The Search

There’s a hair on the humbug. The gap where Tom’s front teeth have rotted away frames the sweet like a sticky set on a proscenium stage of yellow tooth and tongue, the set of splinters that make up his lower jaw, a single row of empty seats. The hair sticks to the sweet like a slipped wig, thin and grey, pasted down with sugar and saliva. Tom’s tongue passes over the faded confection, eclipsing it for a second. When it comes back into view the hair is gone. It is times like this I always feel an overwhelming sense of respect for dentists.
"Ok, that's fine. Can you lose the hat? Hope it's not a bad hair day."
Sucking the sweet into a recess at the side of his mouth Tom grins.
"Not got enough hair for that."
The hat is removed and I stare down at the thin grey mat, it looks like a patch of grass after a tent that has been pitched too long has finally blown free.
"Can you run your fingers through there? Sorry I have to ask."
"What you looking for? Nits?"
“Actually that might be a problem, last thing the nurse needs is an outbreak of nits in here, those combs are dangerous."
He trails his fingers through his hair, it slumps back into a dead quiff. Like a Christmas tree decorated thirty years too late.
"Find anything?"
"No, you're fine."
It is normal procedure to search people from the shoes up but after three months of the same faces and the same awkward chat the ritual has slipped.
"Ok, arms."
"Haven't got any, what do you think I'd be doing bringing arms into a prison?"
Tom laughs at his joke almost causing him to spit out the sweet. He sucks it back between his teeth, phlegm rattling in his throat as the laugh turns to a cough.
"You'll be telling me you're armless next."
It is always the same, we make jokes to hide the discomfort of what we have to go through each morning. The workers don’t like being searched and I sure as hell don't like searching them.
"Can I smoke?"
"Not in here, sorry."
"What about when I'm through?"
"You're fixing a gas leak, I don't think it would be a very good idea."
"Shit biscuits, so where can I go for a ciggie?"
"Well, I could let you out but then we'd have to go through this all over again."
"...k'sake. How can a man work without fags? It’s ridiculous!"
He is muttering now as he raises his arms and I can see the tension in his limbs.
"Gloves off please, don't know what you might be hiding in there. Nails?"
Neither of us laugh at that one.
Pulling off his gloves Tom has the air of a sullen schoolboy. As he stands before me with arms outstretched and head lowered to avoid my gaze he so resembles that image so ingrained in our collective consciousness that I have to step back.
A crucifiction. A grimy messiah.
He is still lamenting the cigarette situation under his breath but I have stopped listening. There is only one irrefutable thought in my head.
You couldn't smoke on the cross.
And there it is, I can still hear Tom but all I can see in front of me is a hill in broad daylight and what seems to be hundreds of men and women being sent to one of the most holy and horrific of deaths, each craning their neck towards a cigarette that they can just barely hold between their fingers but not between their lips. There is a look of frantic desperation on the face of every man and woman present, not because of where they are but because of they cannot have. It is as if a single inhalation would save or redeem them. Ash falls from fingertips hitting the dusty earth below. Ashes to dust. I don’t know if my eyes are open or closed, I can feel my hands working but the crosses are still with me. Some give up and let the cigarettes drop, others so desperate for that last nicotine kiss wait until they feel the heat on their fingers, their necks almost snapping as they strain to reach the filter. They cry as they are burnt, the shrunken glowing embers falling to the ground where they find a friend in the wood. Flames start to climb the crosses.
I shake myself out of it. It's not even eight o clock and my mind is setting fire to crosses with cigarettes, It's thoughts like this that convince me I'm going to hell. Maybe I’m already there?
"Smoking kills." Did I just say that? In my mind I am still surrounded by smoke and the last of the lost.
"Yeah but I'm practically dead anyway."