Purgatory

Pavel blew out a final billow of cigarette smoke and looked up once more, with a certain disbelieving disdain, at the huge sign hanging overhead. “’The Van Horten Wing’,” he read aloud, “’Supporting the World’s Endangered Cultures’.” He flicked the spent cigarette into the gutter and cleared his throat. “What absolute bullshit.” Plucked from the incredible high of his dangerous liaison with Vicki just two nights earlier, Pavel was now in a deep despair, riddled with doubt and guilt and confusion. He hadn’t had a cigarette in three years, but found himself on some kind of long-repressed auto-pilot, buying a pack and a lighter, placing the slender cylinder between his lips and inhaling its acrid pungency with a desperation he had thought long gone. Had it been in any way possible at this nauseatingly public event, he’d have showed up staggering drunk and made a deliberate spectacle of himself. Anything to kill the inner demons who were so viciously twisting his innards.

WARNING: Readers must be 18+ due to mature themes and language.