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eBook Category: Horror
eBook Description: How far will a chain smoker go to soothe his nicotine fit, when he's trapped in an elevator for three days? Far too far in "The Lust of Lungs."

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Needles and Sins, 1993
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2002

24 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [54 KB], eReader (PDB) [25 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [11 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [11 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [63 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [82 KB], hiebook (KML) [56 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [41 KB], iSilo (PDB) [9 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [12 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [39 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [19 KB]
Words: 3231
Reading time: 9-12 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"Arnzen is a major new talent and voice in the field of quirky dark suspsense."--Booklovers

***TOP SECRET***
BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, AND FIREARMS
CLASSIFIED DOC PM2PkDa
RE: CASE 0LL34/BLRAM EXHIBIT 2

I suppose it is black irony that a restaurant critic like myself would begin this journal by stating that I'm starving here. I'm dying of starvation, and I'm actually sitting down in the corner of this godforsaken broken elevator to write about it. For free, no less!

But perhaps the Gazette will allow me to break these pages down into sections for a weekly column, while I recoup after this insane travesty. If I'm in here much longer, perhaps this diary could sell on publisher's row! Who knows? For now, though, I must accept this journal as my only companion.

So, companion, let me begin at the start: in the beginning there was an elevator in a newspaper building, dangling from its frayed cable, precarious as life itself, aging along with the rest of the world outside of itself, tiring from the ups-and-downs. And one day (how long it has been now, even I can't say) a humble restaurant critic who was returning from his nightly test of some wannabe food pusher's bilious yuppie delights stepped inside of this elevator, to return to his office for his nightly report.

And the aged cable snapped.

Now, those who know me--or those who have seen me, at least, for few know who I actually am, since I work so late at night--would say that I am the one who broke that cable, due to my oversized weight. I am not ashamed to admit that I am obese; consuming foods (if you can call half the tripe I've eaten "food" at all) is my life. But so it is for this building's maintenance crew, and it is there, I believe, where the problem began: fat and lazy, they have never tested the elevator cables (let alone clean my office!). And they certainly have been too lazy to fix the one that I'm in now, else I would have been discovered by now.

By rough estimate (I do not, unfortunately, wear a watch), I would say that I have been trapped down here in the bottom of this elevator shaft for three days. It was a Friday night, I think, when this accident occurred, and this is why I believe it to be three days of isolation: the building is essentially empty during weekends, save for the city reporters and wire catchers, who spend the majority of their time taking hits from a bottle behind the secret doors of their office, oblivious to the world around them, the world that they supposedly observe. These people never liked me anyway ... regardless, they will not come to my aid, I'm sure of it.

But enough about all that; suffice it to say that the elevator broke ... and so did my legs during the crash, as I discovered the moment I regained consciousness. I do have the ability to crawl around, but it is relatively painful. No bother; I've had broken bones before, during my hellish stint in the military, and these legs of mine can deal with the needle-and-pins sensations. It's the stomach pains that get to me, more than anything else.

So, you ask, my dear companion, how have I survived for three days (or more!) with two snapped legs and absolutely no food or water?

I smoke. I have survived, luckily, much the same way a factory worker survives work, a barfly gets through the night, a housewife gets through the day, and--most appropriately, I think--how a soldier tolerates hell itself: by the magic of tobacco. Appetite suppressant, general analgesic, and oral fixation debilitator, all wrapped up in one thin sheath of rolled rice paper. Tar and nicotine in gaseous form--fuel for the soul.

I learned this through my experience in the Army. Days in the field with only MREs, or worse, C-Rations, I would simply smoke, and survive. It sounds silly, I suppose, to the average civilian, but it is a truth that every soldier knows. Thus, the requisite cigarette in every pack of C-Rats. Thus, the reason for tobacco as currency in penitentiaries. There are primitive tribes that eat tobacco as a staple in their diets. Soldiers smoke it. And soldiers survive.

Not that I would ever smoke those gratis B-grade tobacco sticks the Army would supply us with in those days. I am--and always have been--one of a dying breed: those who smoke self-rolled cigarettes. A habit, I embarrassingly admit, that I picked up in high school, very long ago. I have a large leather pouch that I carry with me, a golden bundle of dried leaves that I hungrily sprinkle on fine rice paper whenever I get the urge (which is quite frequently here, in the abyssal shaft of doom).

In fact, I'm going to break here, to enjoy one. Excuse me while I break the city ordinances by smoking in an elevator! What sacrilege! Ha!

Smoke signals. I'm blowing smoke signals--billowy rings of yellow smog, which float out through the wreckage above me like cartoonish thought balloons that shout HELP! before fading into nothingness.

You must forgive me, my dear companion, for not visiting for awhile. I am very tired. And I am very low on tobacco. I must ration it, now--damn, if I only had a timepiece!

While I was away from you, my friend, I slept in fits. And in my sleep, I dreamed of killing non-smokers. It was a nightmare, I suppose, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. In the dream, I had been sent to review a surreal new restaurant called THE FLAB, and I had inadvertently sat in the non-smoking section. As I always do, I immediately went through the extended, flaunting rigmarole of dramatically rolling a cigarette (it is my trademark, you see, to go through this ceremony--I'm well known for it, and it sends the signal immediately to the restaurant staff that I have arrived to rate their food, and that their future in this city hangs in the balance I hold with my fingers, the fingers that will soon pound the keys of a typewriter ... those same fingers that slowly draw out time while tortuously twisting the ends of my self-made cigarette as if I had the owner's testicles in my hands!).

Anyway ... back to the dream. I had ignited one end of my exceptionally-well made cigarette, when a pointy-headed man at the table beside mine chastised me for killing him with second-hand smoke. He called me "Rolly," which was in deference to my weight, as well as my habit.

I'm not quite sure what happened next, but I remember that I was suddenly eating the meat of his bicep, hungrily smacking my lips on his salty blood. Afterwards, I smoked another cigarette, a thick, after-dinner one (another trademark of mine, to both reflect on how to describe the meal in my column, as well as to draw out the owner's fears) tapping the ashes atop the poor non-smoker's bloody pulp on the floor, intending to write a very positive review of the restaurant. "THE FLAB is all meat. You must try the arm!" or something insipid like that.

It was a very good dream, despite it's horror, because I awoke without hunger, satisfied.

Since I am nearly out of tobacco, instead of inhaling it right now I will write about it, instead. Forgive me, companion, but I am quite bored, and I can think of nothing else. But listen: I think I have figured out why smokers smoke, and why it is keeping me alive down here.

The body, you see, can feed on anything that we put into it. It does not have to be what some people call "food" at all (which explains why my fellow journalists are quite satisfied with hot dogs from the vendor out front on a daily basis). "Food" is a relative idea, anyway. Food is essentially fuel. We are consumers, you see. We are machines, our engines requiring only something, anything, to consume. Like an automobile: its engine will still run on alcohol ... even water ... for awhile, if there is no gasoline to fuel it.