Archive Tag:vices

Drabble 55 – Capnomancy

Capnomancy
Smoke by Centophobia

I was always a pretty good kid. Aside from some precocious misbehavior (escaping from my crib, getting my head stuck in a dresser, replying ‘peep’ to my mother’s warning that she didn’t want to hear another peep out of me, and so on), I mostly spent my time reading, writing, or having misadventures in the back yard. I’m what you might call boring, even now–my vices are candy, buying books, and biting the side of my mouth.

But I come from a family of smokers. I’ve never actually smoked before, in part because nobody has ever offered me a cigarette (I think that goody-two-shoes aura just oozes off of me), and in part because I once got picked on for smelling like cigarette smoke. It’s just not appealing to me, even aesthetically.

The weird thing is that I dream about smoking. I sometimes crave cigarettes when I’m stressed out, despite never actually having smoked. There’s probably some kind of psychological explanation for that, but I don’t yet know what it is.

Smoking is bad for you, yes, but there’s still something intriguing about a character that smokes. Chalk it up to one of my favorite genres being noir (and occult noir at that), but I’m still that goody-two-shoes girl who can’t help but fixate on how interesting smoking is, how a character who’s a smoker is somehow different than the version of themselves that doesn’t smoke.

Sorry, DARE instructors and Truth campaigns.

I’ll be on vacation next week, which means no drabble. So here’s one for this week, only mildly autobiographical.

Drabble 12 – Tsundoku

Tsudoku
Charlotte “Chuck” Charles from Pushing Daisies, my fictional character soulmate.

As far as vices go, mine are pretty harmless. I have a small candy addiction. I watch the same movies and TV shows over and over again when I’m stressed. I sometimes get the urge to bake pies.

Also, I buy books. There’s something incredibly cathartic about wandering into a new bookstore, thumbing through the shelves, and asking the owner for recommendations. I’ve found some of my favorite books thanks to bookstore owners and fellow shoppers–a bookstore owner recommended A Fine and Private Place by Peter Beagle to me because she said I was a kindred spirit, and a woman browsing the young adult section with my pointed out that I should try The Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones. Another woman told me to absolutely without a doubt stay away from So You Want to Be a Wizard… by Diane Duane–I ignored her, bought the book, and fell in love with the series.

What this means is that I have quite a collection. That collection takes up a lot of space. When I was in school, I didn’t have time to read many of the books I continued to accumulate on bad days, such as the book of English ghost stories picked up one rainy day, the adult fairy tales collection with the pretty cover, or a book of poetry I bought to pay for parking.

Now that I’m graduated, I’m working my way through that pile, but I remember the feeling described in this drabble all too well.