30 June 2012
My lighter flared, a small suffocated spark in the cold night air. I lit my cig with a deep inhale; I loved the gentle head rush that came with the first drag, the way the smoke swirled and lingered, winding it's toxic fingers through my hair, leaving a stale yet comforting odour. It reminded me of him, his smell; like worn leather and beer and tobacco. More than that, I loved the time smoking gave me; five stolen minutes here and there, like now, under the darkening evening sky. Time to contemplate. I gazed upwards, watching the little plumes of noxious smoke blend into the silhouette of the trees, the umber and gold streaked sky was quickly turning grey, tumultuous clouds blowing in from the west, dark and foreboding. A storm was approaching and the breeze was becoming brisker; it blew ash from the end of my cig and found its way into the holes in my cardigan, making me shiver. I wondered what he was doing right now, if he was standing somewhere gazing at the sky, cig in hand. If he was thinking about me too. If he was even still alive.
A bat darted overhead in a seemingly erratic flight path and it's quick black form cut through my thoughts like an arrow released from an over-tightened bow. I took one last drag on my cig before casting its brown-stained end into the bushes. Thinking time over. Back inside my small lounge was cluttered with scattered papers, over-stuffed files had disgorged their contents all over the floor, books were piled in the corner, post-it notes marking important pages. But the mess made sense to me, there was an order to the apparent chaos. It was the product of six months work, six months of digging and investigation. I was on the edge of the truth, of finding out what had happened to him.
At first I hadn't been too worried; he was always unreliable when it came to communication. So, a few days with no calls, messages or emails wasn't unusual. But as the days stretched into a week I started to wonder if he was alright. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get in contact with him. I started to get a feeling that something was really wrong; every time I thought about him my stomach knotted into a tight ball and my heart thumped sickeningly heart against my ribcage. I needed to find out. So I booked a £500 flight to Nepal and started searching. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
© Irrational_Kimmi/Kim H.
Missing: Chapter One, Part One • Opuss № I