Work Text:
Jax brought the cigarette to his mouth, taking a long drag and sighing the smoke out. It wafted up gently. The faint glow of the cigarette did nothing to illuminate the dark house, nor his kitchen table, but maybe that was for the best. Nobody wanted to see it anyway. Especially not him.
He couldn’t see anything. That was his astronomically weak excuse to light a cigarette, that he couldn’t see anything. Not that it mattered. Not that he cared about another smoking butt to be smothered to death under his heel on the hardwood floor. Hey, maybe he was working on painting it. God knew the floor needed it. If he only smoked enough cigarettes and snubbed them all on the floor, he could turn the entire wood platform a burnt charcoal. To match the darkness.
The darkness. There was a reason for the darkness, he knew, and probably a reason for the cigarettes as well but that was a problem for another day. Or night. It was dark in Jax’s kitchen because it was dark outside because it had become night because the universe had sensed Jax needed a good smoke under the cover of darkness. Or, no! The cigarette was emitting its soft glow, erasing the cover of darkness! Not that Jax could see anything on the table, not like his future was thrown haphazardly in front of him. As he clenched the roll between his teeth, grimacing at the burnt taste, he drew the pack out of his pocket, almost spitting the remainder of the smoke onto the table before remembering his expert renovations plan. Plus his future on the table. That too.
As he flicked the lighter, placing another cigarette in his mouth, the brief flash of yellow light lit up the table in front of him, revealing its cracked, destroyed wood. More notably, and something he probably should have thought of first, was his course selections for college. College! Humble little Jax, the boy who barely graduated high school, wanted to go to college. And his entrance essay, recommendations, course selections, all sitting there sweetly on his table.
Unfinished, of course. He hadn’t even gotten started! But it wasn’t like there was enough light in the room to see the calendar, anyway, which would have shown him it was three days until the twentieth, which was the due date.
And the calendar was dead wrong, and it was indoubtably past the twentieth. But it was fine, it wasn’t like there was enough light in the room to see the calendar. And you didnt’t need light to put a cigarette in your mouth.
Jax looked up at the rustling in the kitchen, someone being there with him.
“What are you doing here, Jax?”
“My college applications, Mom, remember?” another long drag of his cigarette made the end glow. “I’m gonna go to college.”
His mother turned on their old kitchen light, turning to him. He hissed, squinting, revolted by the room he was in when it was bathed in the glorious light of the cheapest energy plan they could get. The woman standing there was mean. Her voice shook, sounding like it was being dragged upon rocks as it went along, and she looked so, so tired.
Maybe. He couldn’t actually see her face. He rememebered it looked tired, though, so his mind filled in the blanks.
“No you’re not,” she said with a sigh. Jax’s mom then sat down opposite him, her facial features nonexistant, smudged. Jax felt apologetic for that. “It’s Friday.”
“Yes,” Jax told her, in a response. “It’s Friday.”
She tilted her head. To someone else, it would have seemed inquisitive, but he knew she was not curious but judgemental, and he sighed as she began. “Shouldn’t you be out with your friends?”
“Because its a Friday night?” he asked sincerely.
Jax’s mother looked down at her hands with a frown. “Yes,” she told him, in a response, “it’s Friday.”
“No, Mom. I’m gonna miss my college application deadline,” Jax said.
“Because of the drugs you’re taking right now?” Jax’s mom asked, and he frowned accusingly. She never talked like this.
“Because if I go out with my friends, I’ll miss my college application deadline.”
“Friends?”
“Yeah, Mom, my friends.” Jax looked down at his hand. It wasn’t a cigarette he was holding, it never was- a little joint was there instead. So she had been right. He was sure she’d smile in smug satisfaction at his wrongness if she had a face.
She rubbed his shoulder briefly.
And everything came back to him for a brief second of confusion, how her touch had never been the rubbing or comforting kind but the sharp painful kind that took a world apart. She had had a face, a beautiful one, that didn’t reflect their world at all because their world was an ugly, gray one, just like the room they were in right now. She had never turned the light on for him before, and had never pointed out the amount of weed he smoked a day except for to steal it and use it for her own. She hadn’t cared about his friends. Fridays held no more weight then Wednesdays, or Thursdays, or Saturdays, and when he watched her ignore everyone she ever cared about he copied her, and it was probably the wrong thing to do but how was Jax to know? And she hadn’t cared when he had been too high to submit his college papers in time and she hadn’t cared when he got into trouble with some people and she hadn’t cared when he had found that abonded building.
Aand then she took her hand off him, and everything settled into the way it always was. Jax took another long drag of his cigarette which was actually weed but he didn’t really care.
“Jax, sweet.” she looked at him dead on, more directly then she ever had, ironic since she didn’t even have a face this time. “What friends? You don’t have any friends.”
“Yeah, I do,” Jax sighed, starting to gather his papers. Dawn was coming. Maybe.
“Ribbit doesn’t count, Jax,” she said apologetically. And he almost rolled with it when wait, wait a second, and he realized she had never called him ‘sweet’ as a pet name before. Jax’s mother had never called him ‘Jax’ in his entire life, because it was so easy to forget sometimes that ‘Jax’ wasn’t his real name and Jax’s mother hence would never have called him that. She couldn’t have known about Ribbit either, and Jax tried to hurry up gathering the papers. The sun was definetly coming now.
“Don’t say her name,” Jax told her simply.
“Oh, sweet!” Jax’s mother laughed. “You killed Ribbit a long time ago. She doesn’t count. She never did.”
Jax didn’t say anything.
“Why are you packing up?” she asked, standing up on her chair and laying down on the table with a mockery in her voice. “Oh, are you afraid of Ribbit?”
His heart wasn’t working. He didn’t have it. “No,” Jax whispered. “I just need to do my applications.”
“And Kaufmo,” his mother continued. “Silly cartoons! Silly, silly characters. It would be nice if someone cared, wouldn’t it? Jax, would you like Pomni to care?”
Jax shook his head frantically. There were always more papers. They were right there in front of him yet he couldn’t gather them fast enough because there were always more and if he could just fill them in-
“Aw, hon. I don’t think Pomni cares.”
“Let me fill out my papers,” Jax murmered, staring down at the pile, tears dripping down his face. “Let me go to college.”
“Did you forget?” his mother swirled a glass of expensive wine she hadn’t had a second ago. It was just cheap vodka and a splash of red food dye. Jax’s mom loved to feel fancy. “You were high in a Wendy’s parking lot on the twentieth. You laid there uselessly, like the stupid fucking waste of space you are, honey, when twelve noon passed. You didn’t even know! Four days until you realized is a lot of days, Jax.”
Jax started shaking.
“And then,” his mother continued with a flourish of her glass, “debt! Debt, of all things! I think Pomni-”
“I know!” Jax exploded. “You dont think I fucking know? She hates me! Ribbit hated me! I failed Kaufmo! I pressed the button! It was me! Me, me, me!”
His mother wavered in the air, like she wasn’t there at all. Then she came back, sharper than ever; except, of course, her face. She was sitting back in one of the kitchen chairs, and there were somehow even more papers on the table Jax didn’t bother to notice. She clicked her tongue disapprovingly, then smiled. Or, would have.
“Go home, Jax,” she said sweetly. “They’re waiting.”
“Take me,” Jax said suddenly.
A beat.
“You know the rules, honey. You have to be alive to die. You’re not really alive here at all.”
And Jax jolted up ramrod in his bed, his fictional, cartoon bed, with no smoking joints or grinning moms or college deadlines. He looked at his cartoon body, his purple rabbitoid shape, and nearly screamed.
And it was still dark.