The Intersection: Your Future Is Smoke

A red light shone on the painted head of a doll. The doll's head sat on a windowsill, facing out, as if on display. There was violin music playing from inside the room, muffled and maudlin. Beneath the window a woman lumbered stiffly up a flight of stairs, nursing one leg and leaning heavily on the rail, which creaked under her weight.

"Your future's in my pipe," she said, "I'm smoking your future." She smiled while drawing deeply on her pipe.

"That's how it is," she continued. "I smoke everybody's future. Everybody that walks by. If I see them or not. It don't matter."

She stopped to inspect me for a moment. Her expression became roguish. I half expected her to wink. I tried to watch the trail of my future plume from her pipe, but it was a breezy night and the wind blew away any evidence.

"See?" she said. "You have no more future. I smoked it."