100 Word Challenge: "Up In Smoke"

[This week's 100 Word Challenge word is "Habit". This is called "Up In Smoke"]

It didn't solve anything. That wasn't the point. It was dumb, and it shortened your life, and it made everything smell bad. You couldn't do it anywhere anymore. It was incredibly expensive. Strangers always asked you to bum one. The craving was nearly constant, the need, the empty gnawing in your skull every time you let yourself go without one for a few hours. It wouldn't help, and it didn't fix it, but for a tiny, precise moment, the tension eased, you didn't want one for an hour or so, and you felt just a little bit like living again.

One A Day Until The Day I Die Podcast: "Leap"

["OneADayUntilIDie.Com" is the home of a 100 Word Story Podcast, believe it or not. This is my entry for the topic "Leap," called "Leap Year"]

The red leather toe of her shoe made tiny figures in the air between her and I.

"Want to know something?," she said. "I'm really only seven. I was born on Leap Year Day."

I looked at her black hair as she sipped. The evening felt inevitable, like a movie I've seen already.

"Is that so?," I said.

"Yes," she said, and her toe stopped. "Have you ever slept with a seven year old girl?"

It feels like that sometimes, I thought.

"Never," I said.

She stood up, her dress the shimmering blue promise of tomorrow's rain.

"Let's," she said.

100WordStory.Org Photo Prompt: "One Last Note"

[Over at 100 Word Story Dot Org, they post a photo prompt to induce acts of storytude. This is called "One Last Note"]

When she accused me of stealing, when she said she was out of milk when she wasn't, I didn't roll my eyes. I reminded myself, she was a lady, she had been young and beautiful once, she had raised children and screwed and fought and loved and lied here. She needed my help, but thought she didn't. She left notes everywhere, to help her memory, some of them useful. When I came as close as the firemen would let me, a yellow Post It fluttered to a stop at my feet. In her shaky hand, it said "Turn Off Oven."