes and scooped down menacingly above the redhead. He didn't look up, he couldn't look up.
There was no longer high or down. No city to wander in, no sky to wonder at.
What happens when all directions fade away?
- Snatch up a cig from God.
The clouds opened a million beatsly mouths, all deformed into ghoully grimaces. A thundering sound came crashing from deep within – no, deep above – them.
Badou slid a hand into his half-torn pocket and lifted a sheet-white cigarette, bit at it, and at last steadied it in his mouth. He'd forgotten it, damn. Then he stroke the last antiquely-looking match on his own hand and lit the cig.
- I can smoke more than ya. – he raised his face to somewhere. There was no 'where'.
At last the rain dropped dead-like first on the hill and then over the city in an artistically pointless effort to pierce through its cloud defence. Naturally, it quenched the tiny smoke and its smell. Badou grew silent. No life in the world, no death in the city, no nothing.
What happens when you don't know what happens?
Suddenly, a flash flew past him, shot by some divine hand at the center of the veiled city. A thundertbolt quickly followed its trail and alighted the urban scenery for a moment, dying out in countless specks of blaze.
- Could've done it sooner. – the drenched redhead murmured under his smoky breath.
The miniature sun in the city centre was setting down into the muddy streets, the real one having never risen from them. All was rain again.
What happens when the rain washes all signs?
- Gotta get down now.
But the hill remained as precipitous as ever. As it should be.
Badou shifted his eyepatch to his left eye, ''the unseeing one'' as he used to joke with Haine. Though it wasn't a joke anymore, neither had it been one.
With a dead right eye and a covered left one, he slowly began his descent to the settlement of gangs, the core of the most deadly life – his life, in the city. When he had passed through the cloudy cloth, he removed the patch and opened his eye once more. It was darkened, the city, no flashy neon lights, but, rather, a deep mixture of muddy brown, rainy gray and lightning. It had colour at least and the centre was lighted like a children's festival.
- Got fire? – Badou asked in his mind, most likely himself, and strolled down to the blaze. He pulled out another cig he had not forgotten about. He came close to the flames and lit it, trying not to get caught himself.
He continued walking down a street, some street, any street. His cigarette continued to exude smokey spheres, layers of new air, figures of a madman's memory. The rain had never stopped.
What happens when you have nowhere to go?
- You walk. – Badou lifelessly answered somebody.
- Did you say something, sir? – asked a young man somewhere beside him. The voice was both familiar and distant.
- Yeah, I did. – Badou slowly turned, realising in the process that he was turning to his blind right side and if the man was – no, he definitely is – a killer or a psycho, he'd end up in smoke himself. Probably with two or three smoking holes inside his body.
Worst, the man turned out to be a psycho killer. Haine, that is.
- Got a light? – Badou inquired impassively. He had no cigarette by now.
- Got a smoke? – retorted Haine in his turn.
- Nah. Plenty of smoke up there. – Badou didn't even point upwards.
What happens when clouds dim your vision?
- You smoke them.
- You say something again?
- Nah.
The sky scenery was lighted as if by a newborn sun.
No, suns don't shine, only smokes do.