• PROLOGUE
    I recently realized who I am. Or more properly, what I am. I am a cigarette. I am a cigarette resting between the upper-most knuckles of a twelve year old girls pointer and middle fingers. A twelve year old girl who might go by a simple name. Something like Ashley or Brooke. Brooke. Yes, that is her name. I am a cancer stick held roughly between simple Ashley Brooke's fingers. A thoughtless girl who many presumed to be worry and care free. A hardly noticeable, three inch, white paper rolled neatly around deadly contents. The girl holding me wouldn't know what she was doing. Ashley was only twelve. She'd been through much more than most simple preteens, though. Much more than she had asked for. Much more than she needed. Much more than was necessary for a twelve year old simple, careless, worry-free girl called Ashley Brooke to learn a lesson. Much more than she had bargained for when she accepted the strange offer of something she had no clue about from the cool older boy who said he was called Neko. Neko, who was seventeen. Neko, whose just-as-simple friends didn't correct him when he simply spat out the two simple syllables of his simple nickname. But what simple Ashley Brooke had not known about the simple cigarette, or the simple cool kids, or the simple parking lot of the simple corner store, was that it was everything but simple. The world she was living in was only a mere lie to estranged Ashley Brooke. She had much to learn. And this day, this hour, this minute was the time. The second the words came out as a reply to Neko's offer was when her lesson truly began. Right here. Right now. She started soaking up what she didn't know she was being taught. And so unfolds the story of what I am and what I do to people. I am only in knowledge that I am a cigarette. I do not care what I do to people. I like myself and I will live on as the simply complex cancer stick passed from the hand of seventeen year old Neko to the fingers of twelve year old Ashley Brooke. And I will not stop doing what I am doing even after Ashley Brooke learns her lesson.