I keep a fine cigar rolled up in the leg of my shorts every day. It’s getting awful crisp lately; it’s ready to break apart any second. I haven’t had the sweet kiss of nicotine in three years. I miss it, and I know it misses me.                                             
               

Sometimes I lie, baking with the sand in the sun. I point my cigar up at the scornful star in the middle of my painful meditation, hoping it will light. I feel it smolder over every inch of my skin, over the charred wrinkles of my face when I pucker to take a drag.
               

In my mind’s eye, I can see the roll start to smoke in frustration. A feathery smoke hits me with the taste of, ahh, a fine, old wine. I hesitate to pry my eyes open, to stare at the burning tip with disbelief, but the glue under my eyelids holds them half-shut, and the weight of my limbs have doubled in blood. I can hear the crackling of the paper burn through the odd sensation of my body swaying, just like the waves on the shore, just like the palm trees; and I inhale so slowly.

Then, I open my eyes. There’s no fire, no smoke, even the impatient expression on the cigar is gone. There’s no rush, just the stinging slap of ultraviolet rays.              
               

Sometimes a bottle will wash up on the shore. It seems like the same odd looking bottle every time, like it got too much heat from the sun and bent out of shape. It’s always the same sort of thing inside, something like “send help,” or “NEED DOCTOR,” or some sort of occultist text. Why send for help in a bottle? What good does it do? I’ve found every one of that sorry bastard’s bottles, and I never send any help. I don’t even know where he’s at!
               

In my case, I utilize my bottles in a much better fashion. Take for example two mornings ago: a bottle washed up, with a pencil inside and a small piece of paper. I opened it, scratched out the “S.O.S.” on the front, and on the back wrote: “SEND LIGHTERS.” Yeah, my package of lighters hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m expecting it to arrive tomorrow. I hope someone gets it soon so I can light this sweet roll. It’s been too long without this simple pleasure.
               

Believe it or not, I don’t deserve to be here. I shouldn’t be on this island. I shouldn’t spend my days frying in the sun. I used to be somebody. Though, I think, what good does it do to a stranded man to ponder about the past?

*               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *              
I moved into Las Vegas not too long after the U.S.A. settled their qualms with ISIS and annexed Israel as a territory. The military had just been too close to another world war, but all was good now, and they needed more people. Times were changing, public perception was changing, and propaganda was everywhere. I got sucked in.
               

“Vegas is cheap,” my dad said. “At least it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than San Francisco, trust me. They’re practically giving away the houses out there now.”     I looked down and hit my cigarette. 
“They have an air force base down there, where they used to test the bombs for the Second World War. I don’t doubt they’ve taken care of the radiation since. It’s an alright place if you settle far from central. Way off to the south is nice.”          

With a baby on the way, I took my old man’s advice. My wife, Jan, and I moved into a crumbling apartment, surrounded by drug addicts, a few miles from central. I worked for a while at the airport as a loader while I went to school for a pilot’s license. At that time we had just two months before that baby popped out of my wife, and things were moving too slow for us. So, I took a job in the air force base on Nellis. The pay wasn’t all that great, but we were given our own home. It was unconventional, not at all what we had planned for Lilith, but we filled that home with our dreams for her.

I wasn’t flying any planes, or riding in them, but I was managing a lot of files. I’d spend eleven hours a day sorting through boxes and folders, delivering manila folders for sergeants and majors. Life was easy then. The job, the pay, the work; it was all so simple. All I had to worry about was watching Lilith grow.

Unfortunately, a few years after I joined the base, tensions in Israel rose again, and a lot of things changed. Many of the people I worked with were disappearing, and no one was offering any explanation to us. Officials above me were even going as far as to discourage us from asking about them. Rumors made their way in and out of everyone’s mouth eventually. Paranoia slowly gripped us all.
*               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *              
“Don’t show any fear! That’s how they get you,” one co-worker said.

“If yuh show feah you show them that you know! Ha- you give it away and they snatch ya up. You’ll be gone fo’ a few days.”

It seemed to be true. I saw the same rumors in the eyes of the people I worked with. One guy I knew personally, George, had been gone for two weeks, and when he came back there was something off about him that made my stomach turn.

His eyes were bloodshot and had sagging sacs of purple skin clinging to them. He was tired. Not just tired, inexplicably exhausted.
               

Through every one of his restricted glances and gazes he screamed about paranoia. During work he slouched stiff, did a short burst of work, then looked straight ahead like he remembered something about himself, and froze like that for a minute until he had another short burst of work. During lunch, the two of us stood in line, completely silent, where we’d usually be speaking. George looked down, straight down, when he added a scoop of military mush to his plate, and moved his head like an expressionless camera scanning the room when he turned. Once, just before he turned to walk down the line, he looked at me from the corner of his eyes- the very corner, almost on the tip of his eyelash- and something left his gaze. Something like, “it’s not right, Clay, it’s not right what they’re doing here.” That was the last time I saw him. After that I lived most of my base days in fear. 
*               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *              
               

“Why don’t you ever finish your breakfast, Clay?”  My wife looked down at warm food with disappointment.
“I have to go babe. Bye.” She stopped me just before the door.

“You said things wouldn’t be this way.”
“Listen babe, you're just grouchy. Don't even start."
"Don’t even start? That’s just the thing isn’t it? You can’t fix a problem you won’t even acknowledge,” her chest was puffed, like she was in the middle of an argument, her hands were rising in the air. “I’m fed up, Clay. You’ve been such an asshole here, really, I-” she tried to purse her shaky lips, “I told you I didn’t want Lilith growing up this way. If you want to step on my cooking every morning, fine! You push me and squeeze me too hard when we sleep to hurt me. You don’t want to do this. You aren’t happy.”
“Would you shut up and watch our baby, girl? Geez, I have a few bad days at the base and you throw me a b**** fit girl, this is incredible!”

But she was right. If anyone could tell how I felt those days it was she. She was there to see me stare past the television in the evenings, with a frustrated glaze over my eyes and a shaking, nervous knee.

I left that morning to work, heartlessly. I hadn’t shown her a smile in a week. I remember feeling bad, feeling guilty, like scum, because she had become someone I walked all over when my hours at the base were put in.

The argument echoed in my head all morning, and something clicked on the way to work. Something about how I’d buy her flowers on the way home from the base’s shop; or I could take her to the half-pricing matinees at the theater tonight.

Of course, that same morning was the morning a few steady footsteps broke through the clouds in my heads like hammers against glass, and Sgt. Daniels, a higher-up four ranks above me, handed me a paper. I knew what this paper was. I should have taken care of Jan and Lilith when I had the chance.

*               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *                              

I spent months in some underground part of the base, under the heavy high of a cocktail of amnesiacs and painkillers. For a while, everyday was the same, confusing, hopeless blur. I’d pull my head up, so weakly, trying desperately to piece my mind together, mumbling into the spinning room, but I slumped again every time, “hum- hum… ahh! Whu- wha… hmm, hmm,” and dazed.
              

  I do remember glimpses as I was being wheeled from one ward to the next: men with blood coming out of their ears. They were mad, absolutely insane, one to the point of getting down to his knees, his screams breaking his voice, “I can hear everything! Oh, Jesus, I hear everything. God damn, god damn!” and he slammed his broken fists into the cement in front of him as hard as he could. I heard something in his voice that caused it to crack, like he couldn’t scream loud enough. It was the same screams that crawl out of you in a nightmare: the choking fear that will not escape you fast enough, and it turns your stomach into knots and you feel the hot, sweat grip of panic on your shoulders.
               

He continued, looking up at the ceiling, but his eyes, blinded and completely white from these experiments, couldn’t even see. His skull almost doubled , cracked open exposing a swollen brain, pulsing like a heart.

I was kept awake forcibly for two weeks straight. No sleeping. Meals came only once a day, although the books, the instructional programs, the exercise, those came almost without stopping. At the end of those two weeks, I was finally allowed to sleep for four days.
*               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *              
“Good job, Clay. You’re making excellent progress. Brain use has increased by almost three thousand percent in just six of these sleeping cycles. You’re making great strides for your country, Clay,” a voice sounded through the speakers above me. Doctor Kruvok turned around behind the one-way mirror and met with his council of physicians and doctors.

My brain slammed against my cranium.

If I strained myself, I could still hear the laugh of my wife when we spent time together, and smell the warmth in her food. I could still feel her hands on my back after long days at work, or her hair tickle my nose when we slept. I could hear the cries of Lilith call me to bed at night, too early for my wife and I. But these thoughts were not allowed in my brain, and new thoughts- ones of science and engineering and medicine- flooded my memories and drowned out the last sweet glimpses I had. 

My brain was an engine, running on all cylinders ready to choke and smoke any second. Each connection in my brain jolted me with several volts a second. The last thing I remember, after the drugs, after the learning, after the pain- was blacking out. Like an answered prayer, my sight tunneled and went black. I got cold, real clammy, and every one of my senses gave up. I remember, swimming in my consciousness all alone, and I held onto to the last memory I had of Jan and Lilith- leaving them heartlessly for work one morning.

*               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *               *              

I’m lying in the sun. I can feel the rays permeate my skin and go into my blood cells. My skin is red, and wrinkly like leather now. Still, my cigar does not smoke.   

I stay there until I smoke. The lining of my organs is now thick and calloused, inflamed with heat. Clunk.
I sit up. On the shore are three jars stuffed with lighters. My meditations have worked.

I open a jar, so slowly, restricted by my thick, burned skin. I flick a lighter, a Bic. It’s been so long. I hold the precious flame up to my cigar and take the slower, most passionate breath.