Down the Rabbit Hole

Clove Cigarettes and Pomegranates..DRAFT

The smell of the clove cigarette drifted across the wall of her senses awaking a long ago memory that slumbered like a dragon in the dark recesses of her mind. As she turned the corner, Elson saw the smoker, a scrawny teen perched on a ratty skateboard, a cellular phone tucked between his head and shoulder. As Elson passed by the teen, she inhaled the sweet smoke and the memory floated up with a clarity that was almost painful.

Maya had loved clove cigarettes. She had purchased them in flat metal boxes and smoked the long, dark sticks with the dedication of a true addict. She wore their scent like a perfume and after kissing her, Elson’s tongue and lips would often be left with their tell-tale tingle.

The doors of the library swung outward suddenly, and Elson had to jump aside to avoid the noisy wash of teens that flooded out onto the street. After they’d cleared, she pulled the heavy doors open and made her way to the reference stacks at the back of the building. The library was cool and dark. She preferred to work here rather than her tiny apartment downtown. The smells of the books and the soft swishing of the old microfiche machines were her muse. Elson tried in vain to finish her article for Rolay River Press on some local glassblowers but her thoughts kept drifting back to Maya.

Pomegranates, those had been Maya’s other vice. She would buy them by the bushel then polish them off, one by one, her fingers prying free bloody seed after bloody seed and then sucking them into her heart-shaped mouth. The damp, eviscerated rinds had a bitter smell that, as much as the cloves, became a part of her signature scent.

Clove cigarettes and pomegrantes, two things that could spirit her off to a time when her entire world was ruled by an olive-skinned pixie with twitching hazel pools. Maya had been her awakening and her ruin in barely the space of one calendar year.