Characters & Cigarettes

Ava

Ava takes a long drag from her cigarette, pausing to let the smoke stir in the back of her throat before exhaling. The nicotine rushes through her system, the euphoric feeling it leaves behind settling deep in her bones and making her blood hum. She takes another drag while leaning back on the hard wooden bench she is currently perched on the edge of and regards her new painting project through slitted eyes.

It's a piece more tranquil than her others, filled with less hatred and sorrow than her others. It's a landscape mimicking the look of the park sitting before her. Peaceful. Calm. Almost, in a way, more pleasant to look at than her other works of art in which one can feel the sadness of Ava's life seep through the layers of paint.

With a heavy sigh, Ava throws the butt of her cigarette to the ground and stomps it out with the bottom of her boot before picking it up again and stuffing it back in her pack behind her other sticks of cancer she had yet to use. Her hair slips past her shoulder and falls in front of her face, the wild black strands kissing her cheeks as she starts to gather up her small collection of paints and brushes.

A shrill of laughter stops Ava in her clean up process. Just across the park is a little girl being chased around by what appears to be her mother. More laughter pierces the air as the little girl is caught around the waist and spun through the air. Smiles are shared between the two, a bond of love and trust clear between them. Pain and longing seep into Ava's heart, pulsing with every beat of it. She remembers the happy times with her family before her father passed away.

Summers in Disneyland with ice cream and faint sunburns across their noses. Winters of decorating Christmas trees and drinking hot chocolate while watching the snow fall. Father-daughter dances with dinner dates and leaving early just to get ice cream. Sunday breakfasts, movie nights, bike riding, car rides jamming to their favorite music. Twelve years of laughter and smiles with her best friend and then he was gone. As a police officer, it was always a concern when he left everyday about whether or not he would come back. But to a twelve-year-old, those concerns lay in the deepest depths of their innocent mind. Like a monster in a closet, it's not real.

Ava learned the hard way that monsters come in all shapes and forms. Whether it be the man who shot her father or the poor excuse of a step-father with wandering hands or the painful silence of her absent mother, Ava had become used to the horrors that life loved to offer.

Shaking the bleak thoughts from her head, Ava wiped her paint-stained fingers on the already stained legs of her pants. It wasn't unusual for Ava's clothing to be streaked with different colors of paint. It was a messy but welcome consequence of the way Ava loved to work. In her mind, letting the paint speak for itself was the best way to go about creating. If that meant landing all over her as well as her canvas then so be it.

Shoving all of her things into her backpack, Ava slung it over her shoulder, stumbling slightly on her clumsy feet as she adjusted it until it felt secure hanging against her back. Lighting up another cigarette, Ava kept her head down as she walked, her Doc Marten's thudding heavily against the broken concrete of the sidewalk. She preferred to keep to herself most of the time. With paint coating her fingers and a cigarette between her lips, Ava was perfectly content sitting and getting lost in her art. Depending on the location, people watching or the sound of The Breakfast Club playing in the background usually accompanied her creating sessions.

Couples and families and kids hanging with their friends all milled past her, enjoying the warm sun that the April day had to offer. Ava recognized a few of the faces that happened to walk by, all frequent visitors of the park like Ava was. It was hard not to be a frequent visitor anywhere in this town though considering its small size. Big enough for a wallflower like her to be able to go unnoticed and unrecognized by most, but small enough that with as much attention as Ava paid to her surroundings, she could place anyone's face and where she had seen it last. It was a blessing - or a curse depending on how one would like to look at it - that she had such an ability. It meant being able to breeze by in school with grades good enough to pass without much effort on her part. However, it also meant feeling the crushing weight of loneliness press on her chest, and it loved to press a little harder every time she came across a face she knew yet didn't receive the same recognition back from.

Yet that wasAva. A smoker. A painter. A loner. She had long ago accepted these labels asfacts, embracing them by sticking to herself and ignoring the pangs of longingthat managed to creep their way up her spine from time to time. With one lastdrag of her cigarette, Ava crushed the remains between her fingers and stuffedit in her back pocket, shrugging her shoulders to readjust her backpack beforecontinuing on her way towards what she refused to call home.