November 20, 2003
ashley lost his place in the social world, and this time it wasn't by choice. he took 4 sticks of cigarettes (not more because he was planning on quitting the next week) and left home. he didn't leave a note behind, nothing so little as to explain his decision to flee. there were 2 reasons for this. ashley's right hand had been incapacitated due to his repeated attempts at suicide (no one ever told him to slit lengthwise) and also, it would be of great consequence that ashley did in fact live all by himself. he thought about his cigarettes, and how he was going to husband them for his time away from home. if he took one a day, then going by simple arithmetic he would be out of cigarettes in 4 days. for the rest of his life, perhaps. he then considered lighting one up every time he felt the most vicious need to. considering he wasn't an addict, this was as frivolous as things could get for him. he would probably end up watching his cigarettes fust up and grow stale, in concurrence to his promise not to indulge. as he heedlessly considered proposal after proposal to make use of his 4 sticks, ashley found shade under a banyan and sat down. he thought about things he usually thought about when left alone, things like homosexuality and wild poodles. when given space and time, ashley was able to come up with theories to explain matters close to the heart, and matters which greatly bothered him. once, he convinced himself that the poor were ugly not by coincidence, but by a consanguinity between Wealth and Ability to live which made perfect sense to the Natural Selection theory put forth by Darwin. ashley was delighted with his finding and confidentially studied poor people on the streets and tried to understand which part of them exactly made them ugly and then saw if he could identify any patterns. but when ashley started thinking about homosexuality he would become mellow and agitated. he came up with his own slogan to taunt those around him, as well as to make them think he was queer and a bigot. 'heterosexuality's a fad'. this made ashley very happy as he felt himself being closer to understanding himself as a cultured and aware person. but ashley wasn't gay. he just was like that.
he finally decided what he was going to do with his cigarettes. he would light one up, hold it in his hand, and call out to passers-by asking them if they wanted a free cigarette. it was irresistable to find out if anyone would take it before it completely burnt out. with the second stick, ashley would not light it, but slowly let it dissolve in his mouth. under his tongue. and whatever wouldn't dissolve, he'd chew up. and swallow. with the third one, he decided to see if he could burn it all up in one drag. ashley had never tried it before and was a little fearful, but was determined to try it anyway. he thought he'd keep the last one just in case he had a vicious need for it.
ashley reached into his pocket and found that he'd forgotten his lighter. but he couldn't go back home to get it, because he'd already left home. it was one of those morals thing. if you leave home and then go back, it only means you're weak and really bad at making decisions. so he thought he'd live without the lighter. forced into a change of plans, ashley stared blankly down the road, imagining his house as it was, on the downside of the slope. he wasn't
that far away in reality. but then he wanted to be far away from reality. ashley decided to start a family under the banyan. he adopted the 4 cigarettes and named them neil, paul, lucas and ashley jr, the baby of the family.
2:12 AM
