I still didn’t have a light for my cigarette, but I didn’t smoke.

Bridgette did.
Well, she used to.

The image of it hanging from her lips, flapping, as she chastised me, would never leave me.

That was one of the things that had finally pushed me over. That flapping cigarette and the grating voice that accused me of crimes I had yet to commit. In fact, she gave me the idea, the impetus, when she blamed me for Little Tommy Little. Hey, I didn’t tell him to follow me out into the night. Why hadn’t she been watching the tweenage delinquent? He turns up blue in a field across town and she’s blaming me.

I had watched that flapping cigarette one last time, though; inhaled its acrid stench as I gripped that soft, pale neck. Up and down, it flapped.

UP & DOWN . Down and up. U-p…a-n-d…d-o-w-n.

Down
and
Done.