The Drawer Of Death

"I can't see the end of me. My whole expanse I cannot see. I formulate infinity, stored deep inside of me."

My lighter ran out this afternoon. I've never been too hot at keeping hold of the things, so I tend to either buy disposables or just steal them from friends or even total strangers. Lighters are transient like that. Hell, the lighter phenomena could be a post in itself.

Which is neither here nor there. The most important thing about the transience of lighters is that a regular smoker will have at least seven of them in his or her living environment at any one time. I didn't panic when my lighter died. I knew its brethren were close at hand.

But could I find them? Could I fuck. I checked my writing desk, the accumulated debris beneath it, the top shelf of my wardrobe, even underneath my bed. No lighters. Not one.

Shit.

Because there's only one other place in The Darkened Room where one can be sure of finding a lighter. I didn't want to have to go in there, but addiction is often more powerful than fear. Indeed, it is fear that largely leads to addiction, and I must have my cigarettes.

If you have any appropriately sinister music, please feel free to slip it into your CD player now, because we're about to take a trip into the murky depths of...The Drawer Of Death.

Okay, everybody has a junk room or a junk closet or cupboard or whatever. Everybody has a place where they store those uncategorisable relics and memories and gimcracks that just don't fit anywhere else. But nobody has a Drawer Of Death. Nobody, that is, except me.

I didn't intend it to be a small shrine to all that is evil and forsaken in this world, it just turned out that way. At some point in the murky depths of the past, I reorganised The Darkened Room. Books, CDs, DVDs, clothes, writing stuff, alcohol, essentials, non-essentials...all found their place. I threw away all the junk I didn't want, and what was left was a bizarre tribute to the power of memory. I wanted this stuff, for a wide variety of reasons, but I didn't want it in plain sight and I didn't want it anywhere where I'd keep accidentally stumbling across it. Because once you're in the Drawer Of Death, you're in there for days, man. Maybe weeks. Maybe forever.

I was fast, like a cougar or a shark. I yanked the Drawer open and scanned until my eyes alighted on the object of my desire, taking every care not to let my gaze linger on any other item. There. I snatched the lighter and slammed the Drawer closed. Mission accomplished.

Only it wasn't, because one of the things I saw was a photograph. It was half-hidden beneath a pile of old letters, and all I saw was a leg. But it was her leg, and the photo was taken the night she wore that dress. These are notes from some other darkened room, notes that taste of tequila and smell like weed. They speak of kisses and whispered promises, of laughter and shouting in another part of the house, of sweat and friction and breathless memories I'd rather forget. Not because they're bad, but because comparing them to now is so painful.

I want another chance. I want to go back there and make it right, change it somehow, do or say something that means I don't have to end up here, feeling so stale and alone and tired.

I can't. I know that. So here I am. Here are the words. Here is the one thing I believe I do better than anybody else. I can't make it right, but I can make it beautiful. And wouldn't that be an epitaph for the ages?

Michael - He didn't make it right, but he did make it beautiful.

And there, friends, is a demonstration of the hideous powers lurking within The Drawer Of Death. It lures you with the promise of nostalgic comedy joy, then smacks you in the head with the baseball bat of remorse and sorrow. It is evil, and someday I will burn it.

But not today.