Curvature

It was the scratching noise of a match being lit that broke the silence; heavy arms lifted to light the small brown stick that was wedged between a pair of pale thin lips. The harsh scent of burning tobacco slowly mixed with the sweet lingering scent of opium that clung to the air.

Ethan was sitting on the edge of a bed, lighting another cigarette while staring out a large wall of windows at some nameless city. Another butt to add to the pile in the glass ashtray sitting on the bedside table. The snow was falling in an artistic kind of way, one that would have been sure to inspire something in Ethan if he hadn't had more important things on his mind: like absolutely nothing.

The setting was… expensive, with large furniture in a large room with more large rooms branching off from it. Ethan looked, and felt, small there, but paid no mind to the sensation, or to how curiously out of place that his body, pale and tattooed, shirtless and with mussed hair, must have looked there sitting alone on the edge of a neatly made bed in a neatly put together room. He didn't pay mind to much of anything, except for contemplating how the floury taste in his mouth was being replaced with a bitter one.

Somewhere between reaching for his glass of expensive wine he didn't appreciate the value of, and thinking about the taste in his mouth, he leaned back on the bed, one leg bent up with his foot resting on the covers, the other dangling over the edge. The lethargy of the opium held strong even as the effects started to fade. It was a slow fade, a lazy one that clung to the mind in the way the smoke stuck in the air.

In the air, around the furniture, in front of the windows, the pale smoke stay suspended just below the ceiling he was staring at. The ceiling with the white-white embossing which made little figurines that stared back at him as he stared at them. He thought it strange how his ceiling was the bottom of someone else's flooring; they could be walking all over him without knowing. He grinned and took a lazy puff of his cigarette slowly burning away in his mouth.

He wondered if he was up there, above the ceiling that was also a floor. Lying on another oversized bed staring up at that ceiling that was also a floor, thinking about himself being above him. Thousands and thousands of the same room, with the same Ethan, with the same ceiling-floors, all piled on top of one another in a nameless hotel in some random city of someone else's picking. Thousands and thousands of little Ethan replicas an oversized room, each one of them acting like a prostitute; he laughed at the word, a laugh which would most likely have evoked a most peculiar look from his companion, Montague, had he been in the room. Or maybe he was, the only thing Ethan could see was white so he couldn't tell. He was too busy contemplating the Ethan that was lying on the ceiling above him.

And in that room above him, or maybe the one above that, or so on, he could have sworn that the other man – Montague that is, not those other Ethans - was sitting in the overstuffed chair off to the right of the bed. Shirtless – shirtless? and smoking. Or maybe that was wine in his hand. He wondered how Montague had gotten all the way up there, unless he hadn't moved and Ethan had. Maybe Ethan 2 was really Ethan 1, and he was the copy below staring at the ceiling that was their floor.

He wondered if that Ethan had acted like a whore – no this was not about sex though the similarities were jarring enough to make the discussion seem as if it were. He had acted like one. Ripping away at his coverings, flaunting himself in the desperation that the other man might be interested. He was, of course he was, drugs had a curious habit of creating false interest.

Once the invitation had been accepted – there was always much too attracted to say no – Ethan had been carefully deliberate. Revealing little by little, piece by piece, anything more would have given him away, especially in the eyes of an old friend – friend? – even from one who had something the other might have found use for. But that's how it was played. Cool and unintentional. Typical Ethan. He wondered as he stared up at that ceiling, which was also a floor.

And the world stretched out like an accordion, pulling and smearing colors, distorted fragments expanding at a crawling pace. Opaque hues turned transparent, thinning out and making the world turn a sheer shade of dull. A heavy blink somehow shifted it all back into one single frame. There were no more rooms with ceilings that were floors, no more Ethan's piled a top one another. Just. One. But the world hadn't moved at all. Not once, it just felt different. The slight pins and needles in the tips of his fingers, reality was trying to bring him back.

And the other body sat, no longer rooms above him but was close, speaking of crystalline life and perversion. "I-" There was a long pause, his voice deep from disuse (how long had it been?) "don't care." he decided while staring up at the curling wisps of smoke from his cigarette that reached up, up, up towards the ceiling. The misty grey dissipating in coils, slight and subtle, until it turned so faint that the intriguing curvature vanished. Curvature. Ethan liked the word. 

Pins and needles. The sensation fled from his fingertips, twisting about and settling in his legs, egging him to move. Before the decision was made, Ethan was standing in front of the wall of windows, away from the bed he hadn't remember lying down on, taking a sip from a glass of wine he didn't remember having. The cool air radiated from the panes of glass, brushing over his skin making his hair stand on end. The sky was grey, and the world was white. Ethan thought, secretly – not so secretly – that the introduction of spilt blood on the ground down there would right whatever wrong he felt while looking down at the scene. Monochromatics were boring. He took another sip of wine.

His lips pulled at the corners, stretching into something no one would have called a grin except for Ethan. He made a small huff, hardly a sound, the short movement of his shoulders making a more pronounced statement than his vocal one ever could have. He could hear a voice, one that did not belong to him, speaking. The words were lost, only a dull, muted drone hit his ears that soon fell down to silence once more. "Luxury is worthless." An initial thought he hadn't realized he had spoken until he saw the fog on the window from his breath fading in, then out, like a small ghost pulling away from the two dimensional glory of a frosty windowpane. It was a thought, a concept, from a person who had never known the value of anything, speaking to a person that only contemplated the worth of the things around him. Or not. Ethan's opinions often shifted about the other man, today would be no different.

And there they were again. Pins and needles. Pins and needles dotting deftly under his skin. Ethan wiggled his fingers at the sensation that had crawled back into his hands. He was starting to feel his body, the cool air wrapping around his skin slowly pulling on his mind. It meant he was coming back – back? – he didn't want to. Time went somewhere without Ethan, but perhaps not his counterpart because somewhere in the back of his mind he thought the man had mentioned boredom. He was always bored. "You tire of things too quickly." Another passing thought. Just a passing thought. Time had found Ethan and there was the silent understanding he wasn't getting away without more of an effort next time. Always the case.

It was gone. It had left him and he missed it. The hollowed out sensation of pure contentment had left with nothing but ending thoughts. Coming back, with wispy smoke that rose, twisting up up up. Tasting the taste of dried up flowers, crushed and burning. And slowly, slowly, it'd come back, a calm inside the monster of nobody. Ethan sighed.

Shift. Reality came back, but turning his head to the left and the other man was gone. There was a name for it that Ethan knew but didn't have. The sensation of caring wasn't there, it never would be. "No," Ethan spoke, his voice quiet and far away. Somewhere there had been words, words that created something that was uninteresting enough, the tale of a story that left a dull impression on his mind, just enough to touch the overactive imagination of a Tattooed Man. There was the caramel-skinned man, his dear Montague, hunched over and creeping in Scaramouche Venetian mask, gold in colour, chasing the silhouette of a large woman nude and bouncing, fleeing the glass-faced man who clutched a stiletto dagger in his scabbed left hand. That was the price of an overactive sense of creativity. He turned from the other man without paying any real attention to… anything. The curling wisps were enticing. More enticing than anything he saw in the world outside those windows. Curvature. Curvature, curvature, curvature. Ethan hummed.

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End
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